The Fantasy of Abracadabra (or Just WHO'S Nuts?)

You faithful few who read this fledgling Blog are by now probably wondering: is she nuts? First she tells us she's a liberal Democrat, then she turns right smack around and threatens to become a Libertarian. I have heard the rumbles of deep concern...Get the butterfly net!!!

First, let me make clear that I see no contradiction between being a liberal and being a libertarian. There certainly are Right-Wing libertarians, but that's no excuse for anybody to mindlessly lump all libertarians and conservatives together. (They certainly don't lump THEMSELVES together. Ask just about any conservative alive today if a libertarian and a conservative are one and the same -- then stand back and watch the fireworks!)

The proper name for a libertarian is "classical liberal." I have become increasingly aware, over the past decade or so, that whatever sort of liberal I am, it isn't the same sort of animal as that of a Bill or Hillary Clinton, a Ted Kennedy, a Nancy Pelosi or a Barney Frank. If the one-two punch of Bubba and Dubya should have taught us anything, it is that the State is NOT our friend.

Once upon a time, only liberals believed in the Fantasy of Abracadabra: that sweet but curiously out-of-touch notion that every problem might be neatly solved with the wave of a legislative or judicial magic wand. It sounds nice, it sells well, and it seems to produce, in those addicted to it, a high more powerful than LSD and crystal meth put together.

Now conservatives have become Abracadabra junkies, too. Hate abortion? Abracadabra -- Shazaam...shaboom...begorra and begone! The idea that some problems are not so tidily solvable never seems to occur to them. When, after all their nifty spells, the unborn children continue to die, will these crusaders for "life" simply look the other way? We can't count 'em anymore, so the unborn dead no longer count?

What about the sad state of marriage in this country? Shazaam...alekazam...bubble-bubble, toil and trouble! Pass a law (violating four existing amendments to the Constitution if done at the federal level, and three if at the state) that prohibits the poofs from getting married, and -- POOF! -- just like that, the institution is saved! Not quite as easy as it was for Samantha (we can't just wiggle our noses, look cute and blink), but hell, it still requires no sacrifice from us (at least not if we're straight) -- so it's a bargain.

The Abracadabra Fantasy allows us to find convenient scapegoats upon which to dump our problems. But nobody ever solved a problem by blaming it on somebody else. It is the road to riches, fame and political glory in this country to tell people that all their troubles are somebody else's fault. But quite the opposite from doing anything constructive to remedy those troubles, it actually guarantees that no remedy can ever be found. In order for problems to really be solved, they must first be faced and owned up to -- the one tough, grown-up task our nation of oversized spoiled and whiny brats runs from as if it were the Plague.

One of the many current, totally pointless and dumbass debates now raging between Right and Left is "What would Jesus be?" Or, in another variation, "What were the Founding Fathers?" Would they have considered themselves liberals or conservatives?

The real answer, I believe, is that without exception, they would look at us, wide-eyed with incredulity at the very stupidity of the question. "Why, we're both," they would answer. Not because they were wishy-washy, but because they would have recognized a simple truth that we have forgotten. There is no need to choose one "side" or the other and be married to it 'til the end of time. In traditional Western, Judeo-Christian civilization, the liberal and the conservative are as mutually necessary as, to the Oriental, are the Yin and the Yang.

Truth be told, NOBODY is totally liberal one hundred percent of the time -- nor is anyone totally and one hundred percent conservative. Not unless they are so unbalanced that they are too removed from reality to exist outside of a padded cell. Those who get stuck in the category of "centrist" include everybody independent and well-adjusted enough to think for themselves. Libertarians often get crammed in here, as well. After all, on the black-and-white battlefield of Left versus Right, anybody who won't take one "side" or the other is relegated to No Man's Land.

But what the Libertarians believe is that there need not BE a battle. The whole reason that there is one is because politicians, pundits and other powermongers have managed to hoodwink most people into believing they can make all opposition disappear and rule the world. It is a big part of the Fantasy of Abracadabra -- as a matter of fact, it is totally necessary to it. Wave a wand, and watch your enemies fall before you. Release the magic potion, and everybody will think like you.

Ladies and gents, we should have stopped believing in such nonsense by the time we were done leaving cookies and milk for Santa. Just because insanely ambitious and fanatically power-mad people TELL US SOMETHING, that does not mean we must believe that it is true. We are now caught up in the political equivalent of a nuclear war. It is all-or-nothing: the "right" to rule as tyrants over those with whom we disagree or the cruel fate of powerlessness and virtual annihilation.

When the powermongers get their power, do they EVER solve any of the problems they promised to take care of once we put them in charge? Why is it that, in nearly every single instance, the problems they were supposed to solve only grow worse instead?

It's quite all right for little kids to believe in the Fantasy of Abracadabra. But every grownup who buys into it is like a child, waving his fork over his spinach and pretending it is a wand. "Shazoom...shazaam," he chants, "now you are ice cream!" Then he tastes it, and finds out that his wand was a dud.

The wands of both the liberals and the conservatives who retain their rosy-viewed faith in statism are duds. Lots of people in this great, big, brawling national argument are indeed nuts -- on that, I will agree with you. I just don't agree that I am one of them.

This Blog will not be stuck in the stale mud of the past. We have finally and mercifully emerged from the Twentieth Century -- that dark swamp of statism and tyranny. The mainstream media is the tool of the tyrants. It is up to blogs like mine, and the rest of the alternative media, to point the way forward.