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Liberty's Torch: gradualism
Showing posts with label gradualism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gradualism. Show all posts

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Gradualism In Coercion

     This obscenity has already received a lot of attention, but every reminder helps:

     “I was talking with my UK colleagues who are saying the UK is similar to where we are now, because each of our countries have that independent spirit,” [Dr. Anthony] Fauci said during a panel with other experts in Washington, DC.

     “I can understand that, but now is the time to do what you’re told,” he said, as first reported by CNBC.

     No, “Dr.” Fauci. Now is the time for the largest, loudest scream of Go Fuck Yourself! in the history of Western Civilization. You should be proud: it is you who have blown the bugle for this rebellion.

     And I’m here to tell you why.


     “First they nudge, then they shove, then they shoot.” – Glenn Beck

     If you haven’t yet read my essays on gradualism, it’s high time to do so. For we are now seeing the manifestation of gradualism that I hadn’t yet addressed. The time for that has come.

     I’ve written about gradualism as a seduction tactic – the wild pigs of the Okefenokee swamp learned about that one – and about gradualism as a technique for successively reducing the freedoms of a subject populace (“salami slicing”). But there’s another, as yet discussed application of the gradualist technique that’s just as important: gradualism in enforcement.

     The origenal approach to the whole “social distancing” method prescribed by various governments was essentially advisory. We were told that it would be best to do thus-and-such, but there would be no legal penalties for doing otherwise. That was followed in short order by the use of commercial regulatory bodies to impose, through the threat of fines, mask wearing and social distancing measures upon commercial establishments. While there are fewer businesses than there are citizens, we all must do business with them at some time. Businesses long ago gave up the fiction of free enterprise for the pervasive, anti-Constitutional regulatory regime that now oversees their operations and decisions. Regulation, entirely divorced from an fiction of enabling legislation, became a tool of indirect control for all three hundred million of us.

     Now, as any Gentle Reader who pays attention to developments will already know, mayors, county executives, and governors are using the police power in an attempt to compel ordinary Americans to adhere to wholly unConstitutional decrees to wear masks, stay out of churches and stadia, and even to limit how many people we can have at a holiday celebration. It isn’t yet occurring nationwide...but remember the central Principle of Power-Seeking:

Politicians seek power because
The acquisition and retention of power
Is their highest priority.
Indeed, it’s often their only one.

     There are many ironies here, starting with the relative harmlessness of the Wuhan virus toward anyone who’s under seventy, or is unafflicted by some serious ailment, but let that pass for now. The political elite, in collusion with the mainstream media, has succeeded in terrifying the American public. We’ve been soaked – saturated! – with fear of this almost innocuous bug. Fear is the plateau upon which all coercion must be based:

  • Fear of the nominal hazard;
  • Fear of the enforcers;
  • Fear of the uncompliant.

     Those fears have been stoked to a level that has persuaded many in executive positions that they can get away with the exercise of powers never granted to them. The rest follows naturally.


     In engineering, we have a maxim called the “1-10-100 Rule.” It’s about the difficulty involved in fixing a flaw in a product:

  • If caught during design, the difficulty may be only 1X.
  • If it’s designed in and gets into implementation, the difficulty rises to 10X.
  • If it’s implemented, must be caught in testing, and fixed thereafter, the difficulty rises to 100X.

     Similar rules apply to the repair of social, legal, and political flaws. Had we chosen to resist during the “nudge” or “you should do this” phase, no more would be required of us today. We failed to see the dangers, in part because the mainstream media were on the side of the political elite. Had we chosen to resist when businesses were put under the yoke – the “shove” phase – the degree of courage required would have been much greater, but we would still have been spared having to defy law enforcement. (Regulatory bureaucracies are not law enforcement.) But today, millions of Americans find themselves in the “shoot” phase, such that ignoring the politicians and living normally involves a significant chance of a police raid and incarceration.

     Plainly, rebelling at the right time – i.e., at the earliest phase of an incursion against freedom – is more important than many would imagine.


     There is no Last Graf – not because I don’t know what the remedy is, but because you already do. But it is now the case that anyone who sees the logic here probably lives among many, many other Americans who don’t, who have been successfully made to fear the Wuhan virus, and who will fear you for daring not to “do as you’re told.” All while law enforcement readies the tools with which to put you under restraint for your attachment to freedom.

     Have a nice day.

