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Political Hay
Brave New Barbarism
The “progressive” modern world regresses into a past of pirates, tyrants, and orgies.
Modern liberals measure “progress” not by the unfolding fulfillment of the natural moral law but by its elimination. Consequently, most of what is labeled “progress” is basically just regress, a return, under a glossier guise, to the practices of antiquity and pre-Christian paganism.
Pagans stuck the inconvenient elderly on snow drifts; moderns dehydrate them to death in hospitals. Pagans left unwanted babies to die on hilltops; moderns bury them in bins behind Planned Parenthood clinics. Pagans attended orgies, moderns attend “gay weddings.”
In its deepening moral squalor, in its raw defiance of reality as God made it, the Brave New World is as barbaric as the old one. That Hillary Clinton and other architects of the Brave New World are now forced to grapple clumsily with piracy is somehow fitting. Their “new world order” is intrinsically disordered, a reckless ideological experiment that explodes in recurring currents of chaos, discontent, and lawlessness. Why not piracy too?
The recent gusher of globalist babble at the G-20 summit is exposed by the rise of piracy as a total sham. And the rise of piracy is one more proof of Dambisa Moyo’s thesis in Dead Aid — that ceaseless Western government-to-government handouts to Africa, which are just a new version of white colonialism, have frozen the continent in a helpless and horrid past. After a trillion dollars over sixty years, the only vivid display of entrepreneurial activity in Africa today is…piracy.
National Review noted this week that Bono’s organization, One, is organizing a campaign of attacks against Moyo’s book. Perhaps Bono can add pirates to his to-do list or maybe co-host a few Park Avenue parties for them with Al Sharpton.
But having already accepted de facto piracy by African governments — most aid, Moyo observes, evaporates in corruption — the engineers of the new world order aren’t likely to win the “war on piracy” or even fight it. Besides, the pirates, as oppressed members of Islam, are pursuing a lifestyle worthy of respect, which they practice very conscientiously if not ecumenically, as in 2008 when the Somali pirates celebrated a Muslim feast in mid-ransom taking. As AP reported at the time:
“We are happy on the ship and we are celebrating Eid,” pirate spokesman Sugule Ali told The Associated Press by satellite phone. “Nothing has changed.” Ali did not say whether the ship’s 21-member crew, which includes Ukrainians, Russians and Latvians, would be included in the feast that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. One crew member has died of an apparent heart attack.
In the giddy days of the campaign, one cheerleading journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mark Morford, speculated that Obama might be a “Lightworker” for the globe — “that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet…”
This “new way of being on the planet” looks awfully familiar, a return to history’s most dismal, farcical, and evil chapters with tyranny, decadence, and false religion. This week the new way of being on the planet resembled the 18th century — pirates abroad, tax-revolting tea parties at home, and a president, acting like a king, who collected excessive taxes and hatched extreme plans (such as forcing doctors and nurses to perform abortions against their consciences) while his aides sputtered about “extremists.”
George Washington was an extremist in George III’s eyes, and maybe even a disgruntled military veteran too. But under the madness of King Obama, extremism in the defense of liberalism is no vice and the citizenry’s attempt to moderate it no virtue.
About the Author
George Neumayr, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is co-author, with Phyllis Schlafly, of the new book, No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (71) | Leave a comment
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Pingback| 4.17.09 @ 6:32AM
“We are happy on the ship and we are celebrating Eid…nothing has changed” « Sigmund, links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
stu.b.con| 4.17.09 @ 8:08AM
Davey can you EVER actually comment on this or any other site with some cogent, rational thought? Or are you really this pathetically stupid? never mind...I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man(person?). Go away
John W.| 4.17.09 @ 8:24AM
David,
Thanks for your post exposing the mind set of hate groups. I plan to print and keep it with me. I often have difficulty making people understand just how disturbed such groups can be in their "thinking." You've given a great example of the attitudes of the American NAZI Party,,the KKK, the Democratic Party and a host of other Left Wing Hate Groups.
James Pawlak | 4.17.09 @ 8:40AM
You might carry the story further to include the use of tar-and-feathers and armed-and-successful armed revolt (Began when the tyrant attempted to seize firearms in the hands of citizens).
