A couple of very different experiences I’ve witnessed in the past couple of years demonstrate what I’m talking about, and the capitulation in both sent chills through my system. In and of themselves, the incidents are not significant. The significance is when this kind of thing is how our entire country is run, from Obama Care being the law of the land, down to the most minute and innocent types of routine activities. The following acts of compliance I witnessed were not the actions of free citizens. They were the actions of subjects. You probably will recognize similar situations from your own experience.
The first incident involved home school parents and kids, and it was eye opening. I thought home school folks were very independent by nature. I know we are. The entire lifestyle, and home education, is about far more than just a choice of school location. It is about freedom from government in an area where most simply capitulate. Or at least, it is supposed to be.
Several years ago some home school folks were having semi-organized pick up hoops with fathers, sons and daughters at a community center outside Raleigh. The gym was not reserved per se, but no one except the home school crowd ever showed up early on Saturdays. So for a few weeks they had their run of the gym early, and all was fine. Since most of the people knew each other, this group was self-organizing. This is typical of such groups, by the way. The loosely organized rotation of play was working great, giving everybody the appropriate level of competition and no one played too long or sat out too long. If someone outside the group did show up, they were worked in seamlessly. Everything was going great.
That is, until the county bureaucrat in the office noticed that our group was not following the “rules” for free play posted on the walls. Now, rules like this are posted in community gyms for one reason: To make sure everyone gets a fair shake at the playing rotation. Without them, a normal flow of unattached players could easily result in chaos. But this was not a normal flow of unattached players, and there was no chaos. What the rules are set up to accomplish was already being accomplished in freedom, by common sense.
But, you see, the “rules are the rules.” And when some bureaucrat gets it in their head that the rules are the rules, the very reason for the rules doesn’t matter any more. The very activity the rules are supposed to enhance doesn’t matter either. The only things that matters are the rules and their ability to force them down peoples’ throats.
Thus this county employee, who we pay with our taxes to screw up our life, insisted that we scrap our perfectly working system and follow the rules on the wall. It totally disrupted the entire experience. There was less “order” after following the rules designed to keep the order. But that is not the point.
The point is that the parents in charge simply complied. They didn’t even try to talk sense or reason with the government bureaucrat. I don’t know if it would have worked or not, but it was the lamentable and overly compliant reflex that was chilling. And there was no reason for this. We pay our taxes. We obeyed all the rules about clean footwear and clean language and polite play. We were model citizens. We were doing great. The gym was going to be cleaner after we left than when we got there.
As stated earlier, I figured this home school crowed would be more independent minded. For crying out loud, we live a life that says we require less organization from government than others. And yet, this was all lost on the “rules are the rules” sheepish leaders of our very group. To me, this is the real danger of the creeping liberalism of bureaucracies.
And yet, things are even worse when organizers of an event that would normally be associated with independence and freedom and success and a hint of danger become the agents of inane “rules” themselves. Such happened at something called “The Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament” in North Carolina in 2010. I am still flabbergasted by this one, and it is a controversy that is still under way.
As you might have guessed, The Big Rock is a bill-fishing tournament. Every year something on the order of 125 to 150 boats that average almost sixty feet in length pay about $18,000 and change in entry fees to participate in the week long event. This is, by and large, a conservative crowd, even if no one officially says it. Even though some liberals participate, this week is about burning lots and lots of diesel fuel and about big boats and disposable after tax income and brown liquor and pretty women and catching big fish and telling even bigger lies. Depending on your boat and how far off shore you fish, this is a thirty-five to $50,000 week for the boat owner. Many of the boats themselves are worth several million. But these people are passionate about the exhilarating sport of bill fishing. The feel is sort of a cross between NASCAR and Wild Kingdom, with a little Tea Party thrown in. There is nothing remotely resembling an Occupy rally or a union hall about it.
The essence of bill fishing is freedom and success and talent and professional equipment and knowledge and, of course, lady luck. It is done way off shore, and often in difficult conditions. You don’t luck into a blue marlin, and these fish are not willing participants. You compete against them, and other competitors, by definition. And depending on how many boats enter and a few other factors, the week’s prize blue marlin is worth something on the order of a million bucks. And that’s just about what the prize fish was worth in the 2010 tournament. An Atlantic Blue Marlin weighing 883 pounds was boated by Virginia based ‘Citation’ on the tournaments opening day. It was, in fact, the biggest fish ever caught in the Big Rock’s long history and still is. Thus, the crew of ‘Citation’ appeared to be the winner of the 2010 Big Rock as the week ended.
