I Like That "Can't Be Trusted" Line...

Still, you’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule is just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

— Barack Hussein Obama

Commencement Speech, Ohio State University

• FAST AND FURIOUS, where elements of the United State government, including the State and Justice departments, facilitate gun-running into Mexico to create a firestorm against United States gun laws. Two American agents are killed and literally hundreds of Mexican nationals, including women and children, are slaughtered by the smuggled guns. No resolution, and as recently as last week B-Ho once again repeated the now-discredited trope that, "American guns are responsible for crime in Mexico."

• BENGHAZI, where an American ambassador and 3 American citizens, including 2 former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, are killed while the full power of America sits on the sidelines without taking action. Elements of the U.S. government, including the State Department and probably the White House launch a massive cover-up to protect the "Al Qaeda is on the run" narrative just weeks before what appears to be a close election.

• ROGUE BILLIONAIRE Michael Bloomberg launches a major campaign to subvert state and local legislators with threats (the threat of a fully financed primary challenge from the left) and massive campaign contributions (both in cash and "administrative help"), all focused on having state and local legislators "ignore their constituents" and vote the fascistic Bloomberg line. 

• IRS ENEMIES LIST, where arguably the most powerful and feared agency of the U.S. government reveals they were targeting conservative groups such as the Tea Party and other groups who were perceived as against the present Administration.

• JUSTICE DEPARTMENT "RAIDS" THE ASSOCIATED PRESS phone lines. Despite the fact that the Mainstream Media have been little more than cheerleaders or apologists for the Administration, Eric Holder's Justice Department issues secret subpoenas on AP, sending a chill through even the lapdog MSM and supporters of the First Amendment.

And on and on...the disaster of ObameCare, passed by a clever legalistic "trick" rather than a heads-up vote ....crippling government regulation enacted without public input or Congressional oversight... the continual lies from Eric Holder, from Hillary Clinton, from Obama himself...more than four years of a vicious, cynical campaign, headed by Barack Obama himself, to turn black against white, rich against poor, American against American!

Maybe it's time for us to maybe spend a couple of minutes looking at history, then ask ourselves the most important question of our, and maybe America's, lifetime...how is it that the tyranny referenced by B-Ho in his commencement address begins? We Americans live in a country that might be best described as the "Great Anomaly," a stable representative democracy. Even our most contentious national elections, think Bush versus Gore, don't end up with tanks in the street.

But there's a catch...the incredible "machine" built by the Founders' genius only works if its citizens believe it works. The reason the tanks aren't in the street is that despite the white hot flaming rhetoric we believe that at its core the system itself is honest, that the elements of change will work for both sides. Central to that believe is that the instruments of government are not used as a weapon against its citizens...that is the signature of tyranny.

Because we are citizens of the Great Anomaly, we have only a distant, and distracted, view of tyranny. We imagine that history's monsters, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hussein, Amin, Milosovic, Mussolini, Hilter, are somehow the modern incarnation of the vampires of lore, that at some point the citizens of those respective benighted countries answered the midnight knock on the door and invited the great vampire to step over the threshold.

But as even a casual reader of vampire lore will recognize, vampires are not just tricky, but subtle. They understand at an albeit mutated DNA level what constitutes an "invitation," and they're quick to step across thresholds. So we come back to our question, "How is it that the tyranny referenced in B-Ho's commencement address — a tyranny that the President assures us is of course not lurking around the corner — begins?" At what point does the vampire step across the threshold and into our home?

I'm going to send you to Charles Cooke's headlining piece in today's NRO to prove that I'm not completely insane here, and his thoughts align with mine:

“Paranoia is just having the right information,” William S. Burroughs once observed. We have that information. Who can look at the 20th century with a cold eye and conclude that the problem was that people were “too fearful” of their governments? Who will claim that our blood-drenched last hundred years was the product of people insisting too emphatically that they must retain their liberties? Who will claim that the great flaw of the last century was that the people were armed — or able to speak freely? Most important, who will claim that the progressive conception of government has proved superior to that of the Founders? 

The news that the IRS was targeting pro-Constitution groups with “patriot” and “tea party” in their titles is almost implausibly ironic. But that the IRS was “targeting” anyone is flatly unacceptable. Herein lies the silver lining: By reminding its citizenry that government tyranny is not an abstract concept, the IRS has done America a considerable favor. “Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then,” wrote Philip K. Dick in A Scanner Darkly. Indeed. Next time an authoritarian explains how, say, a national gun registry will be just swell — and labels its naysayers as neurotic — his opponents will have a new and useful shorthand: “IRS scandal.”

If history teaches us anything, it's that for we struggling humans, the vampire is always outside the door, always asking its singular question: "May I come in?"