Who Rules Whom? A Nation of Self-Proclaimed Experts
Our culture is being experted to death. We live in a society where one must possess a certain amount of expertise to wield influence; be it legal expertise, scientific expertise, economic expertise or medical expertise. This nation was stripped of aristocracy by our founding documents, but there has always been a segment of the population which longed to facilitate their return. Whether called Tories or Loyalists or Progressives or Socialists, the noble sovereignty inherent in each of us has always made a large swath of our fellow Americans uneasy.
The solution for some is to mar that nobility with cheap servitude to their appetites. It seems odd to compare the tawdriness of Lindsey Lohan to the steely grace of Margaret Thatcher, yet they both possess the same innate sovereignty. The difference being that Lohan’s is atrophied to the point of non-existence while the Iron Lady nurtured and burnished her self-mastery to a dominant sheen. These poor sods like LiLo make a king of their stomachs (or their groins) and take on the mantle of court jester in their own kingdom.
The solution for others is to hide or emasculate their innate nobility by genuflecting to anyone perceived to be stronger or in possession of more expertise. They become fanboys and Obama Girls, prostituting themselves along the avenue of Authority. Instead of holding their own sovereignty as a sacred gift from a Most High God, they view it mistrustfully, preferring instead to hand it to someone who says that they mean well and know more.
The number of experts available to govern those who are unable to govern themselves is legion. How cheaply we surrender the reins of our existence! Once it was true that no man was good enough to tell another how to live his life; it has become that no man is good enough to live his own life without professional expertise.
The abdication of our natural sovereignty to experts lends credence to the concept of guaranteed outcomes. After all, someone is only an expert if they can guarantee an outcome in your life or the world around you. The trouble is the number of so-called expert opinions far outweighs any small number of guaranteed outcomes in this world. For the outcomes which are truly guaranteed (death and taxes to name a couple), we do not need experts. God has made this world comprehensible to children; it is men who force complexity upon it in order to pretend that we could replicate it, given enough technology.
If someone truly is an expert on a subject, that subject being worthwhile, then we should certainly give them a hearing. I can learn many things from those who have taken the time to become proficient in one topic or another, yet we must avoid enthroning them for their wisdom. Some of the greatest men and women in history have had humble roots. The same idiots who sneered at Sarah Palin’s college degree from the University of Idaho proudly trumpet the genius of Steve Jobs, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Einstein, all of whom lacked a formal education.
Embrace the self-made among us! Do not abdicate the priceless nobility with which you were born. We must not return to either the aristocracies of Western Europe or the oligarchies of Eastern Europe. Under our Constitution, every citizen is a king and our government exists to serve us. Resist the urge to trade the illusory peace of mind which Leviathan offers for your dangerous liberty. A life spent failing in freedom is worth 5,000 years spent safely imprisoned.