Otis, my man!| 4.17.09 @ 8:52AM
Dave,
Come on, we're on to you. We know you are really a Conservative posting under a pseudonym in order to discredit Liberals. You're comments are too obviously parodies of Liberal thougth they must be posted for our amusement. I've enjoyed them immensely, but you might want to use a different fake name, just to foster the further illusion that Liberals actually read Spectator articles.
Cheers, Otis
Skippy| 4.17.09 @ 9:06AM
As Anderson Cooper stated. it's hard to talk while you are tea bagging and like any good liberal, he speaks form experience. And notice the name calling comes from one very insufficient liberal?
And more Palin bashing, me thinky you have a fantasy role play working? Stick to Bill Richardson, John Edwards and Chris Dodd, former prestigious President wannabees.
Dope.
Carbonicus| 4.17.09 @ 9:20AM
Dave, do you dispute that liberal neo-environmentalists have killed millions in Africa because of your Rachel Carson-era DDT hysteria?
Before you ding any church or religion, look inward at your eco-religionism. You have yet to provide any credible fact supporting your environmental/planetary apocalypse religious ideology, just "gaiarrhea".
People in glass houses, Dave.....
Jerry| 4.17.09 @ 9:28AM
DM,
I do dispute your claims.
1. Nobody disputes that a small minority (~100) of the 46,000+ priests in the US were guilty of 'pedophilia' (most were actually gay priests engaged in ephebophilia, ie, sex with teenage boys). That some priests VIOLATED their SACRED VOWS was scandalous indeed, as was the resultant cover-up by some bishops, but it is laughable to argue that it is a tenet of the Catholic faith that priests must molest children. Would you make the same argument about Muslim clerics or Jewish rabbis (gasp! they've done it too!)?
2. Where has the Church committed genocide? Are you trying to link the European wars with the Church, or will you just trot out canards about the Inquisition and the Crusades? If the former, I'm curious to learn the link; if the latter, I'd suggest you read some history books.
I would argue that it's perfectly reasonable for Catholics to condemn other religions for their violence--how many times have you seen the Pope screaming about infidels wading in their own blood? Your poo-flinging at anybody who dares suggest that adherents of the 'religion of peace' are anything but peaceful is the real laugher.
BTW, clever comment on teabagging--very original! I'm sure that none of the racist, lunatic, bigoted, xenophobic right wing extremists could have parroted that doozy from CNN, Maddow or Olberman!
stmichrick| 4.17.09 @ 10:05AM
You amuse me David Mis-Mathews;
You silly man.
You, in your treasonous way, count deaths of enemies of freedom as equivalent to those caused by the aggression of murderous nazi and communist tyrants.
You, in your racist way, connect any misdeeds of white Europeans with the policy of the Catholic church.
You, in your fraudulent way, mis-represent the homosexual priest scandal as a huge pedophilia scandal.
You, in your un-informed way, equate Limbaugh's addiction to prescription painkilling drugs with the recreational drug abuse of your slacker peers.
Your posts are teaching moments for those whose conservative instincts are developing.
Tim| 4.17.09 @ 10:27AM
I have a vision, and I know
The heathen shall return.
"They shall not come with warships,
They shall not waste with brands,
But books be all their eating,
And ink be on their hands.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Ballad_of_the_White_Horse
DougN| 4.17.09 @ 10:37AM
I don't understand David's tut-tutting Neumayr's description of African entrepreneurship. I read the piece and had no trouble grasping the point. I think, David, that Neumayr is suggesting that piracy is the only business that seems to be profitable in the ENTIRE CONTINENT.
Also, It's "Somalia." Two "a"s, not two "o"s.
Tim| 4.17.09 @ 11:11AM
Also, It's "Somalia." Two "a"s, not two "o"s.
Cut him some slack, he had to text all that from a cramped boy's room stall while cutting third period english.
