The Freak Shall Inherit the Earth

I dropped by the Freedom Rally (http://www.freedomrally.info/) on the grassy knoll in front of the Capitol this afternoon -- a sunny and brisk day with the Mall teeming with high school tour groups, demonstrators, vendors, derelicts, and misfits of all sorts -- in short, a typical day in the Belly of the Beast. The Freedom Rally was not a "biggie" by DC standards -- a low speakers' platform, a standard-issue sound system, a handful of video cameras -- _no_ visible media presence... and the Capitol as a backdrop, in all of its newly-whited spendor (with the requisite heavily-armed guards dotted here and there on the edifice). The crowd -- so to speak -- was, by my untrained estimate, somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 -- more than a street gaggle, but certainly below radar in this city of Million Whatever Marches. And to look at the crowd, you would think you were back at Woodstock (or "at" Woodstock, if you were never there to begin with), except for the age bifurcation. You have your aging hippie types who have discovered the merits of freedom (as a political, rather than just personal, concept) -- a handful of young families -- and quite large numbers of disaffected youth, many of them sporting the punk or goth look, some retro-hippies, but all, without a doubt, among the passed-over, unrecognized, and unawarded. This would not have been the rally of choice for the student council or varsity or fraternity types, or business school or law school androids, in other words. We're talking more like the ones who _would_ have been at Woodstock way back when, or marching for peace, or free love, or drugs, or whatever. There were also a few soft-core biker types, some "crazy granny lady" types with gray witches' hair and serapes, some bearded elders, and a few folks who I've also seen at the fringes of the March for Life -- you know, the ones with the street-person clothing and their own homemade signs who seem to be off in their own world, and who occasionally shout something to no one in particular. What one definitely did _not_ see was anyone who was well-dressed or well-groomed, sleek, and complacent. No coiffures here, and no makeup, and no polished shoes. This is, in short, America's rag-tag street rabble -- the prophets whose words are written on the subway walls (to quote S & G) because where else are they going to write them? The people who are satisfied with things as they are would have no need to be there, and neither would the people who are mildly dissatisfied. What we see here are the ones who want to bring Leviathan down -- to cut it out, root and branch -- to ignite the Hindenburg. These are the ones who consider the battles in Congress over whether to increase an agency's budget by 1% or 2% the height of absurdity. Their vision is to cut it by 100% -- and they can usually tell you why this is a good idea, and they're usually right. (To get to the rally I had to walk past the HHS building -- surely one of the first to go in the alternate universe where these folks wind up in charge.)

But here's my question. Would the same people who count themselves among the disaffected -- the rebels -- the outliers -- of today been in that category thirty years ago, say? Or will they be in that category in thirty more years? In other words, is alienation a personality type? Or does it really and truly depend on the status quo of society at a given time? We know that the "suit and tie campus radicals" of the 1960s are now the tight-lipped, tight-assed politically correct scolds of the political elite -- in other words, the establishment. We know that a few people who thought of themselves as "establishment" back then have become the Paleocons of today -- despised and rejected of men. So I guess it does depend to some extent on the way society is, and the way the individual is. And yet there must be some people for whom being a rebel, an outlier, is job one, and the rest is detail. Certainly in this day and age campaigning and demonstrating for liberty is to be one of a very small remnant -- guided by the light of one very small, flickering candle. And maybe a few of these would have been in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the 1930s, or been Maoists in the 1960s. But maybe we shouldn't worry about it and just accept -- in the "big tent" tradition -- whoever shows up.

In any case, just seeing a few other people with the same convictions gave these folks a great boost in morale. The speakers, of course, were "preaching to the choir" -- unless you include the occasional groups of Teamsters who wandered by, or the Hispanic group from California who had come to town to welcome Pope Benedict, or the Seventh-Day Adventist spinoff group handing out anti-Sunday sabbath propaganda. We have to remember that this is, after all, Washington DC, and the right to "petition for the redress of grievances" is what accounts for at least half of the people in the streets at any given time -- not to mention _all_ of the lobbying groups. But who knows, a few innocent bystanders might have heard one of the speakers speaking bitterness about the IRS, or the Federal Reserve. And this accidental overhearing might take root. I kept thinking -- yes, 500 is a small number. But Lenin started with a half dozen, as did Hitler. Not that their programs were especially beneficial in the long run, but it does illustrate the power of ideas, and their potential to spread like viruses, for good or ill. We say -- or think -- that liberty is passe, and that government "has to" be enormous just in order to "handle" all the "challenges" of the world as it is. But if one points out that government per se is the major challenge of the world as it is, all we get is a blank stare. Our society has evolved in a most curious way over two centuries, from moral certitude + (near) governmental anarchy to moral anarchy + totalitarianism -- surely not a coincidence, since in each case there is a symbiosis, and one reinforces the other. But government is an evil beast that fights for survival and insists upon growth, and it has many tricks up its sleeve to accomplish both of those, the first and foremost being war. The government can start wars in order to nourish itself off the blood of the citizens -- but can the citizens, all by themselves, end a war and reclaim what was theirs to begin with? The closest we have come to the citizens ending a war was Vietnam. But how much of what was lost in the process were we able to reclaim? And, in fact, how much will we be able to reclaim when (and if) the war in Iraq ends? Has the government ever closed an "emergency" or "temporary" agency, or terminated an "emergency" program, or an emergency suspension of rights? Maybe in a few cases, but more often than not all of those infrastructure entities remain firmly in place long after the end of hostilities. So yes, stop the war and bring the troops home so that the battle can begin! And if you want to know the battle plan, ask one of those scruffy "freaks" I saw lounging on the lawn in front of the Capitol today.