But a funny thing happened on the way to picking up the million bucks. Someone noticed that a rule had been broken. Now I fully understand that rules are necessary for any sporting competition by definition. For this tournament, there are important rules that define when the fishing starts and ends each day and what type of equipment is allowed and disallowed. There are rules about what can and cannot be done to successfully boat a fish, and rules about the protocol for weighing in fish for prize money. All of these are rules that speak to the essence of competitive marlin fishing, and to violate any of these rules would be to gain a competitive advantage. Certainly, reasonable people can agree that a violation of any of these rules is worthy of disqualification.
But the crew of the ‘Citation’ did not violate any of these rules. They did not cheat. They successfully boated the biggest fish in Big Rock history and got it back to the weigh station. They did everything that’s very difficult to do and everything that speaks to the essence of the entire reason for the event even existing in the first place. So, what rule was broken?
One member of the crew did not have a valid North Carolina fishing license when the boat left the dock that morning. Keep in mind e was not the captain of the boat, nor was he the owner of the boat. He was not the angler that caught the fish. He was the mate. Nonetheless, the tournament committee disqualified the million dollar marlin over a fifteen dollar license. They did not penalize them five yards for off sides or even fifteen yards for unsportsmanlike conduct. They flat threw ‘Citation’ and its crew out of the 2010 tournament. The rules allow for such a decision, but they do not mandate it.
In all honesty, the organizers do make it easy for all crews to know about the valid N.C. fishing license requirement. They have tournament rules that are based on N.C. law. This is a fact. To which I say, why all the fuss about a piece of red tape to begin with? Everyone in football knows about off sides, but it is still only a five- yard penalty.
I have to wonder what kind of self important spell the organizers were under when they elevated a little piece of paper above the very heart of this event in the first place? Look, I agree all the participants should have a valid fishing license. It’s a good rule. I also think the pit crews at Daytona should all have valid drivers licenses. I just don’t think you DQ the winner for violating this particular rule in either case. If they cheat to catch the winning fish, by all means disqualify them. But for this? Fine them a portion of the winnings, give
that portion to your charities, and be done with it. Everybody wins, including the tournament, which gets to claim a monster fish for its archives. A modicum of common sense, a bottle of scotch, a dry cocktail napkin and ten minutes is all someone with brains would have needed to solve this entire thing.
That makes too much sense. Because, after all, “the rules are the rules.” For some reason, the Barney Fife demon has infected the organizers of this great event. They have decided to take this amazing spectacle and have it dominated by a tiny piece of North Carolina bureaucracy. And this is where it gets kind of funny.
The “rules are the rules” crowd at The Big Rock might just get tripped up by their own “rules” dogma. Their rule is based on state law, but the state only has jurisdiction out to three miles. These fish are caught much further off the coast than that, probably nullifying the license as even being a valid requirement. Oops. Hey, the “rules are the rules,” right?
Moreover, the Big Rock’s own rules state that everyone on board must have a valid license before “landing the fish.” That is a state phrase also by the way. Now the mate in question did secure a valid license on the internet from a lap top on the boat before the fish was landed. If you are going to live by the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law, the mate is clean here. The “rules are the rules.”
Even funnier, the citation the mate got from the Wildlife Department was incorrectly dated. “Rule are rules,” you say? It would be ironic indeed if the crew of the ‘Citation’ wins their million bucks because a wildlife officer flubbed the citation.
To top it off, under state law, an $18,000 fee for the chance to gain a million dollars is a contract, and a contract cannot be voided in full because of one non-material breach. The fishing license would never rise to the level of a material breach in the minds of thinking people. In other words, the “rules are the rules” folks might end up defeated by that very standard, in this case ultimately. I hope so.
But again, that’s not the point. This is a case of liberalism run amok. How close have we come to boiling our frogs when an event like this can make a ruling like they did? I am sure you can think of situations just like this at your job or in your play where the same dynamic is at work. It is an illness that threatens our very fabric, because it impacts issues much bigger than free play at community gyms and fishing tournaments. These are merely illustrative of a bigger disease.
Now, there are many reasons for this unnatural affection for mundane rules and paperwork, including the fact that it takes armies of bureaucrats to keep track of and enforce all of these rules, and those armies of bureaucrats are nice to have around on election day, or to fill buses for some kind of protest, if you are a liberal politician or community organizer. These are your “peeps.”
