The Road to Despotism: The Slow Deconstruction of America's Greatness

Heckler - On How Progressivism Threatens American Liberty

On the Road to Despotism

The road to despotism is paved with the good intentions of progressive ideology, and its final destination is still despotism.

In April of 2009, former American DNC Chairman, Howard Dean, stood behind the lectern at Café Rouge in Paris and made a stunning declaration. He asserted to his audience of mostly European progressives that the American economy of the future will be characterized by a coexistence of capitalism and socialism. Dr. Dean went on to say, "Capitalism has seen its last days, socialism is where we're headed, communitarianism."¹

Dean’s flagrant denial of American capitalism is neither anomalous nor fringe. In fact, European communitarian panderers, such as Dean, are nothing new. The list of high-profile Americans appealing to the distinctly European ideals of appeasement, big government, high taxes, and collectivist social programs continues to grow. For example, in March of 2003, following the American invasion of Iraq, singer Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks announced from a London stage that, “we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."² In his political documentary Sicko, Michael Moore praised the publicly funded French healthcare system as near flawless, while simultaneously castigating private healthcare in the United States.³ Barack Obama, in a bizarre and unprecedented move that made even Angela Merkel publicly scratch her head, shunned face-time with American voters during his 2008 presidential campaign to tour Germany, France, and Britain.⁴

Why do so many high-profile American eyes continue to peer yearningly at the values of our neighbors to the East? More importantly, are these values that seem to be held in such high esteem consistent with those of our founding fathers? To know the answers, it is necessary to gain a more comprehensive understanding of Europe, an understanding that is much broader in scope than that taught in the average social studies class.

Europe and European Statism

When we think of Europe, maybe we think of towering Gothic spires, Venetian Gondolas, or perhaps the art of Swiss yodeling. Europe is a culturally diverse and stunningly beautiful region, a swath of centuries old peoples and cultures dotting the landscape from the beaches of Normandy on the West, to the Alps on the East. But if we take only the land, the people and the culture into consideration when attempting to fully understand Europe, we will fall disappointingly short in our effort. Europe is much larger than the geographic and cultural boundaries that define it as a continent. Indeed, Europe is an ideology.

Today, most European economies have significant penetrations of socialism, with large economic segments under government control and frequent government intervention in those segments which still remain privatized.⁵ Many European nations have evolved into cradle-to-grave welfare states. Single-payer health care systems, public pensions, anti-business regulations, and some of the highest individual income taxes in the developed world are idiosyncrasies common to the majority of European nations.⁶ In summary, the present European ideology of governance emphasizes economic egalitarianism over individual risk and reward, with enormous and intrusive government serving as the means with which inequalities in income distribution are moderated or abolished.

It is important to point out that the paradigm of deference to big government has for centuries been present in European societies. Monarchism, feudalism, socialism all share two common traits: big, powerful institutions of governance and a pervasive presence throughout European history.⁷ For ages, squabbling monarchs have ruled the European principalities with varying degrees of repression on individual liberties, often supported by the informal reciprocity agreements among the medieval lords, vassals and fiefs.⁸ It was this perpetual subjugation of the masses to the whims of nobility and monarchs that ultimately led to the emergence of socialism in Europe.⁹

Socialism is a distinctly European invention. One needs only to read the first sentence of the Communist Manifesto to learn that Marx’s enigmatic specter certainly wasn’t haunting America.¹⁰ In 1917, Marx’s ideas directly influenced the Russian Revolution, and socialism officially took hold as an economic and social system following the overthrow and execution of the Czar.^{11, 12} The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution set off a chain reaction of revolutions that ultimately swept up most of Eastern Europe into a red dust bin.¹³ The abolition of feudalism in the late eighteenth century, and the fall of monarchs and feeble republics in the early twentieth century bred several variants of Marxist philosophy that consequently gave us the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Pieck, Mussolini, Hitler and Morwaski, just to name a few. And sadly, much of Europe traded czar for dictator, king for despot, one tyrant for another.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, the great socialist experiment was in progress in places like Russia, Germany, Poland, and Hungary.¹⁴ Several decades and Perestroikas later, after years of economic decline, genocide, and diffusing poverty, Europe’s socialist regimes fell one by one following the dissolution of the USSR. Democracies have since sprung up from the rubble of fallen socialist governments, but rest assured that socialism is far from dead.¹⁵ A red cloud still lingers ominously over the region, and socialist precepts are driving policy and governance across Europe to this very day. Granted, it is a well-tempered Marx whose ghost whispers collectivism in the ears of Europe’s progressively minded bourgeoisie, but the specter is still haunting Europe nonetheless.

