What if elections
were actually useful tools of
social control? What if they just
provided the populace with
meaningless participation in a
process that validates an
establishment that never
meaningfully changes? What if that
establishment doesn't want and
doesn't have the consent of the
governed? What if the two-party
system were actually a mechanism
used to limit so-called public
opinion? What if there were more
than two sides to every issue, but
the two parties wanted to box you
in to one of their corners?
What if there's no
such thing as public opinion,
because every thinking person has
opinions that are uniquely his own?
What if public opinion were just a
manufactured narrative that makes
it easier to convince people that
if their views are different,
there's something wrong with that
â€" or something wrong with
them?
What if the whole
purpose of the Democratic and
Republican parties was not to
expand voters' choices, but to
limit them? What if the widely
perceived differences between the
two parties were just an illusion?
What if the heart of government
policy remains the same, no matter
who's in the White House? What if
the heart of government policy
remains the same, no matter what
the people want?
What if those
vaunted differences between
Democrat and Republican were
actually just minor disagreements?
What if both parties just want
power and are willing to have young
people fight meaningless wars to
enhance that power? What if both
parties continue to fight the war
on drugs just to give bureaucrats
and cops bigger budgets and more
jobs?
What if government
policies didn't change when
government's leaders did? What if
no matter who won an election,
government stayed the same? What if
government were really a revolving
door of political hacks, bent on
exploiting the people while they're
in charge?
What if both
parties supported welfare, war,
debt, bailouts and big government?
What if the rhetoric candidates
displayed on the campaign trail was
dumped after electoral victory?
What if Barack Obama campaigned as
an antiwar, pro-civil liberties
candidate, then waged senseless
wars while assaulting your rights
that the Constitution is supposed
to protect? What if George W. Bush
campaigned on a platform of
nonintervention and small
government, then waged a foreign
policy of muscular military
intervention and a domestic policy
of vast government borrowing and
growth?
What if Bill
Clinton declared the era of big
government to be over, but actually
just convinced Republicans like
Newt Gingrich that they can get
what they want out of big
government, too? What if the
Republicans went along with
it?
What if Ronald
Reagan spent six years running for
president promising to shrink
government, but then the government
grew while he was in office? What
if, notwithstanding Reagan's ideas
and cheerfulness and libertarian
rhetoric, there really was no
Reagan Revolution?
What if all this is
happening again? What if Rick
Santorum is being embraced by
voters who want small government
even though he voted for the
Patriot Act, for an expansion of
Medicare and for raising the debt
ceiling by trillions of dollars?
What if Mitt Romney is being
embraced by voters who want anyone
but Obama, but don't realize that
Romney might as well be Obama on
everything from warfare to
welfare?
What if Ron Paul is
being ignored by the media not
because they claim he's unappealing
or unelectable, but because he
doesn't fit into the
pre-manufactured public-opinion
mold used by the establishment to
pigeonhole the electorate and
create the so-called narrative that
drives media coverage of
elections?
What if the biggest
difference between most candidates
was not substance but style? What
if those stylistic differences were
packaged as substantive ones to
reinforce the illusion of a
difference between Democrats and
Republicans? What if Romney wins
and ends up continuing most of the
same policies Obama promoted? What
if Obama's policies, too, are
merely extensions of Bush's?
What if a
government that manipulated us
could be fired? What if a
government that lacked the true and
knowing consent of the governed
could be dismissed? What if it were
possible to have a game-changer?
What if we need a Ron Paul to
preserve and protect our freedoms
from assault by the
government?
What if we could
make elections matter again? What
if we could do something about
this?
Andrew P.
Napolitano, a former judge of the
Superior Court of New Jersey, is
the senior judicial analyst at Fox
News Channel and anchor of
"FreedomWatch" on
Fox
