I wrote this article nearly a decade ago and held it, because the timing didn’t seem right. Now things have changed and it may do some good. And so, with just a bit of updating, here it is:
If you’re a producer, I’m talking about you, and I’m serious about this: You are morally superior to the suits and names who order everyone around. I’m not saying you’re without your flaws (Lord knows we all have them), but in comparison you are better, and clearly so.
If you feel good coming home from an honest day of work; if you go out of your way to help family and friends; if you like pointing at something and saying “I made that;” if you care about your work as a carpenter, trucker, housewife, nurse, welder, shopkeeper, clerk, farmer, rancher, engineer or any of a hundred other professions, you are a producer, and this is for you.
Nearly every public voice on the planet tells you that you are beneath “important” people, but you’re not. Those voices are generated by precisely those people and those who are sucking up to them. They play a one-note symphony, and truth has no chair in their orchestra.
I Was Wrong About Polycraticus
Isn’t it silly that using a name like “Polycraticus” makes you sound smart?
Anyway, Policraticus was an important book, written in about 1159 by a brave man named John of Salisbury. This was the book that setup what we call “the rule of law.” (The original version of which was far better than what passes for it today.)
The funny thing about Salisbury’s book is that it was part philosophy and part gossip. In between intellectual arguments for the rule of law, he spent a lot of pages exposing the decadence and immorality of that day’s overlords: the royalty.
I had always guessed that John did that because gossip sells: throw in a bunch of “rich and famous” secrets to get the philosophy into more hands. But now I think that what Salisbury did was necessary. His readers needed to know that their rulers were morally degenerate. If they had continued to assume they were morally pure, they would have continued believing that they were God ordained, and they wouldn’t have placed their rulers beneath the people’s law.
The same thing was necessary for the American Revolution to work. One of the crucial contributions to the revolution was a sermon by a minister named Jonathan Mayhew. In it, Mayhew explained why it was not only acceptable, but right and necessary to question the King and to examine his morality. According to John Adams, that sermon sparked the revolution, and I think he was right, because you can’t get decent people to oppose something they think is sacred.
And so it’s important to understand that rulers are not better people than you… that in fact, they’re worse. Please try to hold that thought.
An Inescapable Conclusion
There are reasons why working people don’t want to consider themselves morally superior, but we haven’t space for them today. (You can find such things in our subscription letter.) What matters today is that you understand this: Like it or not, the overlords are power-mad enemies of truth, and they are worse than you.
More than that, the overlords believe that so long as they never admit their errors, you’ll be mentally and emotionally unable to oppose them. They believe they control everything you see and hear. More than that, they believe you are so deeply affected by guilt that they can kick you into line whenever they need to.
And so, briefly, I’ll play like Salisbury with a few bullet points:
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- We’ve learned, over the past few years, that the ruling class is filled with sexual predators. From Weinstein to Epstein to Cuomo to Clinton to Rose and an long list of others, those at the peaks of power are not better than us, they are worse… markedly worse.
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- The ruling class lies and cheats endlessly. We’ve known this for a long time, foolishly excusing it as “politics.” But if you or I did that, no one would excuse it as “business.” They’d stop dealing with us and they’d take their money elsewhere.
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- Over the past two years we’ve seen almost every shred of free speech, proportion, “live and let live,” and a hundred other decencies swept away. The overlords filled the world with fear, and they dug it. They ignored democracy and ruled through executive orders, they intimidated millions at a time, they turned neighbor against neighbor and ripped families apart. Knowingly.
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- The overlords were wrong, again and again and again… yet they never apologized, never explained, and never changed course. As I edit this, they are still doubling down. “Take the vaccine and you won’t get Covid” (WRONG). “You won’t spread Covid” (WRONG). “Masks stop Covid” (WRONG), and so on. People are on their fourth shot these days and still getting Covid. Hundreds of thousands have been sickened or killed by their hurry-up vaccines and Covid has affected almost everyone regardless. And yet we see more intimidation, more threats and more insults.
All of this leads to a horrifying but inescapable conclusion:
We’re nuts to obey these people.
They lie on purpose. They jump into bed with whomever buys them a few fund-raisers. They write legislation for donations. We’ve known this for a long time, but we haven’t wanted to to think about it… it calls too much into question.
Now, however, it has gone too far and more of us every day are saying, “Enough.”
I’m not advocating anything in particular, but can we please start facing this situation as adults?
Is This Too Radical?
Before anyone gets too scandalized by this, let me quote someone who was far more radical than I’ve been:
That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
Did you get that? If something is high and glorious among men, if it enjoys status, if it is authoritative, important and respected, God himself is disgusted by it.
You wanna take a guess who said that?
Yup, that’s right, it was Jesus. Get a concordance and look it up.
And lest you think I’m taking his words out of context, let me point out that Jesus begins by saying “Ye are they which justify yourselves before men…” Does that sound like any class of people we know?
None of us are radical, compared to the rabbi from Nazareth. And let us not forget that the God of Christians and Jews has always “inclined his ear” to the humble and turned his back to the mighty. I think we should start incorporating that into our daily thinking as well.
So yes, you are morally superior to your rulers. More than that, if you intend to exist in any way that’s better than “Own nothing and be happy” (anyone unfamiliar should look that one up too), you need to get clear on the fact that your rulers are morally inferior to you.
Again: You’re not morally perfect; none of us are. But in comparison to the overlord class, you are definitely better. It’s not even close.
So, please, for the sake of the world, start acting like it!
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Paul Rosenberg
freemansperspective.com