Tending Sheep for Slaughter
In a recent post about the current President, one person replied, “Who would be a better LEADER?” This is my response:
Why do we need any “leader” … at least at a national level? We are not sheep to be tended … and ultimately led to slaughter. Neither Biden nor anyone else can possibly know, much less satisfy, the concurrent and competing needs, desires, and wants of a nation of 330,000,000 individuals. For one to assert unique insight or singular enlightenment is the height of arrogance and hubris. For the public to believe in a savior or in an anointed few delivering for all believers a heaven on earth (i.e. Utopia), represents the worst of naivete and ignorance.
First, individuals should be tasked, empowered, and responsible to take care of themselves (for better or worse). Too often, persons abandon personal responsibility and shirk individual effort in favor of a culture of victimhood, in which “others” are given responsibility both for one’s present situation and for one’s ultimate fate.
Second, truly effective “leadership” does not come from some figurehead or government politico. Individuals are best led and motivated by persons with whom they have meaningful interpersonal relationships: family and friends. Absent those meaningful, productive, and beneficial relationships, it is often a matter of the “blind leading the blind(er).” Rather than being led to the Promised Land, we are more like proverbial lemmings plunging to our collective death.
Emphasis should be on stable families and productive local communities not some ineffective national solution to be imposed by force through a gargantuan bureaucracy. Will a more personal and local focus fix all societal ills? Nope. Will those things afford to everyone all that they want? Nope. Those things will, however, allow those who are motivated, committed, and determined an opportunity to succeed.
Despite inexplicable blind faith, the federal government cannot “fix” society or effectively provide for us, and vesting in that government, by and through self-serving political minions, vast unrestrained power is a recipe for certain disaster on an epic scale. With each certain failure or unfruitful iteration, the state demands or usurps more power on the unfounded promise of future success. As power trends toward absolute, so does the certainty for abuse, corruption, and tyranny.
Government is not a panacea. It is at best a necessary evil. Our lives are our own to live. It is up to the individual to make the most of the single life that each person is afforded. Today, government and much of the populous has adopted a perverse affinity for “equality” (without due consideration of “equity”). Should we follow the “lead” of government, we may be more “equal,” but we will be more equal in misery, disappointment, loss, and want.
