animals

If you knew me, and you don’t, you’d know that I’m a big Pink Floyd fan. So anyway, I was thinking the other day about Animals. For some reason I tend to forget about this album, but, in my opinion, it’s an excellent album. Sure, as a Christian and a conservative, I take issue with some of the lyrics, most of it I like and the music is some of their best. It’s very dark, though, and reminds me of Animal Farm, one of my all time favorite books, though the premise is a bit different.
All that being said, I realized the other day this dark album is a great illustration of how liberals view the world.
You have the pigs. The aristocracy. They are the rich and powerful few who use religion and commercialism to pacify the masses while they exploit them. They run the machine (go ahead, have a cigar).
The sheep are the blissfully ignorant masses. They are the stupid followers who don’t know what’s in their own best interest. They are helpless without a shepherd.
Then there are the dogs. They live in a dog eat dog world. They smile while they stab you in the back. They think of themselves as individualists, but what they don’t know is they are merely pawns in the pig’s game and completely expendable.
The one group left out is the enlightened, the philosopher kings, the anointed as Thomas Sowell calls them in The Vision of the Anointed. These are the ones who care. They are the educated elites. The believe that not only should they be in power, it is their birthright. Pesky inconveniences like constitutions and elections are merely obstacles. The rest of us are too dumb to make decisions for ourselves and would be completely helpless without them. This belief that they are entitled to power allows them to justify any lie or crime necessary for the acquisition of power. Their elitism justifies their binding one standard on us, while holding themselves to almost no standards at all.
They view the world as pre-revolution France. They dream of carrying the banner of equality as they storm The Bastille. And, of course, there’s the guillotine, revenge against those they view as responsible for all they deem unfair.
What I find ironic is their hatred for the perceived aristocracy. Aristocrats view themselves as being of noble birth, a higher breed with access to education and refinement. Therefore they have a right and a duty to rule. So, like the pigs in Animal Farm, they’ve become identical to their enemy.
However, in Pigs on the Wing pt. 1 and 2 the question “if I didn’t care…” is brought up. The idea that we need to care and look out for each other.
Dostoevsky, in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, sums up everything he’d been trying to say with his writing since he was sent to Siberia with only a copy of the New Testament (part of The Bible, for those with a public education) to keep him sane and knock some sense into is increasingly radical left wing mind. He writes:

And really how simple it all is: everything could be arranged at once! The main thing is to love your neighbor as yourself-that is the main thing, and that is everything, for nothing else matters. Once you do that, you will discover at once how everything can be arranged. And yet it is an old truth, a truth that has been told over and over again, but in spite of that it finds no place among men!

Now why does that sound familiar to me?
It is simple. If everyone loved one another in this biblical sense, a genuine desire for the welfare of others, in deed as well as words; if everyone had the wisdom to know what is in the best interest of themselves and others; if everyone had the self-control to overcome the emotions and temptations that push us to act otherwise; we’d have little or no need for government at all. Any economic system would probably work.
Though we aught to promote these values, we must deal with the world as it is and not how we wish it was.
We are people. People are people. All have fallen short of the glory, and all are subject to emotions, hormones, passions, lusts, temptations, ignorance, confusion, selfishness, and momentary lapses of reason. Even good people, and I do believe most are good natured at heart, are capable of doing horrendous things. David, a man after God’s own heart, slept with another man’s wife and had that man killed to cover it up. On top of this, there are those who aren’t good. I don’t believe they were born evil, but somehow they allowed themselves to become evil. This is Planet Earth after all.
For these reasons, we need government. The primary, and I believe, original purpose of government is to protect the people, not to rule over them. The government serves the people, not the other way around.
So what am I trying to say with this rant?
If it is this difficult to govern our own lives, why would be let a stranger, especially politicians and bearcats, govern our lives for us. They too are only human. They are not infallible, even Obama. They are all subject to temptation, stupidity, and the corrupting forces of power. This is precisely why their power should be limited.
These pigs, I mean “anointed” are no more than vindictive, arrogant, narcissistic busy-bodies seeking to congratulate themselves and give their meaningless lives some meaning by prying into everyone else’s business and telling them what they are doing wrong. I deal with way too much of this at work, I don’t want to get from my government as well.
But I guess, that too, is life on Planet Earth.
I guess that’s about all I have say for now; it's late and my brain's gone comfortably numb. If you’re still with me, if your attention span is long enough and you have nothing better to do, thank you for reading. Any thoughts, questions, corrections, or suggestions are more than welcome.
Oh, and condescension is not love.