Born Leaders

Governor Tarkin: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away forever.
General Tagge: But that's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?
Governor Tarkin: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
Star Wars IV: A New Hope

“Democracy – what is it?” Glenn Beck asked on his television show. He may well have asked. What it isn’t is a Republic, with a leadership, a constitution, a legislature, and a court system. In a true Democracy, the people would vote on everything, from electing the president, his cabinet or ministers, the legislature (just as they do in a Republic), and the judges in the court system.

No elected official would make any appointments at all, supposedly. In a social democracy, or communism, everything would be done by committee. What the people don’t realize, since it’s never really been tried, or when it has, it’s failed, what a chaotic disaster it would be.

Individual freedom would be the first thing to be thrown on the trash heap of history. Anything you’d want to do would have to be approved first by a committee (believe me, I know – I live in a condominium complex. Their new set of rules and regulations is 25 pages long). You haven’t many choices in such a complex. The board decides what’s best for the community of residents living here. You can make no renovations to the inside of your unit (which you own), except on an emergency basis, without prior approval. In order to remodel my kitchen, to take out the ancient cabinets, I must submit a written request first.

You learn to deal with living that way, by and by. Being single and living alone, it has its advantages. But for our nation to surrender its individuality, to resort to a cubicled country where a bureaucracy decides your every move is unthinkable for a nation whose very foundation is liberty and prosperity.

I used to be a vice president of a community organization. Like Mubarak, I remained in office too long and the natives started getting restless – and like Mubarak, by the time it was time to go, I was only to glad to go. I resisted because there were individuals who wanted to change the nature of our organization in a way that I knew violated our band’s constitution and the intentions of its founders.

The leader of this rebellion wanted to replace the band’s director with a committee of directors, and eliminate the other officers’ positions. Five band directors instead of one, I asked, incredulous. That was crazy. I had the unfortunate task of being in charge of directing the band’s elections (for that reason alone, the day I lost the election, I wanted to do handsprings all the way home).

I said I would think about it; but it only took me five minutes to realize what disaster such an arrangement would be for our little marching band. I imagined this five-headed band director trying to decide which street the band was supposed to turn down, with mere minutes to spare. The band would come to a halt, bringing the parade behind to us a halt, which is grounds of disqualification in a judged parade – you have to keep moving.

Or deciding which music to play as we approached the reviewing stand, with the judges marking our band down on their clipboards. I said, “No.” I wouldn’t consent to allowing a committee to run for band director. One office, one person.  They could appoint all the assistants they wished, but only one person could hold the office, make the decisions, and be held accountable for them.

Our rebel was a committed Liberal who screamed at me with the foulest profanity that I wasn’t even giving the idea a chance, that I was just opposed to change. I had committed the high crime, in this person’s eyes, of thinking for myself and disagreeing. Still, I held firm.

When I had the chance, I spoke to the other members of this committee, reasoning with them about the drawbacks of such a system and what a detriment it would be to the band. The illustration of the five-handed band director convinced. “When you come down to it, some one person has to make the decision. We don’t have time on the street for a committee to debate and vote on which march we’re going to play or how long to wait after a stop for the band to resume marching. Someone’s just going to have take the chance and call it.”

They agreed and the proposal of a committee band director was mercifully abandoned.

This is the way the Liberal Socialists want to rule the world – by committee. The Socialist Islamists have different ideas and eventually they’re going to come to an impasse. Make no mistake – the Muslims won’t be turning to Allah for earthly guidance; they’ll be turning to their mullahs, their clerics. The Socialists, to their union leaders. Regional governors, indeed.

It took a lot of guts to stand up to that rebel musician on our band, who was much bigger than I was. But I stood my ground because I knew I was right. That’s what being a leader means. Sometimes a decision may not be popular, but it is right.

The Communist Socialists appear to be advocating a “leaderless” world, a world with no bosses. Or presidents, prime ministers, or drum majors. Just a loosely connected mob meandering down the street. Or so they would have their followers think. A very convenient arrangement, as no single individual could be held accountable, either.

In a recent issue of Smithsonian, the magazine noted how The Mall has no individual statues. In past times, history would erect monuments to individual leaders of courage and character. Now our monuments are to the faceless common man.

We do owe an enormous debt to all those unknown (well, to us) soldiers who sacrificed their lives for their country. But we shouldn’t forget those who led them into battle, making their own sacrifices as well. The Medal of Honor website is full of their stories.

Most veterans don’t consider themselves “heroes”; they reserve that honor for those who fell in battle. It’s fine that we honor the average G.I. Still, we should not allow the Socialists to remove the individual leaders from our public spaces and consciousness. To tear them down, to scrape their names from the columns of history, is to attack the philosophical “individual”. The Socialists don’t want us to think of ourselves or anyone else as individuals, but only as a member of the team, a particle in the masses, a cog in the machine. They don’t want anyone to stand out, to be better, to be a hero.

That is the Socialist’s notion of democracy, of fairness, of justice. In Hungary, when the Communists took over, they tore down all the statues of local heroes. They declared that they’d brought a “new order” and that the slate was now wiped clean. Al Qaeda blew up the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan.

But eventually, someone more powerful will come along and wipe out their structure and rearrange them into cronies and lackeys petitioning for his favor, just as the emperor in Star Wars disbands the “imperial” senate and sets up his own “bureaucracy.”

No one can blame the common people for mistrusting their representatives. Not when they act like bureaucrats - passing laws for which the people never gave their consent and are detrimental to the nation as a whole – crooks, or fools. A Republican Congressman from New York was forced to resign just today for placing a photo of himself, topless, on a dating website, advertising himself as single when he isn’t.

Speaker Boehner demanded his immediate resignation, which this Congressman submitted along with an apology. Obviously, this man was not a born leader. All that district can do is try again. It makes you wonder what such people are thinking when they seek public office. Nothing seems to cure them of it, either. One scandal no sooner ends, than another crops up.

But the Communist Socialists and the Islamic Socialists promise to solve all that. In the first instance, since they control the Media, the Communist Socialists would make sure never heard about it, thereby relieving you of the worry. The Muslim solution would be to sentence the offender to death by stoning.

That is our fate, if true leaders don’t start showing up to lead the way back to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.