SLG| 4.17.09 @ 12:15PM
The predictable zealots of "social" conservatism probably won't like these two suggested offerings, but they seem to make a whole lot more sense than anything I've read on these pages lately: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-winter/republican-alternative.asp
And, this too:
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2009-spring/ayn-rand-atlas-shrugged.asp
Pat| 4.17.09 @ 12:52PM
"Oh my god, we're all gonna die!" is something you hear in the movies when the terrorists have cleverly booby-trapped the airplane or the cruise ship. But for societies like America there's nothing that dramatic and fast paced. Collectively, for humans like us, it's just a slow, inexorable decay back to barbarism, then a brief timeout from civilization lasting decades or possibly centuries followed by the difficult climb back to an advanced civilization.
An individual or small group can escape the carnage, but an entire society has nowhere to run or hide. And authors, like this one, have dark dreams and intuitive suspicions of a pressing mortality for a once great America. We're a weak society now and growing weaker with each passing year - maybe it's our wealth or our politics, or maybe it's just our fad diets - but we're not gonna keep it together much longer.
Pirates, jihads, euthanasia sanctioned by the state, volunteer armies to protect the rest of us who won't or can't fight, modern slavery, waves of impoverished migrants wandering here and there over the globe looking for help - we have all the historic signs. If a morbid fascination with tales describing the death throes of the Roman Empire becomes fashionable, better build that cabin in northern Montana.
Big Leo| 4.17.09 @ 12:59PM
I arrived after DM's post was removed, yet the stench lingers. Are we done with him now?
stmichrick| 4.17.09 @ 2:35PM
SLG;
Objectivism is intriguing to a point. As with libertarianism, though, the operating assumption is that, 'I'm fine, so should you be.' As examples, I conclude there exist rational or objective reasons against allowing abortions and for a (very) limited welfare state...and not just because Jerry Falwell or Barack Obama told me so.
I take issue that the unborn child is exclusively the 'property' of the mother to do with as she deems convenient or practical including the barbaric act of termination. That child is an individual, not an organ, whose right to live should be protected unless the child's existence threatens the life of the mother.
It is practical to run a limited welfare state that would protect free individuals in that state by dealing, in some way, with those whose incompetence, misfortune or physical impairment would impede productive society's ability to pursue life and liberty.
Ayn Rand did not have ALL the answers.
Louis Jenkins| 4.17.09 @ 2:38PM
If we are progressively regressing (ie returning to Barbarism) then we should do as the Celts did, or so I read. When falling on hard times the village elders would take the Chief out and publicly disembowel him. The Shamans would watch him quiver and convulse during death to predict what the future had in store. Now that's real political responsibility.
kenneth| 4.17.09 @ 2:43PM
It's clear from the stuttering flow of logic that Mr. Neumayr and his sort have fallen victim to the American education system, if not its moral decay. Let's try to follow this: aid to Africa hasn't worked. Piracy is evidence of this (so far pretty cogent). This is to be expected of the "extreme liberal, socialist, closeted Muslim, nihlist, pagan-loving tyrant Obama, who has all of 80 days of policy making to his name. All of this, of course, is airtight evidence that America is, or soon will be a place no different from Caligula's throne room or Haight-Ashbury in 1969 (whichever seems worse). More foil for your hats, sirs?
Aid to Africa hasn't worked because we have never had a sincere interest in seeing the continent work, and African's have none of the key ingredients to make it work. The west has raped the place of people and minerals for several centuries, put up trade barriers to the one thing they could do well- agriculture, "loaned" money to dictators to steal and buy weapons and re-drew its national boundaries to exacerbate tribal tensions. "Aid" is an industry geared mostly to keeping western consultants on a payroll. Until we change that, and until Africa somehow embraces the rule of law and sound economics, aid of course is a stepping stone to nowhere. Cut us pagans some slack. We throw a damn good Halloween party (even the occaisional orgy). You need to unwind once in a while, or all this end-time fantasy is going to put a hole in your gut!
Todd| 4.17.09 @ 3:06PM
Why is anyone still responding to that jerk DM now that the moderator is removing his useless posts? I agree wholeheartedly with the author that what is called progress today from the left is really regression to a pagan state and inevitably results in more barbaric behavior with no objective moral standards.
Is not most of Africa's governments pirates on land? The only difference is that we give it voluntarily and help keep the corrupt entrenched in power. I have been a fan of U2 but when I saw them live a few years back and Bono started going on about Africa and how we need to give them more "aid", I would have pelted him with rotten fruit if I had the option.
