Authoritarianism

by

Gadfly

          In my lifetime, the only American President I have heard or read to be an authoritarian is Donald Trump.  For example, see here, here, and here.  Even worse is the example here:  The “evidence” offered to support the authoritarian premise is tautological (i.e., a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form) in its construction . . . but it sure reads like the truth.

          Most of Trump’s Executive Orders were designed to reduce the insidious authoritarian policies from previous regimes.  When progressive federal judges imposed injunctions, Trump honored them until they were overruled by higher courts in accordance with our Constitution.

          Yes, Trump did fire members of his staff when their agenda was not compatible with his.  Trump was the one elected by “we the people,” and his allegiance was to them via Constitutional authority.

          What is missing from the left’s domination of the public narrative is that while Trump did not accept the explanations for the 2020 election (e.g., we’re still waiting to hear the results of the Arizona audit) he voluntarily left the White House.  There was no coup. 

Yet, talk about insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, completely ignores or denies the actual insurrection that took place across America during the summer of 2020.  Here is an excerpt from Mike Gonzalez’s recently published book, BLM:  The Making of a New Marxist Revolution:

Today, the First and Fourth Amendments prohibit much of the domestic surveillance work that would have been necessary to know how much of the 2020 protests were organized by a tight-knit group of Marxists.  We don't have the liberal democracy village by letting others destroy the liberal democracy village.  But have we left ourselves without adequate protection?  The changes that the leaders of the BLM organizations want would erode or extinguish our liberties.  This presents a conundrum.  Any conservative who may be tempted to think that those constitutional protections leave us vulnerable must balance that very real concern with the equally valid consideration of what an unleashed FBI could do to conservative movements freely carrying out constitutionally protected activity [Note: consider, for example, the FBI manufactured “right-wing conspiracy” to kidnap a sitting governor].

As a result, there is no place in the federal government--not in the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, or the DNI--where one can find out how much the 2020 protests, and all the deep societal changes that have followed in their wake, were the work of a network of groups whose leaders are committed to implementing a communist blueprint in the United States.  PolitiFact's Tom Kertscher is completely right in saying that many Americans who reject communism support Black Lives Matter.  When my well-meaning neighbors put up lawn signs that both praise BLM and declare "silence is violence," they don't get the contradiction.  They don't know what they don't know (pp. xx-xxi).

          With all the hype about a leftist authoritarian characterization of Donald Trump (and Trump voters by association), Joe Biden is being celebrated for his actual authoritarianism.  His calls for unity belie the demand for surrender and cooptation.  As F.A. Hayek observed in his chapter, “Planning and Democracy,” in The Road to Serfdom,

The common features of all collectivist systems may be described, in a phrase ever dear to socialists of all schools, as the deliberate organization of the labors of society for a definite social goal. That our present society lacks such “conscious” direction toward a single aim, that its activities are guided by the whims and fancies of irresponsible individuals, has always been one of the main complaints of its socialist critics.

In many ways, this puts the basic issue very clearly.  And it directs us at once to the point where the conflict arises between individual freedom and collectivism.  The various kinds of collectivism, communism, fascism, etc., differ among themselves in the nature of the goal toward which they want to direct the efforts of society.  But they all differ from liberalism and individualism in wanting to organize the whole of society and all its resources for this unitary end and in refusing to recognize autonomous spheres in which the ends of the individuals are supreme.  In short, they are totalitarian in the true sense of this new word which we have adopted to describe the unexpected but nevertheless inseparable manifestations of what in theory we call collectivism (p. 100; bold, italics are mine).

           We are being told the greatest threat to America is domestic white supremacy.  Yet, despite the evidence of thousands killed via Islamist ideology and hundreds of riots in 2020 stemming from leftist BLM and Antifa ideology, we are led to believe the January 6 Capitol riot represented an existential threat of white supremacy led by Donald Trump (like Orwell's manufactured Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984).  

Hundreds of Capitol rioters have been incarcerated for months without bail for mostly misdemeanor charges.  Some are in solitary confinement.  One Capitol rioter was returned to jail after being released on bail with a mandate from the judge to refrain from use of the Internet (a form of censorship).  Eerily, this form of government power was emphasized by Orwell in 1984 when O’Brien lectured Winston Smith: “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”     

The FBI has already reported there was no conspiracy to incite an insurrection on January 6, but Congress presses forward with its "insurrection" meme via a special committee to investigate the Capitol riot, issuing hundreds of subpoenas.  

Americans (to include a former president) with unacceptable political views are being "deplatformed," some even denied banking service. 

Then, there is the complicated set of lockdowns, quarantines, and mandated vaccinations and masks.  Check out this Tucker Carlson segment from his September 14 program.  In addition to explaining the little known (media suppression) loss of medical personnel from hospitals because they choose not to be vaccinated, Carlson explains how this Administration further divides Americans in terms of those who comply with authoritarian dictates and those who do not.

Last week, in an unprecedented action, 11 members of the Academies' Congressionally mandated Boards of Visitors were illegally/unconstitutionally terminated because their "values" were not aligned with the current Administration.

This week we learn from Bob Woodward that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley conspired against President Trump (see my earlier articles about Milley here and here).  If true, Milley’s actions are far more egregious than the private letter General Douglas MacArthur sent to Massachusetts Congressman Joe Martin in 1951 expressing his disagreement with President Truman’s policies for prosecuting the war in Korea.  When the Congressman made the letter public, Truman fired MacArthur.  Expressing concerns about policy with an American Congressman is significantly different from undermining an elected president in communications with a foreign counterpart.

What does all this mean? 

Leftists (even some right of center politicians) keep calling America a democracy, even though our Framers deliberately formed a republic as an offset to the dangers of democracy (see for example Federalist Paper 10).  Alexis de Tocqueville predicted what happens in a democracy (bold italics added for emphasis):

After having thus successfully taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community.  It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.  The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided:  men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting:  such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.  I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described, might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom; and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.  Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free:  as they cannot destroy either one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once.  They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people (Democracy in America, 1840, p. 398).

Anyone familiar with communist/fascist regimes should recognize the signs of a similar regime emerging in America.  Hannah Arendt taught us about these dynamics in her books, The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition; F.A. Hayek shared his observations and analysis in The Road to Serfdom; and C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man.

If we fail or refuse to recognize authoritarianism so we can stop it, we will repeat 20^th Century totalitarianism, unified in collective misery in a wretched ash heap of history.