And so it was, that amid the turmoil of European tyranny, a nation was born. It is commonly known that many of the colonists who fled Europe to present day New England in the seventeenth century did so to escape religious persecution, (among other transgressions against individual liberties committed at the hands of the dictator-monarchs).¹⁶ While certainly this is true, a much broader view of their motives provokes yet another question. What caused religious persecution? The answer is larger than just the tyrannical rule of Charles I. In fact, the answer is big, unwieldy, and repressive institutions of governance. The millions of European immigrants that would subsequently sail the Atlantic did so for precisely the same reason. That is, to escape the tradition of big government in their homelands, a tradition that continues today. In their essay The Rise and Fall of Constitutional Government, West and Jeffrey point out that the European practice of governance was based on religion or class, and that rights were not assigned equally, nor are they created equally.¹⁷ In other words, kings, queens, vassals, lords, priests, etc., are born to rule, or are endowed with divine rights to rule, over the affairs of other people. The inequality inherent in European governments should be considered the foundational value that led to centuries of dictators and their overbearing institutions of governance. In his book Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin accurately describes the ideology of deference to big government as statism.¹⁸ Can it not therefore be said that America was founded principally out of a rejection of European statism?

Disgust in Action and a New Assertion of Liberty

The Declaration of Independence is often regarded as the instrument with which America severed its political and territorial ties to Britain. This is in fact true, but I would argue only partially so. The Declaration not only asserts territorial and political independence, but also independence from European ideology and statism. In The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson stingingly rebukes King George III for “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these states.” The ensuing indictments express a true sense of disgust at the repeated crimes of the King against the colonists, and reflect the burning sentiment of the people to be free from the statist who repressed them and the British statism, the extension and actualization of European ideology, that drove their repression.¹⁹

The nations of Europe are free to determine their approach to governing, and their choices are to be respected out of an appreciation for their national sovereignty. We love our European brothers and sisters, but today most Americans do not share the same values. Without question, the founders of our nation did not share European ideology, and their assertion of independence was the most severe act of rejection of it possible.

America’s Founding Beliefs, Principles and Values

What are the core beliefs and values that America was founded upon? There are many ways to articulate the intellectual paradigm that inspired the founders. Volumes could be and have been written on the subject, but our purposes would be best suited to summarize them into three manageable ideas that hopefully capture the main ideas.

Human nature is concupiscent.²⁰

Today, progressive thought rejects that human nature is deviant, and that people are born concupiscent. As Dr. Rauchut points out in American Vision and Values, the Romantic, Existentialist, and Post-Modernist views of human nature acquiesce to the ideas that human nature is essentially good, or that one determines their own human nature, or even that human nature is merely a social construct that doesn’t really even exist at all. Those who subscribe to these ideas explain individual deviance as a product of society and its institutions. In other words, people are born good, but society makes them bad. Therefore, they believe the purpose of government to be an instrument that forces the correction of society’s ills. The Traditional view of human nature, as Dr Rauchut brilliantly illustrates, holds that human nature is “tainted by concupiscence – a distinctive tendency to do bad things.”²¹

Indeed, the American founders were without a doubt Traditionalists in their view of human nature.²² This fundamental and most basic truth is the root from which our nation’s approach to governance grew. The founders had personally experienced the repression of their European rulers. They had personally witnessed how government evolves into a brutal and oppressive force when the power over a citizenry is ceded to a few. As Dr. Rauchut points out, “And individual liberty, as the Founders understood, is proportional to the size and scope of government. The bigger the government, the less freedom we enjoy.”²³ The model of limited government with multiple checks and balances is born out of the idea that government, if left unchecked and in the control of a few, will always be perverted by human nature’s tendency to do bad things.²⁴

The founder’s intent for government to be limited in its scope and influence is documented repeatedly in our nation’s historical documents. The separation of powers, and the checks and balances inherent in the new government made it stronger by rendering it resistant to the penetration of corruption.²⁵ Perhaps it is most clear in Federalist No. 47. Madison writes, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”²⁶ There is no interpretation of this very candid declaration that could possibly lead anyone to believe that Madison viewed human nature as good. Had he believed, as the Romantics do, that human nature is essentially good, the object of his advocacy in the Federalist No. 47 would not have been to protect the people from tyranny at the hands of government by a few.

There is a just and loving God, and all people are divinely endowed by their Creator with natural rights and freedoms: freedom to dream and pursue happiness, freedom to innovate in the pursuit of one’s dreams, freedom to work, freedom to retain the fruit of one’s labor, freedom to worship based on one’s conscience, and freedom to abolish institutions of governance that inhibit these divinely endowed freedoms.

