Beware the Frumious Bandersnatch. True Tyranny comes on ‘little cat’s feet’ Tyranny almost never begins with jackboots and bayonets -oh the boots and bayonets may come out later to be sure at the first sign of real dissent- but this ‘jack boot’ variety is usually a simple tyranny of martial force –the ‘tin pot’ dictatorships that seize control for profit and raw power. Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin and Manuel Noriega all fit this mold. The people are kept in place –ultimately- by the threat of force. The resources of the nation are exploited to satisfy the greed of a ruling family, party or Junta. A ‘cult’ of the leadership is promulgated, and secret societies of thugs are encouraged to ferret out any insipient sources of resistance; the once terrifying Tonton Macoutes (bogeymen) of ‘doc’ Duvalier in Haiti are a perfect example. Parenthetically, the current partisan use of the IRS also fits this mode of tyranny nicely. These tyrannies are usually short lived and are generally replaced by more of the same. (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.) They generally have no ideological basis save power, and profit; like Assad’s Bathist regime they practically beg for armed resistance. The really deep, and multi-generational tyrannies arrive on ‘little cat’s feet’. The most insidious and debilitating forms of tyranny are accomplished by ‘regulations’. It begins with the over-arching agenda of a political party, or a proto-religious group to restructure the society from the ground floor –always for ‘their own good’. For the purpose of this exercise I consider any group that includes ‘reeducation of the masses’ in its syllabus as being ‘proto-religious: Socialism, and P.E.T.A both fit the bill. It is really only a small step from the currently ‘despised’ Puritans of the 17th century to the ‘celebrated’ Environmental Protection Agency. It is still ‘rule by decree’ whether the decree comes from the ‘beloved leader’, the ‘elders, or a bureaucratic committee of agency ideologues whose latest ‘regulation’ takes on the nature of law. This ‘brand’ of tyranny also invariably requires a fracturing of the society into ‘interest groups’, one group of which is singled out as the nexus around which all injustice and social in-equalities revolve: The Jews, the Gypsies, the Rich, the Mormons, the Catholics or the successful, or those who do not subscribe to the social agenda of the ‘managing elite and their clique are to blame, there is always a ‘scapegoat’. Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il-Sung, these are the models of the kind of ‘Ideological Tyranny’ that results from the presence of agenda driven social engineers in the governance of nations. They, acting always through their bureaucratic infrastructure, rule by decree and by regulation, for the purpose of restructuring, and reeducating society for ‘its own good’, just as the Puritans did. Ideological activism and socially divisive agendas have no place in a free society, and their presence in the current political arena, are an affront to the founders of our Republic. The end will be tyranny. The founders of our Republic, most prominently President Washington, along with Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, and later an admiring visitor in the 1830s, Alexis De Tocqueville, (Democracy In America) published in 1835, all cautioned against two dangers -intrinsic to a ‘democratic’ system- that can ultimately destroy any Republican state: The tyranny of the majority, and ‘Party-ism’. The Tyranny of the Majority. Our ‘Republican’ system was designed specifically to avoid these dangers by instituting a series of ‘checks and balances’ to the process of legislating and implementing American law, and to the election of public officials. These checks and balances are enshrined in our bi-cameral legislature, our independent judiciary, our separately elected executive branch, and the sometimes maligned and always misunderstood Electoral College. All these ‘branches’ were designed to work together -and at odds- to insure that the ‘interests of the minority’, whether those interests are of a small state like Rhode Island, or of a ‘poorer state’ like Mississippi, or of a minor presidential candidate like Ron Paul, are not lost in the discourse but that compromise and accommodation rule the day, not the latest fad, or the howling of the mob. The founding fathers were frankly distrustful of laws made in the heat of the moment. The prospects and ramifications of a Tyranny of the majority can be seriously addressed by contemplating the American political system in regard to the ‘Kansas and Nebraska Act’ of 1854. In this ‘act’, an attempt was made by the democratic party to effect the legality and presence of slavery in the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska, democratically, by the results of a majority vote of the citizens of the territories named; thus ‘democratically’ over-riding the ‘Missouri Compromise’ of 1850, which had limited the spread of slavery in the new western territories. The act was strongly supported by Stephan Douglas of Illinois. The Republican Party was formed, specifically to resist this ‘end run’ around the Missouri Compromise by the expansion of the institution of slavery into the new territories under the guise of acceding to the ‘majority will’. The GOP was founded by among others, Abraham Lincoln. The famous ‘Lincoln and Douglas’ debates centered on this issue; an issue seminal to the American catharsis of 1861-65, in which the ‘will of the majority’ of citizens of the seceded southern Confederacy was pitted against the ‘will of the majority’ of the citizens of the remaining Federal Union. The issue ultimately resolved by force of arms. The current cries to replace the Electoral College with a direct majority vote for the office of president are ill advised, and are based solely upon a fringe element’s desires to destroy American exceptionalism and civil amity by cynically using the liberties bought for them by the blood of far better men to sow discord, and distrust of our nation’s very foundations. Their ultimate goal is a Tyranny of the Majority…as long as it is their majority of course. The Tyranny of Party-ism. On ‘Party-ism’, nullification, and the imperial presidency. Party-ism is easy to define in real world terms; it equates to ‘bumper sticker politics’. I constantly see bumper stickers that declare that either ‘Yankees’ or ‘Red Sox’ “suck”; Party-ism reduces political discourse and the democratic process to that same elementally infantile level. Votes are automatically ‘cast’ on the ‘party line’, not on an informed and thoughtful consideration of the issues and personalities at stake. The people’s business and the general welfare of the Republic take a back seat to the ‘pork barrel’ and the party agenda. It is not happenstance that the most corrupt states and cities in the country are ‘one party’ states or cities: The state governments of New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the cities of New Orleans and Chicago top the list. Nullification is also easy to define in real terms: ‘That law does not apply to me (us)’. If I as an individual determine that some law is inconvenient for me and I ‘nullify’ it by consciously deciding not to obey it, my ‘nullification’ of it will either get me a nice fat fine, or perhaps some ‘time out’ -courtesy of the correctional system. A state or city government nullifies a law by simply not enforcing it or -as with South Carolina prior to the Civil War- simply passing a local ‘ordinance’ that claims exemption. San Francisco, New York city, and the state of Massachusetts all are guilty of nullifying federal immigration laws by either non-compliance or by local ordinance. They pay no price for their actions (as I or you would) federal funding is not cut off, and federal agents are not sent to enforce the law…why? It is the result of Party-ism pure and simple. An Imperial Presidency is the easiest of all to define. Our country has one sitting in office as I write. We have a president who perfectly represents ‘party-ism’, and imperial nullification. The party agenda is more important than an honest effort to accommodate those who disagree with it. Any who stand against the ‘party line’ are vilified and cast as ‘obstructionists’ or racists. Civil discourse, compromise and accommodation are cast as stonewalling, gridlock and defiance. Federal laws that are at variance with the ‘ruling’ party’s ‘agenda’ are ignored, and un-enforced by imperial decree. Attempts by the several sovereign states to step in and enforce existing federal laws are attacked, and the state, city, or individual local officials are drawn into fatuous and expensive legal battles in order to simply enforce existing laws. The people’s money is being wasted at both ends of this equation. Executive fiats and agenda driven bureaucratic regulations take the place of law, and of carefully directed governance in the people’s name. This is an Imperial Presidency, and it is incipient tyranny -pure and simple. God bless The Republic, and confound its enemies both foreign and domestic. Norman Schell
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 12:36:40 +0000
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