Big Leo| 4.17.09 @ 3:16PM
P.J. O'Rourke wrote a chapter in "Eat the Rich" on Tanzania, a country wealthy in resources that is very poor. We have given enough aid to buy everyone in Tanzania a forty acre farm, yet the people are as poor as ever. He demonstrates why. It isn't the evil Westerners taking advantage or hiring Western consultants-- it's corrupt and incompetent local government. A smart, hard-working Tanzanian in America does well and becomes comfortably well off. A smart, hard-working Tanzanian in Tanzania is so stifled by corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency that if he really is smart he becomes a government bureaucrat and gets a Mercedes and a Swiss bank account.
I know many people who have worked in Africa through my missionary contacts. There is a grim saying they all report-- "One Week a Tourist, Three Weeks a Racist." The mind-boggling incompetence of African societies seems to be a sad universal with no easy solution.
L. Ross| 4.17.09 @ 5:17PM
Big Leo:
I have seen my share of 3rd world countries, and you do strike at the heart of what keeps them 3rd world. No nation of people will ever achieve anything worthwhile without a minimally honest government. When governments cannot be trusted to keep their word, it stifles investment foreign and domestic. When a nation nationalizes foreign investments (just about every member of OPEC), when governments collapse overnight in coupes, when most of the government officals are looking for bribes and handouts, it is enough to make a man long for the days of colonialism. A great deal of the world simply isn't ready for self-determination.
Pingback| 4.17.09 @ 9:24PM
Obama Is President Disorder, Irony and Non Sequitur | obama in trinidad links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
bob montgomery| 4.17.09 @ 11:07PM
Here's 'progress' for you - Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, David Shuster and Rachel Maddow -epitomical exemplars of vulgar idiocy.
Michael Brown| 4.17.09 @ 11:25PM
Not usually invested in making comments, the content of this article deserves a "hear, hear!"
Pingback| 4.18.09 @ 12:33AM
Brave New Barbarism… | CanadaShrugged links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
MT| 4.18.09 @ 12:33AM
Aid to Africa reminds me of welfare in our country. There's no incentive to change, and nothing ever does. Great article.
Pingback| 4.18.09 @ 1:43AM
Brave New Barbarism links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 4.18.09 @ 6:10AM
Obama Is President Disorder, Irony and Non Sequitur | ihs jesus links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Jane| 4.18.09 @ 6:53PM
Yes, civilization is down the tubes. But why is it always necessary on conservative websites to invoke a god as the basis for morality? It's not necessary to morality, and the invocation only undermines believeability. Try a little common humanity. You debase yourself with all this "lord" stuff, and if god created you, you debase him. If your god created you to grovel before him, so much the worse for both of you.
Pingback| 4.18.09 @ 9:08PM
Steynian 347 « Free Canuckistan! links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Lynne| 4.19.09 @ 12:38AM
I'd rather bow down before my God than some dumb-ass fascist like you, Jane. Go back to your bong--now there's a god for you, moron.
A. Clifton| 4.19.09 @ 12:44AM
Pirates from Somalia are in the business for the same reason that pirates have operated for the last 3500 years-money. There is far more money to be made from being a pirate than there is from fishing or farming. Pirates have a lifestyle far beyond the reach of the average Somali man and are looked upto as role models and sought after as marriage partners. It has become something of a drug addiction there. There is only one way to fix it. Go in and sink, burn, destroy everything that floats. Piracy will end rather abruptly. And let merchant ships arm themselves. It won't take more than a few machine guns and light cannon to do the job. Pirates are after money. They are not heroes. So far they have had easy pickings. When things get tough, they will turn away. As for Africa, it has been calculated that enough aid money has been squandered there to give every man, woman and child in sub-Saharan Africa over $4000 . Africa needs governments and not kleptocracies, governance, efficiency and leadership. Apologising for and rationalising the total absence of these vital things only makes matters worse. I remember seeing a prominent European female reporter telling the BBC some years ago that the mess in Zombabwe was all the fault of the"white colonialists". Until Africans sort out their own mess and accept responsibility for what they have done to themselves, Africa will see no improvement. And nobody is goning to recolonize the continent again
Rick Thirsby| 4.19.09 @ 1:04AM
Neumayr is on target as usual. Here is my tangent- who saw this coming? Did anyone expect we would be worrying about piracy on the high seas in the 21st Century ? Seriously, what is the Next Thing ?