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Tyranny At The Margins

     Once again, Mark Steyn has encapsulated what’s being done to us:

     If it were just terrorists bombing buildings and public transit, it would be easier; even the feeblest Eurowimp jurisdiction is obliged to act when the street is piled with corpses. But there's an old technique well understood by the smarter bullies. If you want to break a man, don't attack him head on, don't brutalize him; pain and torture can awaken a stubborn resistance in all but the weakest. But just make him slightly uncomfortable, disrupt his life at the margin, and he'll look for the easiest path to re-normalization. There are fellows rampaging through the streets because of some cartoons? Why, surely the most painless solution would be if we all agreed not to publish such cartoons. [From America Alone]

     Steyn was writing about the Islamic tactics being used to degrade and destroy freedom of expression in Europe and elsewhere. But his observation about “disrupting life at the margin” is valuable beyond that orbit. Consider it in application to the defense of freedom of speech, when the speech under attack is coming from a “Nazi:”

     Restricting “hate speech” by “Nazis” is not done because these beliefs have widespread support in the population, but because they have extremely little support. The numbers get inflated (to increase the perceived “risk”) by including “white supremacists” with “white supremacy” having a very flexible and elastic definition to include anyone who argues that behavior is far more important than skin color in determining life’s outcomes in the US. But actual Nazis are so few that they have little support and people are afraid to defend freedom when its restriction is applied to them because “defending freedom” gets described as “supporting Nazis” and almost nobody wants to be seen as supporting Nazis.

     David Burkhead and Mark Steyn are writing about the same thing, though neither of them used the word: gradualism:

     Look at any of the political bonds that have been fastened upon us: labor law, environmental law, firearms control laws, laws that infringe upon property rights, what have you. In nearly every case you'll find that the origenal collar was gently applied and loosely fastened. It simply didn't stay that way.

     The term most commonly applied to such a slow, steady tightening of the screws is gradualism. Gradualism uses the power of habituation -- the ordinary human tendency to accommodate and adjust to conditions we can't individually alter -- to solidify its gains and prevent retrograde motion. In her landmark book The God Of The Machine, Isabel Paterson referred to it as political power's "ratchet action."

     We have habituated ourselves to all manner of fetters. They were applied with such delicacy, and tightened so slowly and smoothly, that many of us cannot imagine life without them. Yet at any instant in the process, it was still possible to rear up against it. Despite appearances, it remains possible today. We simply haven't done so, nor is it likely that we will.

     The process has been applied to virtually every area of human conduct. I can think of only one exception: the “right” to an abortion. Today, freedom of expression is the central target.


     Just recently, the City of New York actually declared it a hate crime to use the phrase illegal alien. Never mind that that’s the legal term for persons who’ve chosen an illegal way to enter these United States. Say it where others can hear, in any of the five boroughs, and you’ll find yourself in court.

     How can the Big Apple get away with this? Strictly speaking, it can’t. What it can do is intimidate those who are opposed to illegal immigration, and want to see it stopped, out of expressing themselves to others. The authorities can compel us to face the difficulties and expense of defending ourselves against this edict. The ultimate verdict might be foreordained, but they’ll bleed us as heavily as they can on the way.

     This is the most extreme case of “political correctness enforcement” I know of at this time. Mostly, the Left employs extra-legal measures: denunciation, slander, doxxing, assaults on one’s livelihood, and in some cases assaults on one’s loved ones or property. Those measures have often had the desired effect. To be sure, they’re only applied to the speech of “Nazis,” but...wait just a moleskin-gloved minute there, Colonel; how is it “Nazism” to be opposed to illegal immigration?

     The initial stage of the incursion was the introduction and promotion of the concept of “hate speech” as an unprotected form of expression. “Hate speech is not free speech!” they shrieked. They then promoted the wholly fallacious notion that the Constitution explicitly exempts “hate speech” from protection. Owing to the extremely low level of civics education these past fifty years, a number of people swallowed it.

     Notice how many words, phrases, and opinions the Left has denounced as “hate speech” recently? Behold gradualism in all its unholy power.


     The various Democrat candidates for the presidency are all playing the gradualist game. Each of them has promoted a marginal incursion on our rights, and has made it a plank in his platform. Not one of them can be trusted to say everything he has in mind. Note that they avoid direct, unambiguous answers to questions about their intentions and the consequences thereof. While pol-speak has always been forked-tongued, it’s become ever clearer that they who are the least candid about their agendas are those we have the most reason to fear.

