by Jason Stotts
In honor of Halloween, I recently watched Night of the Living Dead for the first time. One of the things that really struck me about the movie, which is probably not most people’s response, was just how very different the government’s position was in regards to the people.
Night of the Living Dead is set in the late 60’s. It’s a movie about zombies, but that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that in response to the zombie threat, the government activated the military, national guard, and police. Because there aren’t that many trained warriors in our culture (as they’re not really needed), they also called upon the civilian defense authority. They asked for the people to rise with their guns to combat the threat and to work side by side with the local police or military to engage the threat. This, of course, helped them to eventually win the day and restore order and was clearly the right thing to do. The civilians fought well and made the difference in neutralizing the threat.
Now, obviously, this is a fictional zombie movie, but I think it makes a really good point. Can you imagine the Obama administration calling upon the people to take up arms to defend themselves and their neighbors against a threat? I think it’s more likely that the dead would come back to life than that would happen.
We’ve moved from a society in which the government is the servant of the people to one in which the government is the master of the people. And that master is fearful and suspicious. The people are no longer trusted with weapons and the democrats are doing all they can to make it impossible to own them. They monitor our every move and read our every message. They worry that the people will rise and overthrow the government again, as we Americans are wont to do when our freedoms are trampled. And they are right to worry because they are trampling our freedoms and they are taxing us to death. Why should I be forced to pay to support your life when I can’t afford mine? Why should I work five months a year to pay for others and suffer myself? I shouldn’t! It’s intolerable.
It’s no wonder they fear the people rising. They should fear the people rising and we should rise. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. If they would return to a real government whose purpose was to protect individual rights and end all redistributionary taxation and victimless crimes, then we would want the government to persist and it would be a value in our lives. I firmly believe that we need a government to maintain order and law and that this can be a real and necessary good. But, there is little that is worse than a bad government and the only thing that has caused more death than governments is religion.
We, the people, have been sold out by both political parties and our rights have been systematically trampled for so many years now that we hardly notice anymore. We need to wake up and notice. We need to stand up and assert our right to our own lives and that we do not have to work to support others and a government run out of control. We need to reign in our servant and put him back in his place. He has become prodigal and dangerous and it is time to remind him who his master is.