Editor:
Freedom requires security. With it, free informed choices can be made in favour of individual and public good. Without security, there is no freedom. Freedom doesn’t survive in isolation. Freedom permits a multitude of diverse ideas and conversations. Freedom withers away when there is an ignorant, indifferent, self-serving population of possessive individualists. Apathetic and cynical citizenry allows freedom to be lost to dictatorships.
Libertarian-anarchists open the door for dictatorships. Their talk about freedom isn’t the path they follow. However, their talk is good enough to convince those who hear what they want to hear. Some political parties manipulate fear and hate in their populations with a false promise of personal security and prosperity. These are dictators’ strategies. They cauterize public opinion against fake demons stirring the pot.
“By creating disunity – it weakens democracy. By getting men to hate rather than to think–it prevents men from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem,” according to a document distributed to American troops at the end of the Second World War, prepared by the US Army Orientation Branch, Information and Education Division, Army Service Forces on Jan. 16, 1944, warning troops about fascism’s threats to democracy.
They convert informed political discussion into hateful personality attacks, taking control of information and preventing open access to government decision-making. With this documentation, the public could make critically informed decisions discovering government mistakes, incompetence or corruption. Without it, the public has unsupported opinions, rhetorical dogma and slick advertising government campaigns using taxpayers’ money to tell them what it wants them to hear. Freedom lost.
They offer survey polls slanting questions posed favouring predetermined decisions, falsifying a public-supported mandate. They take control of the police and then use it to threaten, intimidate, and crush dissent. They take control/manage public pension funds for unfettered access to their unearned bank account. They try to take political control of municipalities, school boards and other organizations. Disruption, chaos and disorder follow as fanatical ideologues manipulate media coverage. Freedom gone.
Does this sound familiar? Any bells going off? Any red flags appearing? Is this the “Alberta Dis-Advantage” we are supposed to want to “take back”?
Jim Gough,
Canmore