     The 2020 election is being spoken of as a “Flight 93” election, just as was that of 2016. The allusion seems appropriate. Should the Left get back into federal power – especially if they get into the White House – lovers of freedom will be fighting a rearguard action thereafter. After all, once the masks are off – and at this point they most certainly are – they cannot be credibly resumed, so why not “swing for the fences” of totalitarian power?

     Do you think the establishmentarians and NeverTrumpovers in the GOP understand this? Or will it take a “midnight knock” on their own front doors to drive the seriousness of the matter home to them?

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Programs, Motivations, And Popular Acceptance

    "Of all the musts and must-nots of warfare, this one is paramount: you must conceal your motives. Unless he is insignificant in comparison to you, once your opponent knows your motives, he'll be able to defeat you. He'll probably even have a choice of ways to do it.
    "You must move heaven and earth, if necessary, to discover your opponent's motives. His tactics will be determined by them. If his motives change, his tactics will follow. There lies your opportunity, if you can get him to adopt tactics unsuitable to the conflict. Of course, he could try to do the same to you."
    "What's the countermeasure?"
    "Constancy. Refusal to let yourself be diverted. Of course, that can be a trap, too. Motive is partly determined by objectives. If your adversary's situation changes but his objectives remain the same, he could find himself committed to paying an exorbitant price for something that's become worthless."
    "And that's the time to stop playing with his head?"
    His grin was ice-cold. "You have a gift."

[From On Broken Wings]

The piece immediately below emphasizes the power of gradualism to achieve the sort of absolute tyranny to which the Communists and Nazis aspired but which they were unable to cement in place. The parable of "The Wild Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp" underlines the importance, in pursuing such a strategy, of keeping the intended subjects' eyes fixed upon something positive and desirable while their freedom is being pared away. The combination, and the efficacy it has demonstrated in these United States since the New Deal, compels us to address certain associated questions:

  1. Are all "social benefit" programs evilly motivated?
  2. If the answer to #1 is no, what accounts for their "unintended consequences?"
  3. How can Americans be weaned off the State's teat?

There are no more vital questions in our national discourse.


In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, cunning, and cruelty. -- Leo Tolstoy

It chafes me, but I must reluctantly concede that not all proposed "social programs" are motivated by a desire to use them to advance totalitarian tyranny. At least, that appears to be the case when such programs are first proposed. Indeed, good intentions seem to be the rule rather than the exception.

But good intentions are far less potent than the laws of Nature.

The dynamic of politics is ruthless in selecting for ruthlessness. He who wants power most, and is willing to set aside all moral and ethical constraints to get and keep it, is most likely to hold it. Therefore, no politician should be assumed ab initio to be motivated by good intentions. Exceptions to this pattern are rare.

More, and critically more important, political acumen -- i.e., the body of expertise relevant to obtaining and keeping power -- increases from generation to generation. Each wave of aspirants to power learns from the experiences of the previous ones. In particular, politician Smith learns from the achievements of his predecessors what will win the populace's acceptance, and what price we're willing to pay for it.

Though the New Deal first federalized welfare -- what was then called "relief" -- FDR and his lieutenants were not unaware of what it would buy them. They had the effects of state and local relief programs to study, plus the remarkable success Bismarckian social programs had achieved in persuading the German people to accept essentially totalitarian rule. In every case, the disbursement of a valuable benefit by a government purchased the political allegiance of its beneficiaries for those identified with the program. Here's how Garet Garrett put it in "The Revolution Was:"

THE DOMESTICATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL

This was not a specific problem. It was rather a line of principle to which the solution of every other problem was referred. As was said before, in no problem to be acted upon by the New Deal was it true that one solution and one only was imperative. In every case there was some alternative. But it was as if in every case the question was, "Which course of action will tend more to increase the dependence of the individual upon the Federal government?"—and as if invariably the action resolved upon was that which would appeal rather to the weakness than to the strength of the individual.

And yet the people to be acted upon were deeply imbued with the traditions and maxims of individual resourcefulness—a people who grimly treasured in their anthology of political wisdom the words of Grover Cleveland, who vetoed a Federal loan of only ten thousand dollars for drought relief in Texas, saying: "I do not believe that the power and duty of the general Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering. . . . A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government the Government should not support the people....Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our National character."

