Who among us would leave the comfort of his home to go and protest a government that's gone off the rails?  Probably not that many.  Not after all the intimidation and threats leveled against conservatives and Trump-supporters.  That seems to have been the plan all along.  We've learned what becomes of patriots who didn't for one moment believe they would be risking everything to attend a protest in support of a sitting president.  By simply exercising their God-given rights, a great many of them have ended up as political prisoners.

Political movements aren't usually carried out by members of a comfortable and still fairly complacent population.  Liberty gave rise to the overwhelmingly dominant middle class that has been the hallmark of modern America.  Even as the American dream starts to dissolve, we'll still cling tightly to what remains and pretend not to be witnessing the demise of history's most beautiful child.

We're told that the precious gift was actually a demon seed and that we must purge all remembrance from our treacherous minds.  As our past is erased, we're taught to hate the present and the future.  Only in feudal serfdom and communism can happiness be found, so we must turn back the clock.  Freedom and modernity are the devils that must be cast into the pit.  They have wrecked the planet and led us off the path of conformity and obsequiousness.

It is, however, the idealists and true believers who are responsible for much of the despair and misery in the world.  Their utopian schemes are an all-out war against human nature.  Authoritarianism is the product of their ill conceived notions of a perfect society.  "Perfect" societies can be sustained only by cruelty and brute force.

People desire the freedom to live their lives in peace. We charter governments to resolve disputes, punish those who step across moral and legal barriers, and protect the nation from foreign threats.  The United States has, from its founding, held the belief that governments are a "necessary evil."  They are destructive by nature and should be severely limited in size and scope lest their growth escapes the bounds of service and become, as is their wont, dictatorial and oppressive.

Image: Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States by Howard Chandler Christy.  Public domain.

That is what our Founding Fathers knew to be the reality of governance.  They pressed up against the limits of their understanding to erase that fear from the struggles of a fledgling republic.  If there must be a "necessary evil," then their posterity should have the tools to control it — to limit its size and growth.  It is our great failing that we have lost the will to employ the tools bequeathed to us.

The true believers are now running the show in America.  A license to kill belongs to their bloated and immoral government — not just to kill the physical body, but the soul-crushing torture of the spirit that is imprisonment and loss.

To force their perfect society on America, the utopians must first do away with the Constitution.  This is no small undertaking.  But when the government can wantonly incarcerate, ruin, or gun down its citizens with impunity, then there is little left of the free state.  Ashli Babbitt was executed by a Capitol Police officer who was then sheltered from the public by government officials and the media.  An internal investigation found that the shooting was justified and that the officer would not face any charges.

That decision created two polar realities.  The Capitol Police used one to exonerate the officer, and another was clearly illustrated by the video recording of the event.

This duplicity mirrors what is now happening throughout our society.  If you're not parroting government-sanctioned speech, no matter how false, absurd, or outrageous, you risk being "canceled" by the technocracy or persecuted by the state and their media allies.  Parents who stand up at school board meetings and question the teaching of Critical Race Theory or transgenderism are now labeled as terrorists by the Department of Justice, while all the crime and corruption sweeping across the country are tolerated, excused, and often encouraged.

This is a far cry from our constitutional government.  It is also an unsustainable state of affairs for even a comfortable middle-class population.  The rising tide of anger and frustration can't be sidelined forever, and it won't be derailed by perpetual wars, endless "pandemics," or climate change scams.

Frank Liberato is a pseudonym.