Lynne| 4.19.09 @ 2:52AM
God only knows--and I mean that literally, Jane.
Slinky| 4.19.09 @ 2:55AM
Who knows?
wes| 4.19.09 @ 9:31AM
Response to Jane,
Why are you so bothered by a reference to God or God talk? Please defend your statements asserting that morality can exist outside of God.
The problem with such statements is it swallows whole the notion that people are basically good.
Nonsense. People are no damn good and require accountability in one form or another. This is evidenced by the downward rationalization of behaviour that is always promoted by progressives as if it were enlightenment. Meaning : people make excuses for what they do and why it is o.k.. That is just human nature. The arguement basic humanity really only seeks to elevate humans to god status. Such arrogance is what is truly debasing.
Silicondoc| 4.19.09 @ 11:49AM
" Modern liberals measure "progress" not by the unfolding fulfillment of the natural moral law but by its elimination. "
Yes, that's why last night, once again, it was driven into my skull that the democrats have made everything into it's opposite. If good is bad and bad is good, then you can make an argument for good and implement it, resulting in very bad things.
It's never ending, the turning upside down of everything - I'll just note it is infuriating the insidiousness of how they implement the sickness.
I still cannot get over their policy of murdering babies. I really don't think any of them should be listened to one iota after they take that stance. That proves to me right there they are absolutely nutbat insane.
So now, we have lunatics running the ship. Not sure what will happen, but it's gonna be crazy - like super massive trillions of spending to the criminals who helped set it all up and looted the whole works to begin with for a few decades, while they claim they haven't got a clue how it happened and it went all wrong but they're doing it again as soon as possible and this time will get the massive generational theft done right.
Keep murdering the babies, there won't be any to future steal from, you crimnally insane pieces of crap.
Pingback| 4.19.09 @ 12:37PM
New Paltz Journal » Blog Archive » “Brave New Barbarism” links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pat| 4.19.09 @ 12:51PM
Before we puff up like a pigeon, swelling with pride that America is civilized and piracy is something that happens in third world countries, take a look at the Detroit Free Press's Opinion section of their website (freepdotcom). Their political cartoonist recently penned a cartoon comparing Michigan to a third world country. Of course Michigan is much more than Detroit and the rust belt corridor from Saginaw to Toledo, but the whining little twerps on the Free Press staff seldom acknowledge that fact.
The cartoon does reflect the region's despair over the automakers' demise and is another in a long series of "pity us" editorials, but a hard look at the facts indicates Detroit and SE Michigan are approaching thrid world status. Michigan has a current unemployment rate 4% higher than the national average. But what's worse is their unemployment rate has been high for years.
The City of Detroit, blue collar and never a high brow, sophisticated, urban setting like New York or Boston, is deteriorating rapidly. Approximately 40 square miles or almost one third of Detroit's incorporated land area is deserted. Block after block of empty, rundown houses with the occasional family squatting among the ruins. Burned out street lighting, slow fire and police services, intermittent garbage collection, wildlife returning to graze among the empty buildings, massive budget deficits - Detroit would be worthy of U. N. assistance if it wasn't within the United States.
Detroit has been steadily losing population for years but it may have reached critical mass. Their schools graduate only 25 to 50% of high school seniors depending on which political group plays with the numbers. Lately, frequent shootings, murders and rapes have increased substantially, reflecting Detroit's normal reaction to hard times. The former mayor was recently released from jail and the current city council is corrupt and often engages in shouting matches, insults and throwing objects at each other during their meetings.
It wasn't always like that, automobile moguls and those who became rich from manufacturing gave generously to Detroit, their art museum boasts several Rembrandt paintings inside the graffitti covered building. Now, state leaders are talking about encouraging farms and grazing land within the boundary of Detroit in return for tax revenue and a reduction in govt. expenses to maintain this vast urban wasteland.