Another dynamic is more basic. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but there is something in the liberal soul that is repelled by whatever it is in the soul of the entrepreneur mover and shaker that makes him or her move and shake. Thus, the ability to have a nice little meaningless forty hour a week job in some hidden cubicle with just enough paper to push to screw up an entrepreneur’s business and life is what drives the self important bureaucrat. They hide behind “the rules.” They love “the rules.” It’s the source of their power. It gives them the ability to wipe out decades of blood, sweat and tears with but a single mouse click.
And it’s bad enough when it’s relegated to government bureaucrats in those cubicles. But when we allow too much of it, or even participate in too much of it ourselves, as free people, we are committing cultural suicide. And there’s just nothing very funny about that.
YMBAL’S #15
If you always donate to panhandlers on the street corner but turn your nose up at a Boy Scout Troop fundraiser…
If you say you want to pay more taxes, but you are paying lawyers millions of dollars to fight the IRS at the same time…
If you think consenting adults are free to participate in any activity but capitalism…
If you think the alarming violence at an abortion clinic is what takes place outside the clinic…
If you pray to “the woman upstairs” or “Mother god”…
If you have ever proposed a ban on guns for the American people while employing private armed security guards for yourself…
If you are very concerned with “the root causes” of crime…
If you think it really takes a village to raise a child…
If you think that the words “to promote the general welfare” in the Constitution means the same thing as generally promoting welfare checks…
If you are obsessed with regulating both preservatives and conservatives…
If earth shoes are a must pack for an overnighter…
If you are upset by the Bible phrase that “ye shall know them by their fruits” because you interpret it as being anti-gay…
If you’ve never been inside a gun shop or a tackle shop but can walk through an REI blindfolded without bumping into anything…
If you think the late Rodney King was at all interested in all of us just “getting along”…
If you are more worried about Joe McCarthy than you are Eugene McCarthy…
If you don’t think that either MSNBC or wind turbines produce noise pollution…
If you really believe the phrase “violence never solves anything” has any basis in world history…
If you think that earned money is evil and government checks are a right…
If you started to squirm when the Schwarzeneggar gave his convention speech about “girly men”…
...you might be a liberal. (YMBAL)
“For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.”
—Karl Marx
“The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way.”
—Milton Friedman
16: REAL GRASS ROOTS VERSUS AXELROD’S ASTROTURF
If you’ve ever mistaken a police car for a Porta-Potty…
Perhaps the most telling thing about the liberal state of mind concerning the Tea Party is how the liberals reacted to it. After decades of having to fabricate and “astroturf” all of their so-called ‘grass roots’ movements, these people simply did not know how to process a real live grass roots movement when it stared them in the face. I guess it never dawned on the left that these Tea Party rallies were not a bunch of people all wearing the same colored tee shirts and carrying identical placards and getting off a bunch of union financed buses.
Which, when you think about it, speaks volumes about more than just the Tea Party dynamic versus the typical Democrat rally. You’ve seen these rallies, of course. They are the gatherings where matching purple or yellow tee shirts fill the seats behind the speaking politician and you just know that somewhere, some tax payer financed jobs are going undone so the union goons can fill the seats. That anyone could look at a Tea Party event, or town hall meetings that preceded them, and think that this kind of astroturfing is behind it is just beyond comprehension.
The stark contrast really speaks to a much broader divide between conservatives and liberals than just Tea Party rallies compared to your garden variety Democrat political rallies, the short lived ‘coffee party,’ or, of course, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) communes. Most small business owners—the entrepreneurial class—are conservative. This kind of independent mindset is classically simpatico with conservative political thinking. There are exceptions, of course, especially in areas where government contracts are involved and some other niches, but by and large, this is a conservative arena. Many businesses were run for years by folks who put in long hours and mortgaged their homes, all in an effort to one day be truly independent of government or the corporate ladder.
And this is exactly the type of person, along with t
heir spouses and children and parents, who organically and independently reacted to an unplanned series of events starting in 2009. Well, actually starting in November of 2008.
These are people who instinctively understood that Obama Care’s socialized medicine, along with huge debt and deficits, were swallowing our economy whole, and would send the nation spiraling down an irreversible path to total socialism. Thus, they took time off from their work and their church and their little leagues to go to the town hall meetings that became a big story in 2009. In a somewhat related event on the morning of February 19th that same year, a little known trader on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange gave about a five minute rant on little known CNBC threatening to hold a “Chicago Tea Party on Lake Michigan.” Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge were both captivated by the display, and with red ‘end of the world’ headlines on The Drudge Report and nearly a full three hours of coverage on Rush’s show, Rick Santelli, CNBC and the term ‘Tea Party’ instantly became a part of our national discussion.
You Might Be a Liberal Page 12
