Over the last sixteen months, many Americans have watched with despair as the Federal government has wrested virtually despotic control over the American economy away from both individual Americans and private enterprise. They have observed the Federal government’s frantic (and totally unsuccessful) attempts to prop up banks that have revealed themselves to be completely incompetent and bankrupt. They have watched the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board printing more money than has ever been created in the history of these United States. They have watched their so-called "representatives" handing out unimaginable sums of their own hard-earned tax money to scores of bungling companies, like AIG, General Motors, and Chrysler. They have watched in cynical amazement as their newly elected president almost instantaneously broke his promise to end the most un-winnable of two un-winnable wars that they specifically elected him to terminate. They have watched him similarly break his promise to investigate the myriad grisly crimes of the claque that used to claim to be their rulers. And they have watched the American economy steadily slipping further and further into depression.

The ordinary Americans who have observed the unfolding of this tragic and ridiculous charade can perhaps be forgiven for thinking that the Federal government is now completely outside of their control. After all, they have made their collective opinions known to their so-called rulers time and again, and yet they have been completely ignored. Moreover, they now find themselves confronting an economy on the brink of inflationary ruin and outright socialization, a government considering at least three new costly military adventures, and a surveillance and police state with virtually unchecked powers over them.

Fortunately for the fate of this nation, however, the despairing idea that Americans have lost all control over the Federal government is very much mistaken. While it is indeed true that the Federal government has scorned their opinions and seized virtual despotic control over their private lives and the economy at large, ordinary Americans have not lost even a farthing’s worth of control over the Federal government. Their capacity to rein in their so-called rulers and set this nation back on the path to peace, prosperity and respect for individual property rights remains very much intact — and in some ways has actually been strengthened by the events of the past sixteen months.

The key to understanding why Americans still retain the capacity to reign in their behemoth government (and even the ability "to alter or abolish it") lies in recognizing that there are more of us than there are federal agents, tax collectors, central bankers, congressmen, and regulators. For every central banker tinkering with the value of our money, there are tens of thousands of ordinary Americans who will soon be watching their savings evaporate. For every tax collector forcing us to hand over our money to the U.S. Congress, there are tens of thousands of ordinary Americans just scraping by — hoping to keep what they earn instead of working for the benefit of Goldman Sachs’ crooked managers. For every regulator seeking to control how we live and work, there are tens of thousands of ordinary Americans who do not feel particularly inclined to having every aspect of their lives counted, managed, arranged, and dictated according to the whims of faceless bureaucrats. For every crooked congressman (or congresswoman) selling out to or cowering before the far-right Israeli government and its American apologists, there are hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans who prefer to keep completely out of the terrible and murderous game called "Middle East politics." Nothing that has occurred over the past sixteen months has altered the crucial fact of our superiority in numbers [PDF].

Now, it is true that superiority in numbers does not necessarily translate directly into victory for individual liberty over "omnipotent government." The barbaric slaughter of over 38 million innocent people by the vastly outnumbered communist Chinese government attests to this fact, for example. What our massively overwhelming numbers do give us, nevertheless, is the undeniable ability to take back our individual liberty and free our economy whenever we are sufficiently motivated to do so. Their diminutive numbers, coupled with the fact that all of their income is solely parasitically derived from us, means that no matter how large and powerful the Federal government might appear, its henchmen will never, ever, be able to keep our liberty from us if we decide to take it back.

The fact that we can take back our freedom whenever we can sufficiently motivate ourselves to do so ought to dispel any despairing thoughts we might entertain in the current economic and political environment. For, in the first place, the current crisis has created a massive number of Americans (an army, as it were) who are completely dissatisfied with their current position in this hyper-regulated, fascist, and hyper-belligerent state. A growing number of Americans are unemployed, and have no hope for finding new work, thanks to the blunderings and criminal actions of the Federal government and their cronies in the Federal Reserve System. A growing number of Americans are returning from wars their "rulers" concocted (or which were concocted by foreign governments) and refuse to end, only to find that the Federal government now considers them to be a "terrorist threat." A growing number of Americans are graduating from college only to ruefully learn that they have been duped by the Federal government into taking out loans they cannot possibly pay back, and that they have no hope of finding good jobs. A growing number of Americans are now homeless, thanks to the mindless stupidity of the American congress and the appalling arrogance of certain members of the Federal Reserve Board. A growing number of Americans are now incarcerated for using or selling "drugs" by a government that has promoted massive trafficking in these substances itself. And a growing number of Americans are just plain sick and tired of paying year after year to kill Pakistanis, Iraqis, Iranians, Afghanis, Somalis, Serbs, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Angolans, Salvadorians, Chileans, Palestinians, et cetera ad nauseum.

What is more, this growing group of angry, disaffected and persecuted Americans is different in a critical way from the people that were slaughtered en masse by the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Unlike the poor peasants slaughtered in frigid Soviet gulags, for example, present-day Americans are armed — both literally and figuratively. In the figurative sense, Americans have at their disposal sources of information about the sordid activities of their so-called "rulers" like never before in human history. They have news outlets at their disposal that tirelessly chronicle the Federal government’s ongoing crimes on foreign and domestic soil. They have institutions at their disposal that make the acquisition of genuine knowledge about economic and political theory completely accessible to anyone with a computer. That not all Americans have taken advantage of these priceless sources of information is irrelevant — the very fact that they exist and continue to faithfully execute their individual missions means that the American public can arm itself with the truth whenever it so chooses. These institutions are rather like a grandfather’s M1 Garand stowed away in the attic of his flaccid grandson’s condominium. That the present owner does not know how to shoulder his grandfather’s rifle is irrelevant to the fact that, so long as he owns it, he could always choose to learn how to use it.

Add to this the fact that private Americans are literally armed to the teeth (and are continuing to arm themselves at a feverish pace today), and you have a people that could never, ever, be subjugated by the Federal government or any other menace — as long as Americans choose to refuse to allow themselves to be robbed or otherwise dominated by far-away places like Washington D.C.

Naysayers and pessimists can point all they want to the "sheepishness," indolence and decadence of the American people. They can shout until they are blue in the face about how the American people have lost the proud sense of independence and individualism that marked their revolutionary forefathers. None of these objections, however, are relevant in the least to the question of whether Americans have lost control over the Federal government. On the contrary, these objections only point out that at the present moment relatively few Americans have chosen to stand up for themselves — they certainly do not prove that Americans cannot stand up for themselves and throw off this awful and deadly Federal yoke if they were to so choose. And, as long as the host creatures continue to vastly outnumber the parasites, any talk about lost control is fatalistic nonsense.

If anything, objections of this ilk should only prod us to say to ourselves and our neighbors "Go, thou, and do something to cast off this horrendous Federal yoke!"

That’s what I’m trying to do, and I hope I’ll see you at the barricades fighting for your liberty, instead of sitting at home in the dark, mired in self-defeating self-pity.

The Best of Mark R. Crovelli