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 20th
Century totalitarianism, unified in collective misery in a wretched ash heap of
history.
