The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

What This Site is About

AbesTurn.com is a blog about government power in the hands well-meaning (and some not-so-well-meaning) politicians and government agents.

It’s about how fear of the unknown compels us to impart power upon power to a government who inevitably abuses us with that power.

It’s about how the cops fear us the citizens more than we fear them, and why we should wake up before they become any more fearsome.

It’s also the home of an ongoing dramatic series about a fictional town in which the power of government has turned into the abuse we actually see all around us in the United States, and a fictional organization that dares to challenge that power, like Zorro challenging the comandante—and winning. It’s a story about the spirit of resistance Thomas Jefferson ironically praised.

Why “Abe’s Turn”

The name “Abe’s Turn” symbolizes the America of today, and how it differs from the America of Jefferson’s time. This fictional town is named after Abraham Lincoln and the war that made him famous. This war was the last, biggest uprising in our history, and a turning point in the balance of power between the Federal government and the states. It was also, metaphorically at least, a turning point in the balance of power between the state and that of the individual.

Abe’s Turn is the police state in America. Some say we don’t live in a “police state,” because true police states are characterized by much worse abuses than we have in the U.S. But “police statism” is a continuum, and on that continuum, we are already on the wrong side of liberty, and continually headed in the wrong direction.

Why “the Conscience”

In the fictional story, the Conscience is an underground organization that fights for individual liberty against the police state, fights power with power. It’s that part of the government of Abe’s Turn that helps the authority tell right from wrong. It balances government lust for power and control. This is an organization of criminals. And later in the story, the establishment even throws the word “terrorists” into the mix, even though the Conscience not once ever harms a single innocent in order to produce terror toward political change (the definition of a terrorist).

In practical terms, what the Conscience represents is that part of us that needs to fear government power, rather than fearing the amorphous unknowns around us. The world will always be filled with uncertainty, and no law, no politician, no government agent will ever be able to eliminate it. But what is certain, as Lord Acton said it: “All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.” In other words, enough power will turn even the best intentioned and most honest individual into a ruthless, cold-hearted tyrant, more afraid for his own safety from his own subjects than for his subjects’ safety from any sort of danger.

It is my hope that by writing about these issues that I can encourage others to call into suspicion the power of government, and to let that suspicion turn into peaceful, benevolent action, and that by so doing, we can avoid the violent overthrow that Thomas Jefferson so honorably lauded, but that which is the truly horrible, inevitable destination on our current course.

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