Undoing the long defeat

If the past has been “fighting the long defeat” then the future must be a “new springtime”. If the past is the story of families and communities being separated from their common purposes and becoming individual cogs of the collectivist machine, then the future must be the story of reclaiming for families the dignity and purpose of producing for their own use much of what they need.


The law is an ass and using the law to enact utopia is often either dangerous or unpractical. There are a few things that would make things easier, but most of the push-back to today’s collectivist consumerism or socialized capitalism must come from voluntary simplicity. In other words this must be something people want and that emerges almost organically with just a bit of cultivation.


That is not to say that once we know where we want to be we can’t advocate a little populist tweaking that favors our cause. Tweaking such as protecting domestic industry from free-trade, raising the minimum wage for ages 25-30 and ages 30-120, and changing the collection of taxes from an income tax to a consumption or sales tax model. Also, we can reinstate certain anti-monopolistic laws and practices, size limits for farms and businesses that are eligible to receive tax breaks, subsidies, disaster relief, SBA loans, and exceptions to burdensome regulations, etc.



After all how much regulation is needed on a small bit of business between a buyer and seller who know each other either personally or by reputation? Why for the love of St. Pete must we subsidize and bail-out big business when we aren’t sure it is a good thing to subsidize small ones? As a practical matter we should ask ourselves how free we will be when we all work for either the government or Wal-Mart; the answer is just a bit freer than when the government takes Wal-Mart over.


One more area to tweak politically is our current residential zoning and development laws. These could easily and popularly be better geared to the development of community. First all future non-productive residential lots should be limited in size. Another priority of smart growth should be sustainability; arable and scenic land should be identified and preserved as farms or wilderness areas. Currently some states offer to buy the development rights from farmers who live near urban areas but want their farms to remain farms, but this is too little, too late. But rather than strictly relying on the jackasses that make our laws we need a list of action points.


First, the story of the new springtime must be the story of communities being rebuilt by individual families - families who value small shops over big-box-store consumerism. This can be done well within your current budget by buying less overall and especially with regards to entertainment-type purchases and services that our grandfathers never had use for. Also for the lower income family that wishes to embrace community, many of the things we need can be obtained at second-hand stores that are always small businesses or charities.


Secondly, we should all garden even if we only start with growing a few herbs or tomatoes in a hanging planter. In fact, starting small is recommended as gardening is an art and a science. A great way to learn gardening is to help out a seasoned gardener who is getting too old to do all the heavy lifting. It brings that human element of shared experience and a passing of the baton, a thing even the best books or websites cannot offer.


Third, we should look to do any necessary food processing ourselves or within a small group of friends or family that share our value of sustainable living. Brewing, winemaking, grinding wheat, canning, butchering, cooling and freezing and so forth are sometimes better done in groups that share the investment in equipment, storage, and facilities. Perhaps each family in the group could own one of those elements of food production or storage.


Finally, most of the changes we make on a governmental level should tend to be gradual and incremental. We should allow some existing things that are less objectionable to be “grandfathered in” while others should be phased out through law or squeezed out through tax or regulation. We must not allow man-made morality to stop us from making laws or setting practices. Only God’s laws should define freedom; only His Public Revelation should define right and wrong.