The Totalitarian and the Donut

(bumped per the Six's request)

When I was in high school my social studies teachers taught the political spectrum thusly:

They followed this up with the idea that, though the spectrum was right in a philosophical way, both extremes tended towards violence and totalitarianism. Which meant that, though hard left and hard right were "opposites" they almost met at the extremes by the actions they were willing to take to gain their power. Like this:

That was all fine and dandy for me for a while. But I started to question this idea when the Nazi party came to topic. Cause, you know, Nazis are hard right. Right? I had been taught that in school for years. But the more I learned, the more I thought, the more I began to see the truth: if the Nazis were hard right then I was bright purple. Communists, you see, want Socialism to gain control over the whole world, whereas the Nazis and the Fascists wanted socialist control of just one nation at a time. International versus National.

Sigh.

But lets move on, shall we?

My problems progressed from there when I tried to figure out how one got from the idea of smaller government and personal responsibility to a totalitarian government bent on the subjugation of a nation. What my teachers were talking about didn't fit the entirety of the spectrum, because they were really only talking about the center, "normal", folks that fell on one side or the other of center.

On day it hit me, it wasn't a line at all!! It was a circle, but instead of the center being on the circle the center was in the middle!

Er... Let me explain.

A donut:

The "normal" folks are the donut hole:

We all know that donuts are bad for us. White flour, white sugar, transfats, it's enough to make you fat, give you diabetes, lead to a heart attack and kill you!

Oh, but it tastes so good! Only will power and the desire to do the right thing keeps us from eating our body weight in donuts. Or, maybe that's just me.

*Sniff*

This donut hole is the visual representation of those that fall into what we mean when we talk about "right" and "left".

So, what happens when you start to move out of the donut hole?

(I don't know what Turtleism is, but I'm working on it. I'm thinking it'll be federal mandates that since speed is dangerous you can only move at 1/5th your normal speed and you can eat nothing but lettuce. Cause, you know, everything else is bad for you.)

All jesting aside, the point is that when you leave the center it doesn't matter which side of the donut hole you started on, you are heading towards the Totalitarian edge. Imagine eating the donut from the center out. A few bites at a time alarms a few, but not everyone. Soon the donut hole is simply bigger and no one can remember it being it's original size. As the next generation takes a few more bites from the center, again, a few are concerned but not everyone. Eventually the people themselves will allow a government to eat the entire donut, plunging their world into a totalitarian government one sweet bite at a time.

But how do we know where the original center is? If people can change it isn't it then an arbitrary line? For a government to work well, no, it must be a steady and well understood line. A line, where if someone takes a bite, there is an entire nation at the ready to call that person to task. We need some sort of written document to define the line...

The Constitution is our brick wall, it defines what is normal and what is not. The Constitution allows us to see those that are stealing our donut from us, one bite at a time. The Constitution is not a "living document", changeable at a whim, but a document of well defined limits and rules. Break them and suffer. The last 100 years has seen a redefining of the Constitution, a complete lack of willingness to abide by and protect it.

Shame on us.

Those currently in power believe that so long as they dole out bits of the donut to the people that they will be content. So long as they get their bit they will allow the lines to be redrawn.

We can no longer allow the donut to be eaten on our watch.

We can no longer allow others to change the game in blatant disregard to the law of our land, defined by our Constitution.

We must defend the Constitution.

We must defend the Donut!

-The DO