Take a look at this picture:
Just by eyeballing it, do you think the elephant can break that chain if he wanted to?
Of course! He can snap it at any time!
Then why doesn't he?
Because he's been trained (starting from a baby) that he can't break the chain. As the elephant grows up, it tries and tries, but the chain is too strong. The elephant gives up and never tries again, even when it is fully grown and massive...and can snap the chain in the blink of an eye.
Mentally, the elephant has been beat.
Now let me introduce you to American human beings. These humans descend from ancestors that valued and cherished the mentality of Liberty.
But then the power hungry "mental trainers" came along.
One (of the many) trainers goes by the name of Michael Gerson. Like his colleagues, Gerson recognizes the contempt that Americans currently have for the government. He sets out to reaffirm to the trained humans that they cannot break the chain.
Gerson writes in The Washington Post:
Americans do not want public officials who share their contempt for government; they want public officials who no longer justify it.You see American humans also start their training at a very young age. Government wants to make it even younger with its idea of "Universal Pre-K".
The alternative to grandiosity and incompetence is not to do nothing. It is to achieve policy goals in ways that are practical, incremental and effective. Americans have not ceased looking for responses to routine educational failure or persistent economic stagnation — or to the problems of an expensive, inequitable health-care system. These are public challenges, in which government plays an inescapable role. A successful political party will provide a superior conception of that role. (my emphasis).
By the time the Americans are 18 years old, the idea that government plays an "inescapable role" in education, the economy, healthcare, and every other facet of life, is cemented in.
When adulthood is reached, American minds are ready to "graduate" to CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, and the Michael Gerson's. Just in case Americans get curious about liberty, these trainers are there to provide a daily refresher course.
As with elephants, this is all mental. The power rests solely on the ideas that are held by each individual.
Government does not have to play an "inescapable role". Such an idea is equivalent to the tiny chain holding back the massive elephant.
A much sounder, sustainable, and viable idea...is for government to play no role whatsoever in education....
The elephant merely has to jolt its leg to snap that puny chain, and he could gallop off to freedom.
Americans just need to adopt different ideas! Then speak, write, tweet, youtube, and share them with others. Americans can tell the mental trainers to take a hike, and then set the country back on the path of Peace...Commerce...And No Foreign Entanglements.
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The BEST analogy you could have used!
ReplyDeletePS So very interesting, and inspiring, to hear 'how you got to work for Bob'!
The fact that articles like this are even published and its not the only one that has been circulating, suggest to me at least that the anti state mentality is growing. Sure, very little has changed.
ReplyDeleteBut the fact that the mentality of people conditioned for so long to believe that tax funded monopolies are their saviors is changing to the view that these institutions are frauds that seek to exploit the public and not to serve it is very good news indeed.
Could anyone who read the newspapers and magazines pre-internet honestly say that they would have seen articles like this back then? In other words, from a libertarian perspective the glass is half full and not half empty even in these times of the total state.
Great stuff, reminds me of the boiling frog analogy. If only we can realize we just need to jump out of the water before we're boiled alive!
ReplyDeleteFantastic Analogy!
ReplyDeleteSince you are very wrong about the elephant breaking the chain, one can doubt the rest. That story about the baby elephant is a myth. During the last 4000 years a lot of mistakes has been done by a few, but not by many, as a rule. Therefore, elephants are teathered as good as possible, and even adult bulls fight, they seldom break the chains. The myth however, is becoming as populair as the myth that bombs killed the last elephant in Berlin Zoo during WW2. On hundreds of forum this is reapeted by human parrots. But its not true.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not the elephant / chain story is a myth, it really means nothing to the analogy being made.
DeleteThe analogy is fantastic whether it's a myth or not.
No. The "Elephant" analogy has been shown to be true for decades. Try again, troll.
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