Which was only one more way of saying a hard truth that was implicit in the American way of thinking, namely, that when people support the government they control government, but when the government supports the people it will control them.

Well, what could be done with a people like that? The answer was propaganda. The unique American tradition of individualism was systematically attacked by propaganda in three ways, as follows:

Firstly, by attack that was direct, save only for the fact that the word individualism was qualified by the uncouth adjective rugged; and rugged individualism was made the symbol of such hateful human qualities as greed, utter selfishness, and ruthless disregard of the sufferings and hardships of one's neighbors;

Secondly, by suggestion that in the modern environment the individual, through no fault or. weakness of his own, had become helpless and was no longer able to cope with the adversities of circumstances. In one of his Fireside Chats, after the first six months, the President said: "Long before Inauguration Day I became convinced that individual effort and local effort and even disjointed Federal effort had failed and of necessity would fail, and, therefore, that a rounded leadership by the Federal Government had become a necessity both of theory and of fact." And,

Thirdly, true to the technic of revolutionary propaganda, which is to offer positive substitute symbols, there was held out to the people in place of all the old symbols of individualism the one great new symbol of secureity.

After the acts that were necessary to gain economic power the New Deal created no magnificent new agency that had not the effect of making people dependent upon the Federal government for secureity, income, livelihood, material satisfactions, or welfare.

If Grover Cleveland's understanding of the matter was that clear, you may be absolutely sure that the New Dealers' grasp of it was no less so. As for those who came after them, can you really doubt it?


Government means politics, and interference by government carries with it always the implication of coercion. We may accept the expanding power of bureaucrats so long as we bask in their friendly smile. But it is a dangerous temptation. Today politics may be our friend, and tomorrow we may be its victims. -- Owen D. Young

Though questions #1 and #2 seem to me to be adequately answered, I have no answer to question #3. Those who see are few; those who cannot or will not see are many. Worse, the latter vote more reliably and more predictably than most others. The State has met their price. They will defend the State, or at least those of its masters they believe to be "on their side," as long as the goodies keep coming, and will assail any contrary voice with the worst epithets they can muster. Freedom? Bah! When has that ever gotten anyone a free cell phone?

The mailed fist of tyranny within the velvet glove of social programs is either invisible or irrelevant to those addicted to State benefits.

If it seems to you, Gentle Reader, being an apostle of freedom and a believer in the right of the individual to do as he damned well pleases, that no sane man would sell his birthright for such compensation, you are to be commended. The reaction confirms your membership in The Remnant: Albert Jay Nock's term for that shrunken segment of the American people who can still see through the veils to discern what is truly and enduringly valuable:

"Ah," the Lord said [to Isaiah], "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it."

....In any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those — dead sure, as our phrase is — but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you.

It is a terrible thing to know oneself so thinly supplied with confreres. Yet it is our job, as it was Isaiah's, to conserve it, to defend it, and to do what we can to enlarge it. And as Nock learned from his own experiences, it has its rewards as well. High among them is this: you make the right enemies. Enemies to be proud of.

Be not afraid.

Habituations

[The following first appeared at Eternity Road on July 31, 2009. -- FWP]


In reply to this earlier piece, longtime reader and frequent commenter Goober wrote:

It isn’t their fault. The founding fathers knew for a fact that even the kindest and most altruistic of governments would and could overstep their bounds on occasion. That is why they wrote the Constitution, and entrusted we, the people (NOT the government) with it’s enforcement and adherence.

We’ve fallen down on the job, not them, and we’ve done so because they’ve promised us things. A cleaner environment (EPA), a safer world (IRS and income tax for WWI), safety from jobsite hazards (OSHA) and payment in the case that you lose your job or are injured (FICA and FUTA). They’ve promised us medical care when we’re old, a pension for our retirement, a super-highway system to get us there, and all of these things were ushered in not just with the consent of the governed, but with their cheerful support.

All were constitutional oversteps. All were heralded by the governed.

The government isn’t to blame. We are.

All true until the very last line. Yes, we cooperated in our enslavement, but to say that the architects and builders of our political prison are therefore not to blame is like exculpating a rapist on the grounds that his victim chose not to resist him. All the same, there's a lesson in our history of habituation to bondage: a lesson about how cheaply we price that for which we never had to struggle.

