We have been going on for several months now pointing out in our commentary many of the almost overwhelming number of attacks on our constitutional republic.
The thrust of the demagoguery that we are receiving is that the old ways of representative government are passe’; that state and local governments are too weak and inept to face, let alone solve, the monstrous problems that now confront our national life. Those telling us this are self appointed intelligentsia that think that only they are the people capable of finding and then administrating solutions to our exceedingly complex societal problems. If we are to believe what these leaders say, and follow what they are doing, their un-articulated cry is that we must scrap our “outdated” Constitution and let enlightened people lead the way out of the abyss of Earth ruining environmental extremis; away from medical malpractice and paucity; and let them solve those and all our other personal, social, business, labor and manufacturing problems. In their view, the ordinary person is not intellectually competent to care for his needs and that of his family, let alone have the capacity to understand today’s politics or to run a modern business. These “superior” people identify themselves by benign names like “liberal” or “progressive” … they are in truth socialists … the worst kind of socialists … command socialists … who intend to enforce the visions of their “Brave New World” by the specter of prison, or failing that threat, something worse, possibly “re-education” or even, maybe, at the point of a gun; all for our own good.
The people doing this claim to be just as American as you or I, but they are not. They have a vision for a more perfect world, in their view, that invariably takes the treasure of our liberty, our wages, our property, our mobility, our future and that of our children from us to enrich the government, that only they, in their view, are competent to administrate. Listen to any liberal talk. He or she has this Utopian view of society that compels society to do right. Upon elaboration of their vision, you will find that its benefits will accrue and apply to all, except they themselves, who are in a different class. Because of their enlightenment, they will have to be placed in a leadership capacity at the top of the system, running the plan. Their answer is government and bureaucracy. They never seem to understand that the only asset that government has in its hands has been plundered from the populace. That any largess from the government to the individual has the double disadvantage of being administered by basically disinterested third parties doling out booty taken from the property of others. Isn’t it a non-sequitur to consider that it enhances the wealth of a person (or any other entity) by first taxing his wealth from him before enriching him? How can tax money create wealth? Socialism, in any form; Liberalism, Progessivism, Marxism, Fascism, Nazism or any other collectivism, is the antithesis of individual freedom. All these “isms” require that the individual be subordinate (and subservient) to the group; the collective, the State. They are all variants of Totalitarian-“ism.”
Our forefathers, the framers of the Constitution, were experts in the study of their “isms,” the totalitarianism of absolute monarchy, be it from England, France, Russia, Germany or a myriad of other places where autocrats persecuted ordinary people. Many, if not most, of the colonists or their ancestors had come to the new world either avoiding or fleeing from those scenes. They, our ancestors, answered the oppression of humanity by would be autocrats or governments by first defining the problem in the Declaration of Independence and then solving it with the Constitution of the United States of America.
After the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was quoted as saying that we had “a republic, if we could keep it.” In the blog category … Solving it! … we will, in essays in the following days, explore, first what is human freedom, second how is it threatened and lastly how it can be preserved.
Stay tuned! Think about it! Participate with your comments!
You hit some pretty good points here. I’ve never heard anyone argue for any kind of collectivism who envisioned themselves as being part of it…always they placed themselves at the top to ‘guide’ those of lesser vision.