I recently started playing Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, and it reminded me that I really I really enjoy the Assassin's Creed games. And not just for the really fun game play, or the interesting stories. I like the games because they set up an important dynamic between eternally combating forces. Freedom verses Control. This dynamic is being echoed in popular culture more and more, but I think that Assassin's Creed is a good example.
On one hand you have the Templar Order, it's symbol supposedly based on the Mark of Cain. The Templar's main goal is to control people's lives and minds. Templars seek to create a perfect world full of order and control and woe be unto anyone who does not display the correct thinking or stands in the way of that perfect world. (Sound familiar? If it doesn't I'll spell it out later). In the Templar world, freedom and individuality aren't just overrated - They're dangerous. Templars seek the dominance of the state over the individual.
On the other hand you have the Order of Assassins, also called the Liberalis Circulum (Circle of Liberals), that fights against the Templars in order to preserve the freedom and the progress and growth that comes with it. I like what the Assassin's stand for so much that I once designed a Liberalis Circulum Agent prestige class for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. But that's beside the point. The Assassins are almost always few in number compared to the Templar, and the Templar always seem more powerful, but the Assassins make up the difference with pinpoint victories.
I mentioned earlier that the dynamic is increasingly present in pop culture. In two fairly recent movies the topic has come up and the outcome of the stories were heavily weighted, I think, in favor of the Liberalis Circulum ideology.
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the insidious force of Hydra hijacks SHIELD to try and take control of the nation while eliminating powerful and dangerous individuals like Tony Stark and Doctor Strange (that mention was a great geek out moment) who can confidently say that they can run their own lives and business better than the State. When viewing the helicarriers that Hydra would eventually use, Steve Rogers replies to Fury's rationalizations with "This isn't freedom, this is fear!"
In Divergent, the system in future Chicago groups people into five 'factions' and those who don't belong... die or disappear. A few people who are labelled as 'Divergent' for having a little bit of individuality basically save two of the factions from a third (Erudite, the "we're smarter than you so we are the only ones who know how to run your life people) and still end up hunted and on the run.
I'm a classical Liberal, which means that these days I'm a Libertarian. Modern Liberals are statists who have usurped the good name of the label. They've done the same with Progressives. President Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive, but he wouldn't recognize modern progressives as anything remotely connected to his ideals. Thomas Jefferson was a liberal, but he had nothing in common with today's liberals.
The words liberal and liberty have the same root word, and both do (or at least should) mean freedom and free-ness. This isn't freedom from responsibility or consequences like so many people want to think, but rather a freedom to act and live unfettered from outside influences such as government.
If you want to see what real "Templars" would do with power and influence then you have no farther to look in life than the 'liberal' Left in this great nation. They have no higher cause than themselves and their perfect world. They have control of the government bureaucracy and the media, and what have they done with it?
- They have become thought police, trying to destroy anyone who thinks differently or freely. Examples of this have been seen with the furor over Hobby Lobby and Chic-Fil-A, and more acutely with the bakers and wedding planners who have been forced by the government to cater to homosexuals against every belief and moral of their beings.
- They have convinced Americans that we aren't simply Americans. You have to get the black vote, or the latino vote, or the women vote... They've factionalized America and far far too many people are okay with it. The value of a person is in the content of their character, not the color of their skin or the shape of their genitals. An American is an American.
There are more, but I don't feel like remembering them. But essentially, the Left wants a permanent underclass that will only vote for them, while eliminating anyone who doesn't agree with their thinking.
Libertarians are a different beast entirely. They're much more chaotic and individualistic than the Left or the Right. They have all manner of personal opinions on everything from drugs to guns to energy production, but they all agree on one thing: People can run their individual lives better than the government can.
I find that the main difference between statists and individualists comes down to their perception of humanity. The statist believes that in any given situation, a human will act poorly and selfishly. The individualist believes that a human will act beneficently and selfishly in any given situation. The statist believes that human nature needs to be curbed by powerful organizations or else destroy everything. The individualist believes that human nature is an engine of creativity and goodness. Pessimism and Optimism. Control and Freedom. One believes that the world works better when other people run your life, the other believes that the world works better when you run your life.
History has shown again and again and again which way actually works. The statist 'utopias' of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Communist China are just recent examples of what happens when the pessimistic view takes hold. Inevitably, those statist bastions caused death, destruction, suffering, evil, and stagnation far far beyond anything that the Left or other statists will admit.
In contrast, those nations and eras built upon individual freedoms have thrived and become innovative, optimistic, and closer to ideal.
Will the world ever be perfect? No. But an honest look at history shows the best way to go about life. To paraphrase Thomas Paine, "Government at its best is a tolerable evil, and at it's worst an intolerable one. Even so it is evil and must be fought against." Government is a consumer and not a producer, no matter what government lackeys may try to tell you. Left unchecked government grows into the monstrous pile of bureaucracy that we're dealing with today.
There are good things worth fighting for in this life, and freedom pretty much tops the list. So are you a statist or an individualist? A pessimist or an optimist?
Are you a Templar or an Assassin?
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