Sheep Calmly Awaiting the Slaughter
I’ve had enough conversations now about the recent news about the policy changes in the TSA that I think it’s time for me to weigh in just a little. When it first was reported that the TSA would be increasing its security checks at airports I didn’t think much of it. But as the reports became more voluminous and clear about what these changes entailed I became a bit more alarmed. Finally, as it became clear that women and children were being searched bodily in some very inappropriate ways (which are illegal in most other contexts) – I asked myself how I would feel if my wife and daughter were forced into the situations described. My answer to my own question caused me to be moved from alarm to indignation. How is it that it makes sense to people that they should have freedom over other people’s lives like this – and even worse, we have become so fearful of boogie-men that we willingly give over our rights and freedoms without so much as a whimper. We have become so dependent on our Large Male Sibling that we will do whatever he thinks is in our own best interests. We have, as a people, become so accustom to the bureaucratic intrusions of the State that we could find someday that we have been led as sheep to the slaughter.
I now offer the following for your consideration – Since these guys have said it so much better than I ever could.
Doug Wilson
Doug Wilson recently blogged about the issue: Touching Sensitive Areas, or TSA For Short
He says: “Here are some points to keep in mind as the controversy about the TSA wends it way through our various news cycles and perhaps, let us hope, into a bill in the new Congress.
1. It does the old heart good to see people get riled up with government incompetence and . . . what’s the word I am looking for? Nincompoopery, I believe that’s it…”and so forth!
Steve Schlissel
Steve Schlissel also commented on the …. in his online article: America’s Terminal Case
He wrote, in part:
“Brothers, there has not been a more important issue smooshed in our faces in our adult lifetimes. Our government is claiming the RIGHT to feel up our women and daughters (not to mention our selves and sons). It alleges that this is necessary for national security. The first thing to understand-as in deeply, so it is completely absorbed: If this is our means of preserving the republic, it means THE REPUBLIC IS DEAD. It means the enemy has won, has triumphed. For here we behold an America which has fully turned us against ourselves, has turned us into something we never were, which we fought and bled vowing we’d never become, into something we stood with all our being against.”
Gary North
Even Gary North has something to say about the situation (surprised?). He begins his article this way:
As a 40-year student of bureaucracy, beginning with Ludwig von Mises’s great little book, Bureaucracy (1944), I have come to recognize a series of near laws governing bureaucracy. This one is, as far as I can see, unbreakable, comparable to the law of gravity.
Some bureaucrat will enforce a written rule in such a way as to make the rule and the bureaucracy seem either ridiculous, tyrannical, or both.
There is no way to write the rules so that some bonehead in the system will not find a way to become a thorn in someone’s side – a thorn that cries out for removal.
There are corollaries to this iron law of bureaucracy.
- The bureaucrat in question will not back down unless forced to from above.
- His superiors will regard any public resistance to the interpretation as an attack on the bureaucracy’s legitimate turf.
- The bureaucracy’s senior spokesman will defend the policy as both legitimate and necessary.
- Politicians will be pressured by voters to have the policy changed.
- The bureaucracy will tell the politicians that disaster will follow any such modification of the policy.
- The public will finally get used to it.
- The politicians will switch to some other national crisis.
- The internal manual will then be rewritten by the senior bureaucrats to make the goof-ball application mandatory.
- Senior management will increase the budget so as to enforce the new policy.
- Politicians will acquiesce to this increased budget.
This leads me to North’s law of bureaucratic expansion:
Any outrageous interpretation of a bureaucratic rule, if widely resisted by the public, will lead to an increased appropriation for the bureaucracy within two fiscal years.
There is an exception.
If the enforcement of the interpretation requires major expenditures for new equipment, the process will take only one fiscal year.
“All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.”
Isaiah 53: 6-7 tells us that the Lord Jesus was led as a lamb to the slaughter when He willingly laid down His life for us (1 Peter 2:21-25; Acts 8:32-33). We too are called upon to suffer wrong at times for His sake, and for sake of the Kingdom of God. And yet, we are given the privilege of living in a country that assures us the freedom to object to wrongs done against us by our leaders. We do not have to act like sheep to the slaughter because we have a Shepherd that has gone before us, and now sits at the Father’s right hand ruling all things for our sakes. We are not sheep without a Shepherd – we are the sheep of His pasture. And we are given the responsibility to do all in our power to make disciples of the nations. We don’t make disciples by willingly being herded by false shepherds and wicked rulers. We live and speak the words of Christ, who conquers His and our enemies with the sword that comes out of His mouth (Rev. 19). Let us not be silent suffers who have no voice – Let us boldly declare the good news that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, has come to make free to serve Him!
Tags: bureaucracy, Doug Wilson, freedom, Gary North, oppression, Politics, Steve Schlissel, TSA
