It is evident that our associations, along with religion one of the two keys to the great success of the American experiment, are prime targets for the appetite of the state. In the seamless web created by the new tyranny, everything from the Boy Scouts to smoking clubs will be strictly regulated. It is no accident that the campaign to drive religion out of American public life began in the 1940s, when the government was consolidating its unprecedented expansion during the Depression and the Second World War, having asserted its control over a wide range of activities that had previously been entrusted to the judgment of private groups and individuals.
When we console ourselves with the thought that the government is, after all, doing it for a good reason and to accomplish a worthy objective, we unwittingly turn up the temperature under our frog-pot. The road to the Faustian Deal is paved with the finest intentions, but the last stop is the ruin of our soul.
Permitting the central government to assume our proper responsibilities is not merely a transfer of power from us to them; it does grave damage to our spirit. It subverts our national character. In Tocqueville’s elegant construction, it “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.” Once we go over the edge toward the pursuit of material wealth, our energies uncoil, and we become meek, quiescent and flaccid in the defense of freedom.
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.
The devilish genius of this form of tyranny is that it looks and even acts democratic. We still elect our representatives, and they still ask us for our support. “…servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind…might be combined with some of the outward forms of freedom, and…might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.” Freedom is smothered without touching the institutions of political democracy. We act out democratic skits while submitting to an oppressive central power that we ourselves have chosen.
They devise a sole, tutelary and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people…this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians.
There is a very old joke about the husband who announces that he has a perfect marriage: he makes all the big decisions, and lets his wife deal with the minor matters. He decides when the country should go to war, while she manages the family budget. He decides who should govern America, and she makes all the decisions about the upbringing of the children: where they go to school, what they wear, how much allowance they receive, and so on. That is precisely the sort of division of powers Tocqueville fears for us. We will be permitted to make the big decisions: who will be president, and who will sit in the legislature. But it will not matter, because the state will decide how our money will be spent, how our children will be raised, and how we will behave, down to the details of the language we are permitted to use.
We laugh at the joke because we realize that the husband’s “big decisions” are meaningless; the same eventually applies to a “democratic” state that makes all our little decisions for us. Tocqueville unerringly puts his finger on the absurdity: we give power to the state in matters that require only simple good sense, as if we were incapable of exercising it. But we elect the government itself, as if we were the very incarnation of wisdom. We are “alternately made the playthings of [our] ruler, and his masters, more than kings and less than men.”
We may chuckle, but it is the rueful laugh of the powerless, because such a government is far harder to resist than a traditional tyranny. “Nothing is so irresistible as a tyrannical power commanding in the name of the people,” Tocqueville intones, because it wields the awesome moral power of the majority and “acts…with the quickness and the persistence of a single man.”
As Tocqueville grimly predicted, modern totalitarians have thoroughly mastered this lesson. Nazis, Fascists and Communists have passionately preached sermons of equality, and constantly paid formal homage to the sovereignty of the people. Hitler proclaimed himself primus inter pares, the first among equals, while Mao and Stalin claimed their authority in the name of a classless society where everyone would be equal. And, while Communism was brought to power by violent coups or by military conquest, Fascism was not installed by violence. Hitler and Mussolini were popular leaders, their authority was sanctioned by great electoral victories and repeated demonstrations of mass public enthusiasm, and neither of them was ever challenged by a significant percentage of the population.
The great Israeli historian Jacob Talmon coined the perfect name for this perversion of the Enlightenment dream, which enslaves all in the name of all: totalitarian democracy.
These extreme cases help us understand Tocqueville’s brilliant warning that equality is not a defense against tyranny, but an open invitation to ambitious and cunning leaders who enlist our support in depriving ourselves of freedom. He summarizes it in two sentences that should be memorized by every American who cherishes freedom:
The…sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
As we see, this science of despotism is being practiced on us with determination and cunning, all in the name of equality.
The foreign policy correlate is obvious, and Roger has spotted it long since. Instead of seeking to advance freedom, our leaders seek others of their “own kind.” That is why Obama instantly endorses the would-be tyrant Zelaya, but has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to support the democratic dissidents in Iran. And he instantly adds, “but of course I still want to make a deal with Khamenei.”
It all goes together.
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8 Comments
1. Alexis:Dr. Ledeen:
It sounds like you’re talking about the Rez, writ large.
That which you are talking about here sounds like business as usual in the American West, particularly the Indian reservations. The idea of a “Great White Father” used by Thomas Jefferson is every bit as monarchial as the system he overthrew in the Revolution.
Here is an excerpt from a planned speech from William Clark’s Journal (July 26, 1806) intended for the Yellowstone Indians. Although he didn’t meet this tribe, he used similar rhetoric for other tribes. (Taken without permission from “The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-1806; Arno Press edition, 1969”, for educational purposes only.)
Children. The Great Spirit has given a fair and bright day for us to meet together in his View that he may inspect us in this all we say and do.
Children. I take you all by the hand as the children of your Great father the President of the U. States of America who is the great chief of all the white people towards the rising sun.
