If there’s a better analogy than comparing the citizen/state relationship to the host/symbiote or host/parasite one, I’ve yet to hear it. The Founding Fathers view of government, both proper and improper, totally harmonizes with this concept.
The Ruling Class believes, falsely, that it is the primary organism. But the public will survive without a Ruling Class; the reverse is not true.
When the host thrives, its symbiotes thrive. When the host suffers, its symbiotes share the diminished state. This is why it’s so, so easy to distinguish between symbiotes and parasites. Parasites thrive as the host weakens. Killing the host dooms them in the end, but the period of downfall is the parasites’ days of glory.
Now switch gears from “biology” to “economics” and look at recent fiscal history. Does the analogy ring true for you?
If voters were both rational and remembered high school biology, the argument would be irrefutable and we’d be fixing this central problem. It’s obvious that we’re not “anti-government”. Only liars and crazy people could make that accusation. We don’t want intestinal flukes; we do want intestinal flora.
People need a symbiotic government. Oh, not for humanity to survive. But that life is Hobbsian: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Do away with state and federal governments, atomize American society, and length and quality of life will greatly suffer.
But look! Our governments are causing society’s disintegration. Black versus white, man against women, young against old, all against all. Why? Because parasites kill their hosts if allowed. End of story.
Not purposely. Only the tiniest percentage of the Ruling Class actively seeks society’s harm. The rest just doesn’t recognize what it is. Since the R.C. is prospering, obviously things are going well. They aren’t for the public? It must be the public’s fault. The Ruling Class is doing its job, right?
Right. Parasites always do their job, and Ruling Class = parasites. Societies thrive with public servants, and collapse with public masters.
It’s blindingly obvious, isn’t it? So now the task is translating this amazing analogy into politics. And this is where the depression sets in. The Tea Party momentum seems to be faltering. Perhaps if the debt limit battle is won, the patient can survive its parasitic infestation.
Okay, deep background is over. In the previous post, we noted that ~70% of Americans believe the biggest concern right now is “finances”. But the majority seems unaware that the main source of economic woe is government.
So now we’ve gone from biology to economics to politics. And here the WORM falters. Who wants to take the baton and run the next leg of the race?
World's Only Rational Man 
The main source of economic woe has been government for DECADES, this is not a new concept.
It still isn’t being communicated effectively, though. People who think and analyze see it, but they’re not a majority of voters. It’s why I believe the rational argument needs to back up emotional ones. That requires using a tactic of progressives, but it’s different. Statists use it in place of reason, freedom-lovers could use it in addition to reason.
I think this article is worth a read:
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/05/27/scotus-makes-it-official-california-a-failed-state/
And California has always been trendy. What catches on there seems to catch on elsewhere. Let’s call this disease an STD–Severe Taxation Depression.
“Black versus white, man against women, young against old, all against all. Why? Because parasites kill their hosts if allowed.”
That’s about power more than anything. Separated people are easy to order around and generally less able to act in their own interests. ‘Leaders’ have been pulling the same for centuries.
The U.S. has repeatedly shown itself incredibly powerful when it moves as a whole, especially against those who think themselves powerful. What greater threat is there to those who desire power than an actually UNITED States of America?
The ‘disease’ affecting the ‘Ruling Class’ is the failure of one of our most important moral positions as a nation: That all men are created equal. They overwhelmingly come from the postulate that they are not equal, they are better, they are ‘chosen’, ‘entitled’; and most menacingly: they are always, without doubt, ‘right’ in their own minds.
They are Squealer on the ladder with paint: “Some are more equal than others.”
I think, over the next century, we will have to redefine government and its place, without the past being automatic bars.
I believe the phrase “all men are created equal” is a bad one, taken alone. Without context, activists use it to defend equality of outcome, a la Harrison Bergeron. Thus people more gifted, or harder working, must be required to sacrifice for the less gifted and the slothful.
“Equal under the law” is more to my liking.
The phrase is fine: So long as all men are given absolute rights which are sacrosanct. (Which is its goal really.)
Its weakness is in being a moral, and therefore philosophical, position. That people lie about it doesn’t make it bad; they are the problem.
Equal under the law has a moral weakness: Men make laws. If a law is made by the hands of men which makes others ‘equal’ then someone is ‘above’ that equality to decide that equality.
Equal under the law is more likely to give you systems like France has: No jury, no guaranteed appeal, no protection from self incrimination.
Both need considerable frameworks around them to make them durable, assuming that, I think the former is superior.
You’re right, a specific solution to the current abuses is no general solution, and the existing maxim is better. I stand corrected.
It’s a good simile/analogy/metaphor.
Interesting that the communists used “parasite” in precisely the opposite way. The “parasites” were the actual wealth creators, who were supposedly fiendishly draining off wealth that properly belonged to the proletariat.
Do you remember the Simpson’s episode when Itchy and Scratchy were replaced by the Eastern European version, “Worker and Parasite”?
Politically, why not keep doing what the tea partiers are doing, just more so and at all levels–national, state, county, city, neighborhood? Isn’t the solution just to get in there and fight for every inch of ground?
It would be interesting if George Orwell hadn’t already described “Newspeak”. As is, it seems more inevitable than anything else.
It’s constantly amazing to me how non-evil, non-brain damaged people let Communists and Socialists preach their religion without being hooted off the stage or pelted with rotten vegetables. Theirs is a historical record unblemished by success. There are two warring economic theories and one of them always kicks the other’s butt in the real world. Russia, Cuba, Venezuela. Financial fortunes improve only for those who seize the government, and their cronies. Everyone else is impoverished. This select group demonstrably thrives at the expense of the whole while calling others parasites.
Conversely, the Chinese government becomes slightly more symbiotic toward individual property rights and its nation explodes with productivity. Etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc…
I’d have to make you read “etc” a few million times to convey how tired I am of these people. Makes me want to go to one of zombie’s photo ops and go out in a blaze of glory. Shout out that communism is only liked by brainless, conscienceless, talentless, slothful, self-worshiping sociopaths. Note that a single man stands up to a mob of thousands, and demand they bring forth their champion to meet me in single combat.
And when they are unable to, and choose the last refuge of the incompetent? I’d note that a billion army ants can indeed defeat a lion, but he’s still the King of the Beasts…and they’re still a bunch of insects.
Then it’s just a matter of seeing how many I take with me.
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