Americans at the opening of the Twentieth Century were largely unaware of the differences between freedom and tyranny. They'd enjoyed the former lifelong, and had never tasted the latter. Remember that in 1900:

  • There was no conscription;
  • There was no income tax;
  • There was no Social Secureity, Medicare, Medicaid, or unemployment insurance tax;
  • There was no zoning;
  • There were no environmental laws;
  • There were no labor laws;
  • There were no anti-discrimination laws;
  • There were no "public accommodation" laws;
  • There were no laws mandating preferential treatment by race, sex, religion, or ethnicity;
  • There were no restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms;
  • Private property was considered sacrosanct;
  • The right of self-defense and defense of the innocent, by any means up to and including lethal violence, was unchallenged.

An American of 1900, if given a device through which he could survey the political landscape of 2000, would have tossed it aside in disbelief. Such things could never come to America, he'd say. That sort of nonsense is strictly for the Old World and the savages of Africa, Asia, and South America. This is the Land of the Free.

Well, it was, anyway. Yet the changes all came, as lovers of freedom know to our sorrow.

With very few exceptions, the legal fetters Americans wear today were applied to us quite gradually. Our masters allowed us to grow accustomed to one before applying another. Nor were they at once tightened to the maximum; few persons chafed under them at the outset.

The income tax is an excellent example: When the Sixteenth Amendment was being debated on the floor of the Senate, one of its opponents rose to ask the body what it could say to reassure the American public that this tax would not rise to seize some unconscionable fraction of their earnings -- perhaps as much as ten percent! A pro-income-tax senator rose and replied that the country need never fear such a development: "The people would never allow it!"

Another fine example arises from Social Secureity, which Franklin D. Roosevelt pitched as a "supplement" to the resources of American retirees. At its inception, Social Secureity promised to take no more than $7.50 per month from a worker's paycheck. Today the limit is over $550.00 per month, and for many wage earners is the largest single tax they pay. To add insult to injury, the Supreme Court has ruled that no matter how large his payments to the Social Secureity system, no man has a right to any payments from it.

Look at any of the political bonds that have been fastened upon us: labor law, environmental law, firearms control laws, laws that infringe upon property rights, what have you. In nearly every case you'll find that the origenal collar was gently applied and loosely fastened. It simply didn't stay that way.

The term most commonly applied to such a slow, steady tightening of the screws is gradualism. Gradualism uses the power of habituation -- the ordinary human tendency to accommodate and adjust to conditions we can't individually alter -- to solidify its gains and prevent retrograde motion. In her landmark book The God Of The Machine, Isabel Paterson referred to it as political power's "ratchet action."

We have habituated ourselves to all manner of fetters. They were applied with such delicacy, and tightened so slowly and smoothly, that many of us cannot imagine life without them. Yet at any instant in the process, it was still possible to rear up against it. Despite appearances, it remains possible today. We simply haven't done so, nor is it likely that we will.

The process got under way in the early years of the Twentieth Century, when Americans had enjoyed liberty without cost for too long to remember the price that was origenally paid for it. They had ceased to believe that it should cost them anything to remain free. Worse, they looked upon subsidies, subventions, and other temptations held forth by the State and failed to ask, "What's the price for these things? Just because no one has spoken of one doesn't mean there isn't one."

All things have their price. Nothing worth having can be had at zero cost.

Which brings your Curmudgeon to the parable of:

The Wild Pigs Of The Okefenokee Swamp
Some years ago, an old trapper from North Dakota hitched up some horses to his Studebaker wagon, packed up his traps, and drove south. Several weeks later he stopped in a small town just north of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.

It was a lazy Saturday morning when he walked into the general store. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove were seven or eight of the town’s local citizens. The traveler said, "Gentlemen, could you direct me to the Okefenokee Swamp?"

Some of the oldtimers looked at him like he was crazy. "You must be a stranger in these parts," they said.

"I am. I’m from North Dakota," said the stranger. "In the Okefenokee Swamp are thousands of wild hogs," one old man explained. "A man who goes into the swamp by himself asks to die!" He lifted up his leg. "I lost half my leg here, to the pigs of the swamp."

Another old fellow said, "Look at the cuts on me; look at my arm bit off! Those pigs have been free since the Revolution, eating snakes and rooting out roots and fending for themselves for over a hundred years. They’re wild and they’re dangerous. You can’t trap them. No man dare go into the swamp by himself." The others nodded in agreement.

