Sense of Faction: Appealing to Authority
Regarding ‘Appealing to Authority’, American Conservatives turn a blind eye to the very aspects that make a State/Government so dangerous: Law Enforcement and the Military. How does that make sense? I can tell you that most of the Founders were strongly against a massive, largely unaccountable military infrastructure; for good reason, it diametrically opposes everything America stands for. More to the point, I concluded that this might have significant influence while serving overseas and someone once told me: "all roads of the Deep State lead to the Pentagon." That was well before the deep state was a major thing in the public consciousness… at the time I simply criticized the guy as having read too many Tom Clancy novels, but; if it’s true, then this constitutes a usurpation of our Civil Government via our military institutions with what would effectively represent a silent coup de'tat. Not acceptable.
Law Enforcement. Having served the country myself, I’m more than grateful for services rendered, thank officers regularly and have even taken things down to the station to cheer them up when things get rough, as they always do, but if you observe our fellow conservatives when an argument comes up their immediate reaction is NOT reason or weighing in on the situation – it’s immediately a defense in an Appeal to Authority; the exact opposite of what conservatism supposedly stands for. Criticism resides at the heart of liberty. There was just a law enforcement officer found not-guilty when it’s clear what he was doing and should be rotting behind bars right now. The precedent these things set is more than disturbing, which is to say – if you legally carry a firearm the Law can outright murder you and walk away unscathed given the reasoning of the verdict. I don’t like that idea, that the Law can simply kill you because you had a firearm and they can claim to feel threatened. We used to have integrity in this Country, once upon a time...
Appealing to Authority is an interesting weakness for conservatives because, if we applied the same failing to the time of the Revolution, that means the Modern American Conservative would’ve been a Redcoat sycophant, not a patriot. Admiring the uniform of England and the Power of the Throne, not the struggle of their fellow colonists. Everything just seems so backwards. That’s not to say that the Progressive failing in the form of Appealing to Emotion is any better.
What I’m saying is these things happen and people are so easily manipulated when it becomes a “team” thing. Red Team vs. Blue Team. So even if your team promises you all these things and betrays them, all the time, you still go Red Team, because you’re afraid of Blue Team. The problem with this philosophy can be rendered in an Ancient Saying: “A false friend is more dangerous than an open enemy.” It is this manipulation via the sense of faction that George Washington feared the most:
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.”
― George Washington, George Washington's Farewell Address
We, right now in America, cannot call the Federal Government anything BUT enormous. It’s a leviathan. We’ve been played for fools – Conservative, Progressive, Democrat, and Republican. I surely hope we can overcome the sense of faction before it becomes a conflict, because I don’t see America coming out the other side of a civil conflict. I see other countries involving themselves and perpetuating sectarian violence for generations out of their own interests and intrigues at our very great expense.