Slaves of the Spartan Kingdom Ch. 03

"But not people who do things in the best interest of others. In my book, when you abrogate anyone's right to decide for themselves what is in their best interest, you make them your slave. It doesn't matter if they willingly give up their right. It doesn't even matter if they believe it is in their best interest to do so. It just makes them a willing slave... but a slave nonetheless.

"When these others look back on their lives, they will only see what they believe to be the good they have done, but never recognizing the slaves they have made – people who are now dependent and beholden to them. People who feel too scared to go without their 'Nanny State' to decide what is in their best interest.

"From the way I just worded that, it would be fair to assume that I am just referring to liberals, but this can apply to anyone of any political persuasion. Since a liberal would find it difficult to believe a conservative would decide things in the best interest of others, let's focus this on the liberals. In particular, let's look at a great liberal icon, who's a congressman from New York, Barney Frank. He was once quoted as saying 'Government is the name we put on the things we choose to do together.' I'm sure he wants to believe that, but he can't actually be serious, and if he is, it's a key linchpin in his self-deception.

"Speaking as someone who views the government as nothing but force, and that force is always evil, and that laws are what you pass when you no longer wish to respect those you disagree with, I would rephrase what he said to what he really means, and that is 'Government is the name we put on the things that we elites want to shove down your throats.'"

After spewing that diatribe, her father looked over at Marcie, and by the deer-in-the-headlights look she was giving him, he realized he had gone too far. He took a deep breath and sighed, "Sorry about that."

Marcie was a little shocked by this. She never knew him to be all that political. If she had to guess, she would have said he was a Republican, but this still seemed out of character.

"I know it seems incredulous that I am comparing liberals to criminals, but there are certain commonalities, and one of them is what I would say to both. That is, 'no matter how well you may think what you are doing works for you, you will do so much better if you decide to do good instead.'

"More specifically, I would say to criminals to just forget about the harm they cause others. Just focus on the harm they cause themselves. Living a life of crime just doesn't pay. Most will end up spending most, if not all, of their lives in prison, and the very few that are smart enough not to get caught, and actually make crime pay, they would have made themselves much more wealthier by joining the legitimate economy.

"To the liberals, I would say that no matter how much they think they have accomplished using the force of law, so much more would have been accomplished if they hadn't. Not only that, but the evil they employ, which they refuse to see as evil, blinds them to the damage they cause to others and themselves.

"Actually, I would like to tell them that, but I know they wouldn't get it. As long as they believe their intentions are good, they will always believe their actions are good. It's like believing that dropping those atom bombs on the Japanese was good for them.

"The problem is it's a lot easier to turn a criminal around than it is a liberal. I know. I used to be one. There are many former liberals, like me, who became disillusioned by liberal politics. I just didn't see what we were doing that was empowering people. All it was doing was making them dependent on the government. As I heard some talking head say on some news show, 'When the government takes you under its wing, you will always wind up in a headlock.'

"There has been trillions of dollars spent on fighting poverty since Roosevelt's New Deal, yet more people feel like they can't get by on their own than ever before. That's my personal definition of being poor, because determining whether you are poor by some arbitrary line of wealth is ridiculous. Anyone who believes they have the power and resources to make a life worth living on their own is not poor. Anyone who believes they can't make it in life without special considerations is poor. I don't care how much wealth they have – they are poor.

"So rather than trying to make the liberals look to the past and see the error in their ways, like I would with a criminal, I would instead take them to the future to see where they are going. What seems to work best is the 'frog and a boiling pot' analogy. You know, 'throw a frog in a pot of boiling water and he'll jump out, but put him in while the water is still cold and he'll boil to death.'

"What I like to do is ask them why they aren't a full blown socialist. Anyone who gets offended by the accusation, I know I have a candidate to turn. I then put it bluntly that if they are not, why not? If they think the control government has over your life is so good as it is, why not more? Why not go whole hog and demand a complete take over of the economy. Why not have the government tell us what companies can succeed and what companies should fail; what jobs we can have and how much we should be paid; more to the point, who should work and who shouldn't have to. In fact, why bother working at all since the government will make sure we have everything we need to live.

"Looking back at criminals again, just because a kid steals a pack of gum that doesn't mean he'll wind up as a bank robber. What he has working in his favor is his God-given humanity to act as a break against him sliding into a complete sociopath. A liberal on the other hand has no break. He believes he is doing good. And the more things he believes it is appropriate for the government to take over control now, the more he'll believe should be taken over later.