Children. The Great Chief who is Benevolent, just, wise & bountifull has sent me and one other of his chiefs (who is at this time in the country of the Blackfoot Indians) to all his read children on the Missourei and its waters quite to the great lake of the West where the land ends and the [sun] sets on the face of the great water, to know their wants and inform him of them on our return.
Children. We have been to the great lake of the west and are now on our return to my country. I have seen all my read children quite to that great lake and talked with them, and taken them by the hand in the name of their great father the Great Chief of all the white people.
William Clark went on and on and on for two more pages about Indians being children of the Great White Father. Later language in the Office of Indian Affairs (later BIA) archives is very similar.
Imagine the tyranny you describe as applied to international affairs. Imagine the tyranny you describe as applied to the American West. Or Appalachia. Even Indian removal in the 1830’s was explained as being done for the Indians’ own good!
Perhaps Alexis de Tocqueville may have realized that any government that would tyrannize Indians would eventually act precisely the same way toward everybody else.
Jul 1, 2009 - 11:57 am 2. David W. Lincoln:Today, Michael, as you know, Canada is celebrating the 142nd anniversary of the passing of the British North America Act, which was the beginning of the Canadian nation.
A week earlier, on June 24, which is the nativity of John the Baptist, the province of Quebec (one of the 4 former colonies of the British Crown, which were the original provinces of Canada) celebrated its fete Nationale.
I have yet to find anything on June 24 that was particularly important in the life of Quebec, other than that was the day the nativity of John the Baptist was celebrated (and John the Baptist was a very important figure accorded respect in 1867 Quebec).
So, when you have the state absorbing attributes of the church, you have the same thing of the early Roman Empire. Emperor and
High Priest combined.
This is hardly the only example of the ancient
world, and yet the same mistakes are being repeated time and time again.
So, those who are willing to learn from the mistakes of others are viewed as dangerous as
a combination of the most virulent diseases of all time.
As long as distinctions between the various areas of life are not respected, and you have
one area of life seeking hegemony over other areas of life, then trouble is waiting in the wings.
I
Jul 1, 2009 - 12:54 pm 3. Alexis:I think the key question in Iran is whether adult Muslims should be treated as adults or treated as children.
In velayat-e-faqih, Muslims (and everybody else) are treated as children. They effectively become wards of the state, with a Supreme Leader (or the Great White Father of Iran) supposedly knowing what is best for his “children”. In contrast, if adult Muslims were regarded as adults, each adult Muslim would be responsible for the welfare and the governance of his nation.
In a society of adults, each adult feels an obligation to be well informed so he or she can actively participate in the governance of his society. In a society of children, each child defers to the judgment of an expert for the governance of his society. Ideally, liberal democracy is the governance of a society of adults by adults.
Not only is velayat-e-faqih a morally bankrupt ideal of governance, but all ideologies promoting the power of experts over a well-informed citizenry should be questioned. For example, the legacy of Woodrow Wilson and his “progressive” ideology of public administration should be called into question. Sadly, I think Wilsonian elitism has corrupted the ideals of liberal democracy to such an extent that some self-proclaimed “experts” from liberal democracies would actually call the Iranian government “democratic” when the state ideology of Iran is so inherently anti-democratic.
Jul 1, 2009 - 1:45 pm 4. Joseph Hayyim:“… In the seamless web created by the new tyranny, everything from the Boy Scouts to smoking clubs will be strictly regulated… ”
Heh. Just yesterday I formally registered the region’s first Jewish Boy Scout Troop. I took-on the project some time back precisely as an antidote to PC soft tyranny.
“On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
to help others at all times;
to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”
These lads aren’t as likely to end-up as O-Bots.
Jul 1, 2009 - 3:23 pm 5. Professor Guvinoff:Long before the modern rationalizations for the “begnin” nanny state, Confucius had given his own vision of the perfectly ordered pyramid with the emperor at the top, talking to god, and most of the rest of us at the bottom, lucky for the privilege to talk to their dog.
The bulk of human experience is tyranny, whereas liberty is the ultimate unprobability, a.k.a., America. Government of the people, for the people, by the people cannot survive unless the people has enough intestinal fortitude to make it work.
Every individualist allowing himself or herself to fall into a state of sheepishness only helps his or her government to turn into a parasite. The trend can only be stopped, and reversed, by a grassroot awakening, which is why the tea parties give me hope.
Jul 2, 2009 - 1:00 pm 6. X Contra:“…equality is not a defense against tyranny, but an open invitation to ambitious and cunning leaders who enlist our support in depriving ourselves of freedom.”
That is a good sentence. Thanks, Dr. Ledeen.
The current pres. seems to be the personification of this ambition. I used to think he was just making rookie mistakes due to inexperience, but the Honduras vs. Iran comparison makes his intention distinct.
Jul 5, 2009 - 8:17 am 7. Honduras compared to Iran, Obama sellout « X Contra:[...] Ledeen and others have been writing about this. Ledeen also quotes Alexis de Toqueville, viz. American Tyranny Redux …equality is not a defense against tyranny, but an open invitation to ambitious and cunning [...]
Jul 5, 2009 - 8:59 am 8. joeblough:Just emailed this item to all my politically minded friends.
My compliments.
Jul 5, 2009 - 8:36 pm