Comparing Detroit in 1950 to Detroit today illustrates how thin the line is between an advanced civilization and third world decay.
Smitty| 4.19.09 @ 5:34PM
Pat, I agree with you--there is a fine line between civilization and chaos. That's why I decry the liberals' constant debasement of our ethics and morals. No puffery here--just grief for the goodness that we used to possess.
MT| 4.19.09 @ 5:37PM
Rush said the Pirates of the Washington DC Beltway are the real threat to our security. Our politicians are pirates who are exacting huge amounts of treasure from us.
Mary| 4.19.09 @ 6:24PM
I'm not sure we ever possessed goodness.
Enslavement, profiting mightily from such labor and returning a subsistence minimum of that to the enslaved may be a staple of human history, but it's bitter to recall. But the Civil War shows that we did know the difference between right and wrong. That's the period in our history that a lot of other nations look to and see something completely new in the history of the world.
De Tocqueville really hits home right now. From DIA, Chapter VI: What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear.
**I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.
I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network 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 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 the 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. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.
By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience. I do not deny, however, that a constitution of this kind appears to me to be infinitely preferable to one which, after having concentrated all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms that democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the worst.
When the sovereign is elective, or narrowly watched by a legislature which is really elective and independent, the oppression that he exercises over individuals is sometimes greater, but it is always less degrading; because every man, when he is oppressed and disarmed, may still imagine that, while he yields obedience, it is to himself he yields it, and that it is to one of his own inclinations that all the rest give way. In like manner, I can understand that when the sovereign represents the nation and is dependent upon the people, the rights and the power of which every citizen is deprived serve not only the head of the state, but the state itself; and that private persons derive some return from the sacrifice of their independence which they have made to the public. To create a representation of the people in every centralized country is, therefore, to diminish the evil that extreme centralization may produce, but not to get rid of it.
I admit that, by this means, room is left for the intervention of individuals in the more important affairs; but it is not the less suppressed in the smaller and more privates ones. It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other.
Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedience which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.
I add that they will soon become incapable of exercising the great and only privilege which remains to them. The democratic nations that have introduced freedom into their political constitution at the very time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative constitution have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted, the people are held to be unequal to the task; but when the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are alternately made the play things of their ruler, and his masters, more than kings and less than men. After having exhausted all the different modes of election without finding one to suit their purpose, they are still amazed and still bent on seeking further; as if the evil they notice did not originate in the constitution of the country far more than in that of the electoral body.
It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.2
A constitution republican in its head and ultra-monarchical in all its other parts has always appeared to me to be a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.**
Michael L. Hauschild| 4.19.09 @ 7:15PM
Louis Jenkins you are my hero, top of someones list, but my hero anyway.
ruth| 4.20.09 @ 12:21AM
I don't know who scares me more: Louis Jenkins or Michael L. Hauschild.
Sebastian| 4.20.09 @ 1:46AM
Decent piece, except for the anti-pagan nonsense one should expect from Catholic leaders. Paganism was not the absence of Christianity: it was a series of coherent, highly ethical religions whose life-span Catholicism has yet to match. The idea that a bunch of liberal modern people are somehow "pagan" could only occur to someone who knows less about antiquity than even Hollywood film-makers. There is no though modern, Christian man has had that Plato and Aristotle did not already recognize; there is no line of poetry in Shakespeare that can match Homer. Modern liberals are anti-theists, not pagans, and they would have been despised in antiquity as the irreverent, iconoclasts that they are. I suggest the author get beyond his Eusebius and read some real history.
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Robert Taylor | 4.22.09 @ 9:03AM
Off-the-cough solutions:
*Convince the car manufacturers to leave detroit and move to a right-to-work state(declare bankruptcy first and nullify the union contracts)
*Eliminate the "corporate tax" which is nothing but a hidden cost in all of our goods and services
*Close the 120+ U.S. military bases abroad over 3 years and defend our shores, our airways and sea lanes.
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Looks like David's comment was a doozy, and looks like it has been removed... based on the reaction to his comment, I'm feeling deprived !
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