"So making a liberal look back on his life never works, but making him look into the future to see where his path is leading him does. The more I make them think about what the break is to prevent a total government take over, the more they realize there isn't one with the path they are on... ...just as there isn't one for the sociopaths who believe that evil works for them." He looked over and asked, "Did I go too far again?"

Marcie said, "I wouldn't know where to begin with all of that, Dad. Socialists are as bad as sociopaths? Where does that come from?"

"I didn't say they were the same," he replied. "I just think there are instructive parallels to consider. I can't help it if the slow progression that makes people evil, is the same process that makes people socialists. My only point is that evil is evil and you must do good to be good. Slapping a good label on evil will never make it good, nor will it ever accomplish good."

"I didn't know you were so anti-government," stated Marcie.

"I'm not anti-government," responded her father. "I'm still a liberal at heart. I haven't changed who I am, nor what I want our society to become. I just don't believe liberal politics will accomplish it.

"What I want is to make a reality of what Congressman Frank said. I want to see real leaders elected into the government, and not dictators promising to 'save us.' I want a government that respects us enough to allow us to decide for ourselves what is in our best interest.

"I want a government that really is the name we put on the things we choose to do together."

While Marcie was mulling over what her father just said, the news program they were watching caught her attention.

From the anchor man, "This just in. Seven police officers have been killed and two others critically injured near Riverside, California. The details are still a bit sketchy, but what is known is that two social workers, with the aid of twelve county sheriff officers, attempted to take custody of an eleven year-old boy that was being abused by his father. Exactly what happened is not known at this time, but the father has escaped with his son ... Yes Jane?"

The camera panned to the right to show an anchorwoman. "We've got some more details, Jeff. The father of the boy is allegedly a member of a violently anti-government motorcycle gang called the Spartan Kingdom. This gang has drawn a lot of attention from the authorities because they openly train to overthrow the government, and many of their members have previously been arrested on weapons charges. As any further details are made known we'll pass them on immediately."

This was the first time that Marcie had heard the name Spartan Kingdom, but she didn't dwell much on why twelve officers were needed to take custody of a boy, nor what the father could be doing to warrant having his son taken from him. Her big concern was on how anything her father has said helps her with her dilemma, and frankly, she didn't see it. "So going back to what you said before about what an evil person is. If I understand you correctly, you said that just because a person does evil that doesn't make them evil. Right?"

"Correct," her father affirmed. "Just as doing good doesn't make you good. There is a lot of blood on the hands of pacifists because of their failure to prevent great evil in this world when they had an opportunity to do so. I personally view pacifists as parasites because they can only exist where others are prepared to do the evil they won't.

"I hope to someday live in a society where all of the right decisions aren't evil ones, but we're not going to get there by believing that only by doing good will we be good, or by believing that if our intentions are good then we must be doing good."

Marcie just shook her head, and said with a great deal of frustration, "I still don't get it. How does someone determine if they are evil or not?" As soon as she said that she realized that the way she put it made it too easy to see that she was referring to herself. Luckily it didn't look like he caught on.

"That's not an easy one," her father replied, "because many times when people do see themselves as evil, they really aren't. It's kind of like that saying where if you believe you are insane then that's a good sign that you're not. People who are evil and see themselves as evil are very rare. Even most sociopaths don't fall into that category.

"The best I can say is that an evil person isn't determined by any particular state that they are in, such as your question would imply. It has more to do with the direction they are heading. If their direction is evil, then they are evil. And when I say direction, I don't mean intention. Your intentions may shape your direction, but they don't determine it.

"And this has significance to another important dynamic on how some people become evil. It happens when they recognize the evil they have done and just give up. They see they have done wrong, and resign themselves to their evil ways, not realizing that all it takes is a change in direction to make themselves good again. This one often plagues women when it comes to sex. Once they've said yes, and they are no longer a virgin, they then believe they have no right to say no anymore."

He paused for a second, then continued, "In order to make the best decisions possible in the present, you need to be open and honest with yourself about your past. More importantly, you should never view it through the prism of your intentions, and only evaluate your past based on what it has accomplished. That said, it's not your past that defines who you are, it's where you are going that does."

He then leaned over the side of his chair and looked directly into his daughter's eyes to make sure that Marcie knew to whom he was referring, "I don't care what she has done in her past, every woman has the right to say no. Every woman deserves to feel as special, and as pure, and as decent as she wants to be."

With tears in her eyes, and gratitude in her heart, Marcie said, "Thanks Dad. I needed that."

~ End of Chapter 3 ~ The Professor's Slave ~