Perhaps no greater delusion stubbornly persists from one generation to the next than the idea that governments can be trusted.  Sure, they conduct their affairs in secret, spy on their own people, and arm themselves to the teeth — but, by all means, trust them as you would a dear relative.  Sure, they steal from productive citizens, manipulate markets, and swell their bureaucratic armies with ever-growing taxes — but, by all means, trust them as you would a close business associate.  Sure, they impose their beliefs on our culture, ban the public expression of unfavored religions, and interpose their agents between parents and children — but, by all means, trust them as you might a pastor, rabbi, or priest.

Even after the global wars, genocides, engineered famines, and kill squads that made the last century the most barbaric in human history, it is exceedingly common to hear Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others from the Church of Big Government mock ordinary citizens for not putting absolute faith in government institutions.  Distancing themselves from the State-sanctioned atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao while nonetheless pursuing policies that similarly elevate the organs of government and intimidate citizens into compliance, today's ruling-class cult leaders pretend that the twentieth century's mass slaughters could never be repeated here and now — as if the predisposition toward mass murder were a peculiarly German, Russian, or Chinese prerogative and not a tragic ailment endemic to the whole human race.

Oh, sure, Justin Trudeau confiscated the bank accounts of Canadians who resisted his tyrannical COVID lockdowns, but such rank authoritarianism was necessary to protect the public's health.  Sure, Barack Obama — with assists from a complicit Congress and Supreme Court — effectively nationalized a fifth of the economy under a broad system of health care mandates, but that, too, was necessary to protect the public's health.  Sure, Hillary Clinton recently suggested that "there needs to be a formal deprogramming of MAGA cult members," but her proposal might be justified as merely a mental health initiative intended to...protect the public from itself.  

Hmmm.  "Protecting the public's health" sure sounds like a convenient euphemism for justifying government tyranny, does it not?  In order to protect public health, we must treat as "sick" any individual who doubts that the government's primary concern is the public's health!  Just by sheer coincidence, of course, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao used this exact same tactic to lock up their political opponents as "mentally disturbed" psychiatric patients before finally concluding that they should just be executed as enemies of the State instead.  Well, at least our government would never act so outrageously as to define us as "domestic enemies."  Wait, what?  The FBI has officially designated President Trump's supporters as "domestic terrorists"?  Warning: If anybody shows up at your door and says, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help," run far, far away!  Quickly! 

Obamacare Stage One: Everyone gets "free" healthcare.  Obamacare Stage Two: Those diagnosed as "deplorable" get complimentary "deprogramming."  Obamacare Stage Three: "Uncurable" MAGA holdouts are placed against the wall to be late-late-term "aborted."  Planned Parenthood should have America cleansed of "wrongthink" in no time.  Yep, sounds like government "health care" to me!

Never forget how close we came during COVID-1984's period of mass hysteria to the imposition of "quarantine camps" that could be used to intern Western citizens who had the misfortune of testing positive for the common cold or the audacity to resist police-State edicts.  In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, government officials were eager to adopt identical measures as had already been deployed in communist China to isolate citizens for months at a time.  With the full-throated support of nefarious institutions such as the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization, Chinese totalitarianism was heralded as an ideal system to be emulated — rather than as a contemptible vehicle for committing crimes against humanity that should have been universally scorned.  Traditional Western deference to individual self-determination and respect for personal freedoms, on the other hand, were cast aside and demonized as a "dangerous" philosophy that must be purged.  With house arrests, school closures, the cancelation of religious services, the forced shuttering of small businesses, the warrantless tracking of cell phones, mass censorship, coerced injections of experimental cocktails, and the criminalization of all dissent, Western governments galloped quickly toward martial law without batting an eye or breaking a sweat.  

At some point, a rational and moral person must take a sober look around and confront reality as it is and not through the prism of comforting delusions.  History can be either a wise teacher saving us from future danger or a prophet spelling out in detail what miseries lie ahead.  Either way, ignoring her lessons will not forestall the hard choices to come.  Whenever and wherever individual freedoms are subordinated to the whims of an all-powerful State, death and destruction are certain to follow.  

No disease or natural disaster has ever posed more of a threat to a people than that posed by their own government.  It is a bitter pill to swallow, but when governments are not pointing their weapons at foreign enemies, they are almost always pointing them at domestic ones.  And unless a nation's people or the legal chains of a constitution keep the State bound, gagged, and subdued, it will inevitably grow to be a monster inflicting harm on those it claims to protect.  

Who is hands-down the worst mass murderer in human history?  In a single word: government.  When it is not finding ways to kill people beyond its borders, it is crafting justifications for killing citizens within.  Those who nonetheless persist in holding any government up as a model of virtue and decency are either too naïve to understand that they champion a cutthroat or so depraved that they gladly serve as its accomplice.

The reason no government lasts forever is because its homicidal tendencies eventually force ordinary people to act, whether they want to or not.  Sometimes, as with Nazi-controlled Germany, outsiders end a murdering State's reign of terror before that terror spreads even farther.  Sometimes, as with the collapse of the Soviet Union, insiders must bring down the Leviathan from within the bowels of the beast.  Either as common soldiers or revolutionaries, though, it is always normal people who must do the heavy lifting.  No government will prosecute and sentence itself.

The question for ordinary people invariably remains the same: when should a government be properly understood as such a threat to the lives and liberties of its citizens that good and decent people must act in concert to prevent greater harm?

Is it when government propaganda is presented as "truth" and provable truths are regularly misrepresented as "conspiracy theories" and "lies"?  Is it when government prosecutors apply two standards of "justice" — one that perennially benefits the regime's friends and another that torments and imprisons its perceived enemies?  Is it when private corporations posing as political parties successfully deprive the people of faithful representation by controlling who may successfully run for office?  Is it when the legislature effectively transfers its powers to a collection of corporate boards, lobbying groups, and bureaucrats?  Is it when the courts so distort the plain meaning of the nation's Constitution as to rewrite it without the public's affirmation?  Is it when rights and liberties considered so inalienable that they are listed within a Bill of Rights are instead cast aside or watered-down as to provide no guarantees?  Is it when a private central bank is empowered to devalue the public's savings by endlessly printing new currency?  Is it when war is declared without a vote, the people are taxed without their approval, and the imposition of communism is simply rebranded as "fighting global warming"?

Yes.

Image: Pashi via Pixabay, Pixabay License.