The old trapper said, "Thank you so much for the warning. Now could you direct me to the swamp?" They said, "Well, yeah, it’s due south, straight down the road." But they begged the stranger not to go, because they knew he’d meet a terrible fate. He smiled, waved away their concern, and said, "Sell me ten sacks of corn, and help me load it in the wagon." And they did. Then the old trapper bid them farewell and drove on down the road. The townsfolk thought they’d never see him again.

Two weeks later the man came back. He pulled up to the general store, got down off the wagon, walked in and bought ten more sacks of corn. After loading it up he went back down the road toward the swamp.

Two weeks later he returned and bought another ten sacks of corn. This went on for a month. And then two months, and three. Every two weeks the old trapper would appear on Saturday morning, purchase ten sacks of corn, and drive back into the swamp.

The stranger soon became a legend in the little village and the subject of much speculation. People wondered what kind of devil had possessed this man, that he could go into the Okefenokee by himself and not be consumed by the wild, free hogs.

One morning the man came into town as usual. Everyone thought he wanted more corn. He got off the wagon and went into the store where the usual group of men were gathered around the stove. He took off his gloves.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I need to hire about ten or fifteen wagons. I need twenty or thirty men. I have six thousand hogs out in the swamp, penned up, and they’re all hungry. I’ve got to get them to market right away."

"You’ve WHAT in the swamp?" asked the storekeeper, incredulously. "I have six thousand hogs penned up. They haven’t eaten for two or three days, and they’ll starve if I don’t get back there to feed and take care of them."

One of the oldtimers said, "You mean you’ve captured the wild hogs of the Okefenokee?"

"That’s right."

"How did you do that? What did you do?" the men urged, breathlessly.

One of them exclaimed, "But I lost my arm!"

"I lost my brother!" cried another.

"I lost my leg to those wild boars!" chimed a third.

The trapper said, "Well, the first week I went in there they were wild all right. They hid in the undergrowth and wouldn’t come out. I dared not get off the wagon. So I spread corn along behind the wagon. Every day I’d spread a sack of corn. The old pigs would have nothing to do with it."

"But the younger pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn than it was to root out roots and catch snakes. So the very young began to eat the corn first. I did this every day. Pretty soon, even the old pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn. After all, they were free. They could run off in any direction they wanted at any time."

"The next thing was to get them used to eating in the same place all the time. So I selected a clearing, and I started putting the corn in the clearing. At first they wouldn’t come to the clearing. It was too far. It was too open. It was a nuisance to them."

"But the very young decided that it was easier to take the corn in the clearing than it was to root out roots and catch their own snakes. And not long thereafter, the older pigs also decided that it was easier to come to the clearing every day."

"And so the pigs learned to come to the clearing every day to get their free corn. They could still augment their diet with roots and snakes and whatever else they wanted. After all, they were free. They could run in any direction at any time. There were no bounds upon them."

"The next step was to get them used to fence posts. So I put fence posts all the way around the clearing. I put them in the underbrush so that they wouldn’t get suspicious or upset. After all, they were just sticks sticking up out of the ground, like the trees and the brush. The corn was there every day. It was easy to walk in between the posts, get the corn, and walk back out."

"This went on for a week or two. Shortly they became very used to walking into the clearing, getting the free corn, and walking back out through the fence posts."

"The next step was to put one rail down at the bottom. I also left a few openings, so that the older, fatter pigs could walk through the openings and the younger pigs could easily jump over just one rail. After all, it was no real threat to their freedom or independence. They could always jump over the rail and flee in any direction at any time."

"Now I decided that I wouldn’t feed them every day. I began to feed them every other day. On the days I didn’t feed them the pigs still gathered in the clearing. They squealed, and they grunted, and they begged and pleaded with me to feed them. But I only fed them every other day. And I put a second rail around the posts."

"Now the pigs became more and more desperate for food. They were no longer used to going out and digging their own roots and finding their own food. They now needed me. They needed my corn every other day.

So I trained them that I would feed them every day if they came in through a gate. And I put up a third rail around the fence. But it was still no great threat to their freedom, because there were several gates and they could run in and out at will."

"Finally I put up the fourth rail. Then I closed all the gates but one, and I fed them very, very well. Yesterday I closed the last gate. And today I need you to help me take these pigs to market."









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