A new website called TheFreedomRevolution.com was launched July 4 by some folks who were part of the Ron Paul campaign, and  I contributed the following article:

Can Liberty Win Against Obsession? 

There's a great scene in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series where Ford Prefect dismisses the idea of saving the galaxy from destruction by the Krikkit race. "We don't stand a whelk's chance in a supernova," he tells Slartibartfast.  His reason? The Krikkits are quite clearly obsessed.

"We're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford... "And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win."

This is one fundamental reason which explains why radical authoritarian crusaders (imperialists, prohibitionists, etc.) so often win their political battles and defenders of liberty so often lose.  People who want to tell others how they must live are frequently obsessed, and the silent majority of people who would prefer a "live and let live" approach to governance are usually too busy living to develop any serious political sophistication. Typically, the pro-liberty position gets outworked, outspent, and outfoxed in any policy dispute; sometimes it takes the authoritarians decades to get what they want, but eventually they succeed and people and politicians are convinced to support a senselessly utopian social policy experiment like Alcohol Prohibition, or maybe a wealth-destroying, privacy-stealing income tax. Over time, all these small and large authoritarian obsessions add up to one giant transfer of authority from self-governing individuals to centralized government. Then, at some point, citizens gradually begin to notice that they feel poorer and less free.

That "some point" is where we are today. Most individuals and most families are in debt, and our own governments are in debt at every level. The federal government, which effectively serves as "lender of last resort" for the entire U.S. economy, is itself so far in debt that the numbers don't even seem to mean anything anymore. Fortunately, voters have at least a vague sense that money coming in should sort of equal money going out, and now they're trying to figure out what the heck has happened to their country. After all, politicians run as Republicans and Democrats, not as Obsessed Authoritarians! So who are these unfit-to-govern individuals, and how can you pick one out of a candidate line-up?

Positive authoritarian identification can be a serious problem, especially for casual voters. Obsessive authoritarianism comes in so many forms that it can be difficult to recognize when blended with other characteristics. We all know what obsession is, but how do we find a good definition of authoritarianism? One startlingly reliable method I learned as a college writing instructor is to ask recent high school graduates to compose a definition of the opposite concept, freedom.  Here's one answer, verbatim, that I was never able to forget:

"What is Freedom?  Freedom is trusting in your government, or superiors, and believing that they will guide you on a path of good will."

Yes, this is what many kids emerge from twelve years of school believing -- that freedom means being free to trust the government and do what its enforcers say (or else). Quite simply, many kids emerge from school believing exactly what you want your minions to believe if you are interested in becoming a successful tyrant; they think government is (a) omnipotent and (b) unquestionably legitimate in all its actions as long as citizens occasionally get to vote in a new Big Brother.

Where could young people possibly get these authoritarian ideas, notions which contradict every principle articulated in our country's founding documents?  Well, they're obviously very popular in schools, popular in the media, and ultra-popular with politicians like Rudy Giuliani, who in a 1994 speech blasphemed as follows:

"Freedom is about authority.  Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

Wow, that one makes me cringe every time. Fortunately, not all college students are graduates of the Rudy Giuliani school of political theory. I very occasionally got to read an answer that would go something like this:

"What is Freedom?  Freedom is the ability to pursue your own happiness and make your own choices as long as you don't hurt anybody else."

It was nice, for a change, to read that left is not right and up is not down.  However, I have to point out that the young adults who wrote accurate definitions of freedom tended to have one thing in common: they were not products of government-operated schools. Somewhere along the way, they had been encouraged to develop minds of their own.

Unfortunately, because the Rudy Giuliani's of the universe are so violently obsessed, they tend to develop sophisticated networks of political machinery and begin acquiring, consolidating, and wielding power over others. Meanwhile, the Ford Prefects of the universe rush to accept the fact that the galaxy is doomed.  "That's why I want to have as many drinks and dance with as many girls as possible while there are still any left," he concludes.

Prefect's assessment turns out to be quite wrong in the book, and today's pro-liberty give-up artists are also wrong.  The path forward is clear; between drinks and dances, we need to cultivate our healthy obsessions with human liberty and start scoring some victories at the state and local levels.  The seeds have been sown!