In his essay Independence Forever: Why America Celebrates the Fourth of July, Spalding points out that the Declaration of Independence is grounded on natural law, or law that is applicable to all people. Natural laws are truths that transcend time, physical location and are by nature universally applicable to every man, woman, and child.²⁷ West and Jeffrey, in The Rise and Fall of Constitutional Government in America, eloquently echo Spaulding by describing natural rights like this: “You are born with it, or you acquire it by means of something that is inherently yours, such as an effort of your mind or body.”²⁸

Spaulding explains that the founding documents of other nations are not all constructed on natural law, thus making the U.S. Declaration infinitely more powerful when compared to those of most other nations. Further, because the principles upon which it is based are universally true, the Declaration of Independence is inherently timeless as a framework for the role of government in society. Because it is founded on natural laws, its basis as forever authoritative can never be undermined.²⁹ Its declarations were not only applicable 1776, but are also applicable and wholly relevant in 2009, and will continue to have immutable relevance as a blueprint for the role of government in American society indefinitely.

Progressive thought abandons the belief of natural rights for the idea that rights, and subsequently freedoms, are provided to people by government and not by God. In His Letter to Abigail Adams, John Adams writes of American independence, “It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.”³⁰ How profound is this affirmation of natural rights? How clear is this declaration that human freedoms come from none other but God alone? How harshly does Adams deliver, from the cold of his grave, a rebuke of the progressive rejection of God as the Sole Divine Endower of Liberty?

Capitalism is the freedom to trade, build wealth and accumulate private property, and is therefore the only economic system under which individuals can most fully exercise their natural rights to pursue life, happiness, liberty and self-actualization.

American philosopher and personal hero, Dinesh D’souza, discusses the modern currents of thought on capitalism in his essay What’s Great About America. For so many, the thought of capitalism, work, risk, reward, etc., evoke negative feelings. D’Souza tells us that the thought of capitalism brings about a focus on the realities of the present world, and takes our focus off of death and the afterlife. D’Souza goes on to say that, “This ‘lowering of the sites’ convinces many that American capitalism is a base, degraded system and that the energies that drive it are crass and immoral.”³¹

Some believe that capitalism is a fluke of American society, one that sprung up as a result of the values described in our founding documents, and that it was not itself a founding value. Nothing could be further from the truth. In American Vision and Values, Dr. Rauchut recounts the story of William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, who realized that his colony was on a trajectory toward starvation. Land was initially owned collectively by the inhabitants of the colony. Food that was produced communally was gathered and redistributed among the families evenly. The problem was that only about 25% of the men in the colony were actually engaged in the work required to cultivate the sustenance upon which the colonists depended for life. To solve the problem, the public land was divided up among the families in the colony, and each family was allowed to keep what they cultivated on their own land. History tells us that this decision permanently ended the problem of declining food production within the colony. But more importantly, it was proof and inspiration to our founders that capitalism would be intrinsic in the nation they were founding.³² One could reasonably draw the conclusion that Dr. Howard Dean is unfamiliar with the history of the Plymouth colony, and their experiment in ‘communitarianism’.

The Great Deconstruction: Our Founding Beliefs, Principles and Values under Assault

Robert Royal, in his thought provoking essay Who Put the West in Western Civilization, describes how Western Civilization is under attack. From Greece where it originated, to the European, American and Oceanic nations of the present day that fall under the broad description of ‘Western’, Western culture is the object of perpetual criticism. As Royal points out, one cannot deny that the West has produced its share of maniacs, tyrants, and perverted practices.³³ Hitler, Stalin, slavery, and the holocaust are all products of Western Civilization. But there is another side, as Royal goes on to say. “Despite its many shortcomings and occasional atrocities, this Western dominance is providential. No better champion of justice, fairness, liberty, truth and human flourishing exists than the complex and poorly known entity we call Western Civilization.”³⁴

America, in my view, though obviously an outgrowth and extension of Western Civilization, is separate and distinct from all that Western Civilization has produced. This distinction is evident based on in its upward evolution of virtue, its refinement of thought, and its pinnacle of achievement in the advancement of human equality, liberty, prosperity, freedom, love, compassion, and humility. No other society or nation in the history of mankind has ever attained the level of achievement, in these regards, that America has attained. This judgment is rendered on what America was intended to be, and not what it is presently, nor what it will become in the future. It is the framework of our nation that is the height of Western achievement, and it alone is not to be judged by the contemporary products of its perversion.

Speaking of which, Dr. Howard Dean, and a host of other liberally minded progressives continue to peer yearningly at the values of our European neighbors. The ideas and systems that are responsible for unprecedented prosperity, equal rights for all, and the societal and economic climates that allow all people to employ their resourcefulness and talents to make a better life, are inconvenient roadblocks to the progressive agenda. This leads us back to our original questions. Why do so many American eyes continue to peer yearningly at the values of our neighbors to the East? The answer, as we have discovered, is that Europe’s views are progressive views: the romantic and post-enlightenment views of human nature are the correct views, rights are endowed by government and not by God, society causes people to do bad things and not individuals, social responsibility is emphasized over personal responsibility, the purpose of government is to correct the shortcomings of society, economic egalitarianism must be achieved through government coercion, capitalism causes disparities in income and must be tempered or abolished. Are the views consistent with those of our founding fathers? Emphatically, they are not.

