A common characteristic of human, mandatory government can easily be seen through the ages.

In modern times, it is summed up with this quote:

Never let a good crisis go to waste.

While we have recently associated this quote with former Chicago Mayor and White House flunky Raum Emmauel, others are credited with it going back decades. One of those is Winston Churchill of England.

Certainly he, and many others, have followed this axiom.

In and of itself, it is not a bad idea.  It is when things go wrong that we find our minds refreshingly concentrating on figuring out the mess and how to fix it.  When we are in a crisis, it is easier to get people to agree on something and work to solve a problem.

Often, it can be good.  When a huge pothole in the middle of a Florida road turns into an even larger sinkhole that swallows part of the road, for instance.  The crisis finally gets the responsible parties to go fix the problem, not just there but in many other stretches of road.  When that latest fire in California burns a couple of hundred homes, sending hundreds of thousands of people into panic, it is a great opportunity to teach people how to be fire-wise.

But that isn’t usually how government works – especially when it comes to digging up reasons to give government more power.  Whether that is a local police force (or town council), the local road department, a State, or a king or warlord. (We tend to pay attention to this attitude at the federal and global level, but it is far more common in local politics and government.)

The opportunity that these types of people – leeches that they are – see is to use the crisis as an excuse for something that gives them more power, wealth, and privilege. However small an increase in any of these things, they are desirable to the parasites that infest our governments.

The pothole-turned-sinkhole is an excuse to raise taxes, impose more regulations on travel, and attack their political opponents who are fighting fraud and waste in the road department. For the bureaucrats, it is the opportunity to hire more underlings, which means an increase in their own influence, prestige, and (of course) pay.

The fires in California become an excuse to blame (and even take over) big companies who can be blamed for starting the fires. And passing more regulations (and raising taxes) to “protect” the environment by not allowing firewise activities to clear brush and trees in dangerous areas.

The coronavirus (Beer Flu) – oops! COVID-19!) becomes an excuse to practice and improve plans for government control of mass movement, transportation, and contact. Whether it is China establishing no-travel zones or the FedGov setting up temporary quarantine sites. And ultimately, more people, money, power and influence for a whole bunch of bureaucrats and government scientists.

We see this on a monthly basis, after there are multiple-murders. (Well, multiple-murders with guns and when it isn’t a family.) There are politicians (and activists) who seek to take advantage of the opportunity: a crisis seemingly ready-made for mischief.  Calls for taking weapons away from those who do NOT go out and kill people or rob them spike.  All gun-owners are condemned as monsters who hate children and worse.

We saw it recently when many of the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia finally woke up to what they allowed to happen by voting a bunch of Tranzi, hoploclastic (gun-hating) thugs into their Assembly: the blackfaced governor used their lobbying day plans as nothing more than an opportunity to blacken those who believe in liberty to keep and bear arms. To blacken them as “white supremists” and wanna-be killers and law-breakers.

And we see it every time a report is issued about some change in the environment, expose of urban conditions, or new study on how stupid our children are being made by government-run, tax-funded schools.

Why? Because more and more of us have been brainwashed into believing that only government can solve problems.