Back to the Future in Politics

BornFree Monday, 26 of August, 2013

One of the episodes of “Back to the Future” had Emmett Brown building a train as a time machine.  In the end the train had to hit 88 mph and skip through time or it would end up at the bottom of a deep canyon because the bridge in real life had not been completed.  Their only hope was to defy the laws of physics and time and skip into the future where the bridge had been built.  As they approached disaster and certain death at the bottom of the abyss, they had to speed up, throwing “magic” logs into the train’s boilers to accelerate it faster and faster. 

In our time, and in reality, we see a very similar mental process unfolding as the statist elite tell us that they are going to take us to Utopia, a place where there is no suffering and everyone has everything they need without having to do anything for it.  Like Emmett Brown who believed he could defy the laws of physics, they believe they can defy the laws of economics and human nature, and skip over reality into a future promised land.  Their progressive train that is spending ever increasingly massive amounts of future income is also heading for disaster and certain economic death and possible destruction of Western society if they are wrong.  When they catch a glimpse of the abyss before them, like Emmett, they cry “Faster, faster.   We have to spend more.  We haven’t done enough.  We just need to print trillions of dollars to solve the problems (created by their own policies) to blast through the barriers of selfishness and greed that are keeping us from Utopia.  We need to throw magic stimulus logs into the boiler to get the engine of state going faster.”   They believe they can fix the bubbles they have created with excessive debt by blowing ever greater bubbles and debasing our currency.  The difference is that this political train is hurtling through reality not a Hollywood movie set and the bridge to the future isn’t there and never will be.  But the abyss will be there, and they will take us all down with them, unless they can defy the laws of economics and human nature and do what no country has done before, borrow and spend their way into prosperity. 

History is strewn with the train wrecks of Utopian philosophies.  If you believe that Emmett Brown could blast into the future if he reached 88 mph in the real world, then you are justified in believing that the statist elite will be able to get us to Utopia.  But even if we arrive in “their” Utopia, you will find that you have lost all personal liberty and freedom of choice about what you do with your life.


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