American liberals continue to look at modern Europe with envy, and with a strong desire to import European models for society into America. The most current attempt of this ideological importation is the recent movement to institute a healthcare system in this country that is funded with tax payer money and administered to all, just as the Plymouth colonists had once pooled their crops and redistributed them evenly among the inhabitants.³⁵ Government is confiscating the private property of individual citizens in the name of eminent domain, outside of the scope of what the constitution says is allowable. In the Kelo vs. The City of New London case, progressive Supreme Court Justices ruled in favor of the government in contravention of the constitution by deferring to legislative decisions over an individual’s natural right to own property.³⁶ The federal government recently purchased a controlling interest in private American automobile companies under the guise of protecting them from dissolution.³⁷ Higher tax rates are being proposed, and justified by their liberal supporters who insist the hikes are fair because of their progressive nature, even though progressive taxation penalizes a person disproportionately by taking a larger share of their earnings, which are private property.³⁸ Affirmative action requires some organizations to hire based on skin color, and not merit or qualifications.³⁹ The list of progressive policies that are presently in place, or under consideration, are the ideological equivalent of spitting on the Declaration of Independence and other documents that articulate the founder’s intent and define our freedoms.

Jeffrey and West remind us that our Republic is in decline, battered by liberalism and those who aim to undermine the constitution by constantly reinterpreting its meaning and forcing it to conform to a dynamic social agenda.⁴⁰ Have we not learned our lessons from Europe’s stormy past? Why do some continue to look across the Atlantic for inspiration in the ideals of nations that once held us captive? Is there no source of inspiration on our own shores? Do those who seek liberal ideologies over core American values not know that the blood of our revolutionaries was spilled to secure our nation as an eternal refuge of hope and freedom?

And so we are, as a nation, as a collection of individuals linked together by our common bonds, standing at a crossroads. There are two roads to choose from. One road is paved with progressive ideology, and the other road is paved by the virtuous principles of our founding fathers, and we know full well where both of them lead.

Sources

1. Baker, “Howard Dean: Going Rouge”, at: http://www.conservativeeconomist.com/commentaries-article.cgi?showId=25

2. Reuters, “Dixie Chicks Pulled From Air After Bashing Bush”, at: http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/03/14/dixie.chicks.reut/

3. Businessweek, “The French Lesson in Health care”, at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_28/b4042070.htm

4. CNN, “Obama Takes Campaign Trail Overseas” at: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/18/obama.trip/index.html

5. Wikipedia, Mixed Economy, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy

6. Wikipedia, Tax Rates Around the World, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world

7. Wikipedia, History of Europe, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_europe

8. Wikipedia, Feudalism, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism

9. Ibid.

10. Marx, Manifest of the Communist Party, at: http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html

11. Wikipedia, October Revolution, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution

12. Wikipedia, Shooting of the Romanov Family, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_the_Romanov_family

13. Ibid.

14. Wikipedia, Marxism, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

15. Wikipedia, Revolutions of 1989, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_communism

16. Wikipedia, Charles I of England, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England

17. West and Jeffrey, The Rise and Fall of Constitutional Government in America, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

18. Levin, “Liberty and Tyranny, A Conservative Manifesto”, Simon & Schuster, 2009

19. Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

20. Rauchut, “American Vision and Values,” Bellevue University Press, 2008

21. Ibid.

22. Madison, Federalist No. 51, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

23. Rauchut, “American Vision and Values,” Bellevue University Press, 2008

24. Hamilton, Federalist No. 9, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

25. Ibid.

26. Madison, Federalist No. 47, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

27. Spaulding, Independence Forever: Why America Celebrates the Fourth of July, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

28. West and Jeffrey, The Rise and Fall of Constitutional Government in America, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

29. Spaulding, Independence Forever: Why America Celebrates the Fourth of July, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

30. Adams, Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

31. D’Souza, What’s Great About America, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

32. Rauchut, “American Vision and Values,” Bellevue University Press, 2008

33. Royal, Who Put the West in Western Civilization, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

34. Ibid,

35. The White House, Health Care, at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health-care/

36. Erler, The Decline and Fall of the Right to Property, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader

37. Taylor, Meet the New, Government-Owned GM, at: http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/29/news/companies/gm_fuzzy.fortune/index.htm

38. Hook, Reid considers raising Medicare tax for high earners, http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-na-health-taxes17-2009nov17,0,3519511.story

39. Wikipedia, Affirmative Action, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action

40. West and Jeffrey, The Rise and Fall of Constitutional Government in America, From the Kirkpatrick Signature Series Reader