No free power lunches
December 3, 2015 § 21 Comments
Modern people have a terrible attitude of entitlement, of which they are mostly unaware. Sure, they can see where those bad people over there feel entitled; but they don’t see it in themselves. It may be obvious to other people, but to the entitled the world just looks so unfair and wrong when it doesn’t hand them what they want on a silver platter.
The form taken by this entitlement attitude depends on the person and what he takes for granted. Modern sluts feel entitled to free contraception and the right to murder their own children as a ‘backup’; baby mommas feel entitled to promiscuous sex with bad boys and food, shelter, education, domestic safety and HDTV for their fatherless children; college girls feel entitled to have ‘safe spaces’ and to punish their mutually drunken lovers as ‘rapists’ when they regret their hookups; libertarians feel entitled to functioning sovereign marketplaces and communities with low or nonexistent taxes; usurers feel entitled to profits without the concomitants of investment in property; and in general people who are terrible followers feel entitled to good leaders.
I’m sorry to inform all of these entitled modern people that there is no free lunch. Liberals feel entitled to the benefits of living under authority without actually having to live under real authority; as a result they are ungovernable and get the lousy leadership they deserve.
Every man is both leader and follower. It is important to be a good follower: not a yes-man toady, which is a form of cowardice, but loyal — even when leadership is bad. The form of this loyalty will vary based on the institution in question and the circumstances, and like all things it has its limits. But we didn’t get to where we are today through an excess of good followership and loyalty.
I don’t speak for other men, but being under my authority is a privilege that is offered to very few people. Only very particular circumstances can result in someone being under my authority. When those circumstances obtain, my subjects get my total commitment to their well being. If my authority is challenged – not particular judgments, mind you, since I am as fallible as the next guy, but the legitimacy of my authority per se – then that follower is out. That person and their issues are not my problem anymore. Living under my authority is a privilege: a privilege which can be revoked.
No self-respecting man is interested in leading ungovernable people. Liberals believe in non-authoritative authority, non-governing governance, non-discriminating discrimination. Liberals are inherently ungovernable.
Leadership is like any other human activity; which is to say, it is subject to all of the flaws associated with human beings. It isn’t always true that “you get what you pay for.” Being good followers doesn’t guarantee good leadership.
But being bad followers does guarantee bad leadership.
Zippy Catholic 
Moderns see authority, loyalty, and purity as positively evil. Liberals really do see subversion, betrayal, and degeneracy as goods. The revolution devours its children.
Most of the problems between the ruled and ruler are probably the result of what that link in a previous thread talked about with respect to the need to make the world a better place. The ruler imposes his will for comprehensive change on an unwilling people; the ruled refuse to either do what’s right (as it may be in some cases) or refuse to be molded like clay in the hands of a social engineer. In the West, it’s more often the latter and that perpetuates the cycle as many people become libertarians because they’re absolutely sick of being treated like they and society are just a huge pile of legos in the hands of an easily changeable kid’s hands (much of the left).
Aside from libertarians, modern people tend to forget the fact that all political authority that is enforced is ultimately enforced at gun point. It never occurred to bureaucrats and politicians in NYC that their “loosie” law on cigarettes would end up resulting in someone dying because they balked at being arrested for a $1-$3 tax law violation. And further ironically, it never occurred to them that their increased centralization of decision making and reduction in ability to just ignore violations in service to the common good would reduce police to situations where they have to do stuff like that.
I’ve heard mention of the “we get the leader we deserve” idea before, but this is a nice bit of detail as to *why* that might be the case. I like it.
Mike T:
Yes, we know: most of the problems in the world are caused by bad, bad authority imposing its will on nice people, which makes those nice people unhaaaaappy, so they have to blow up the family. I mean polity.
No, apparently you don’t know because my comment put two scenarios of equal injustice in there: the leader who attempts genuine reform and is rebuffed by a stubborn people and the leader who attempts to enforce radial social engineering on a good enough society.
Mike T:
Your emphasis is always to rationalize why libertarianism is oh so understandable; to wit:
You are like the female trolls on Dalrock’s blog who cannot abide a discussion of male headship without constantly bringing up abuse.
I didn’t justify libertarianism, I pointed out that the left-liberals’ social engineering breeds libertarianism as that is the natural reaction to wanting freedom from their social engineering while staying a liberal.
Mike T:
I reject your attempts to reframe.
You cannot abide a discussion of sovereign authority and good followership without crying ‘but what about abuse (!!!!)’.
If a feminist were doing that when it comes to a discussion of male headship you’d reject the trolling. But when it comes to sovereign authority you are just as bad.
Except I didn’t cry anything like that, and indeed showed sympathy for a leader who was attempting to uphold the common good against a people who did not consent to it.
Mike T:
Feminist trolls at Dalrock’s always do that. “Yes, male headship and the Bible and all, but abbbbbuuuuuuuusssssseeee!!!!”
Except that libertarianism comment would be akin to a female commenter there pointing out that “good girl” who marries a bad, abusive man will probably end up getting screwed up and hardened in her folly.
Mike T:
Right. A feminist troll cannot abide discussion of male headship without yammering about bad men.
It wouldn’t necessarily be a troll making that statement. You let your past discussions with me cloud things to the point where I can’t make a point about the evil tendencies of modern liberal leaders and how they feed the very cycle you decry without attacking me.
To an extent, rebellion against many, maybe most, of these leaders is necessary as a basic sanity check because their policies are insane and destructive of the common good. That habituates a people to a state of rebellion which leads to an “ungovernable people” as you call them.
Mike T:
There you go again. It is kind of bizarre that you cannot see this about your own comments and keep doubling down. Unless you actually are deliberately trolling.
Mike T:
To see how your comments look to me, consider this simple word substitution:
To an extent, rebellion against many, maybe most, of these [husbands] is necessary as a basic sanity check because their [betatude and leadership failures] are insane and destructive of the common good. That habituates a [wife] to a state of rebellion which leads to [the] “[threatpoint]” as you call [it].
You just can’t seem to talk about government authority without constantly bringing up how bad government authorities are and how rebellion is a ‘sanity check’ or whatever.
It is the same trolling behavior as feminists who can’t stand any focused discussion of bad female behavior and its causal role in modern problems. You’d be happy to have a long conversation about nasty bad government where the despicable ungovernable followership of modern people is never even brought up. But the reverse you cannot abide.
I will grant you that I should have posted it in the other thread, as it wasn’t that on topic in hindsight.
You just can’t seem to talk about government authority without constantly bringing up how bad government authorities are and how rebellion is a ‘sanity check’ or whatever.
I would say that you can’t seem to take me at face value when I make a point of telling you that my talk is limited to a particular subset of political authority. In fact, is gets ironic when you consider that aside from some overlap with libertarians, I generally disagree with libertarianism, particularly on its axioms.
Mike T:
Just the bad, abusive, and too-effeminate husbands, eh?
I think, on the contrary, that I take what you consistently emphasize and downplay seriously.
[…] Source: Zippy Catholic […]
[…] have, concomitant to their liberalism (and to the extent of their commitment to liberalism), an insufferable sense of entitlement and a view of authority as tyranny. Part and parcel to that sense of entitlement is begging the […]
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No self-respecting man is interested in leading ungovernable people.
On occasion I see people arguing against ‘nanny state’ proscriptions “because the Prohibition failed”.
Rather, the most direct implication of the Prohibition’s failure is that the citizenry were bad followers.