Season 1 Podcast 27, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.”
Season 1 Podcast 27, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.”
When we speak of liberty, we naturally assume that we all agree on the meaning of the word. The idea of liberty trips off the tongue as easily as the idea of truth. Everyone likes the idea of liberty or freedom or freewill or agency or truth, but not everyone likes the actualization of liberty, freedom, freewill, agency or truth. One could easily ask, if we like liberty so much, why is it so rare in the history of the world? If we like truth so much, why do we have euphemisms for everything. We now have peaceful riots. Unpleasant truth is called false narrative.
We all agree that we hate tyranny, yet when life becomes complicated, we follow tyranny as freely as the children that followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin though he leads them to their own destruction.
According to legend, the town of Hamelin, Germany, was infested with rats. The story occurred in the Middle Ages so one can assume that the town was suffering from the black plague. A clownish stranger dressed in multicolored tights (hence the name pied) offered a solution. He would get rid of the rats if the town would pay him 1000 guilders. A guilder in the Middle Ages was equivalent to $36 today. That would be $36,000, a very large sum of money then. The mayor agreed. The pied piper played his flute and lured all the rats into the local river where they drowned. The mayor, however, refused to pay the piper such a large sum and the piper exacted revenge by playing his pipe and luring the children into a cave while the adults were in church. The children were never seen again.
One could interpret the story of the Pied Piper in many ways, but it is symbolic of how tyranny becomes popular. When faced with seemingly insurmountable problems, we look to any oily tongued Pied Pipers such as Hitler, or Stalin or Marx even if it means Nazism or Communism or Socialism. We will give anything to make the pain go away, only to discover too late that the solution is worse than the original problem. During a crisis, however, we find it easier to follow the Pied Piper while disregarding the consequences to our children.
We are prone to seek quick fixes or easy solutions; therefore, we often fall prey to empty promises. All animals in their infancy appear cuddly, but some grow into ferocious beasts. So is the face of tyranny. It is introduced first as a warm and cuddly creature and only later does it reveal itself as a devouring beast.
In the Book of Revelation, two beasts appear. The first beast was awful in appearance. He had seven heads and ten horns. He was compared to a leopard, bear, and lion and was given power by the dragon. The second beast however had only two horns and appeared as a lamb. He deceived mankind by means of miracles. It was the second beast, in the shape of a lamb, that murdered anyone who did not worship the image of the beast.
Freedom is such a delightful word that we all seek it until we discover that true liberty requires constant vigilance, hard work, infinite choices, self-reliance, sacrifice, daily frustrations, frightful courage, seemingly insurmountable challenges, uncertainty, competition, complexities, constant opposition, personal responsibility, and daily diligence. In the weakness of despair, a pied piper comes along and promises instant ease, permanent relief, and guaranteed success. We embrace him with open arms only to discover that the cost was our freedom, or as with the people of Hamelin, even the lives of our children. One form of the modern Pied Piper is the national debt, a burden that will one day devour our children.
The Pied Piper is a very ancient story and has appeared in many forms. The Israelites, for example, enjoyed a perfect democratic republic under judges but they insisted on a king to deliver them from personal responsibility. Samu
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