The Left's Big Gamble

For a number of reasons I believe the Left has made a calculated and careful assessment of the American political scene, and it has decided to gamble for the seizure and control of American political and economic power.  They believe, arguably with good cause, that that their hold on the strongest factions in American politics is sufficient to enable them to consolidate and exercise power over an increasingly hostile majority.  Whether they will succeed in the long term is not known, but, given the erosion of liberty we have seen over the course of the last century, the wind of history would seem to be at their backs.



Credibility Check.  I fully expect that my assertion will be taken seriously by very few; it will be characterized as paranoid, alarmist or just plain nutty by most.  It is my fervent hope that most are correct, but like our predecessors in pre-Nazi Europe, I think we take take too much comfort in the nostrum that "it can't happen here"; that majorities have the power to overcome tyranny.  (1)

The Limits of Majority Power
Conservatives associated with the Tea Party and Tenth Amendment movements are aware that -- according to current polls, the majority of Americans strongly oppose the excesses and arrogance of the liberal administration and congress.  But, they reason, that sentiment will bring conservatives back as a majority power, a party with the numerical support of the polity.  That may be true, but a majority party alone can bring about change in only a limited way.  There are other forces at work.

In fact it is the broader powers of the political infrastructure that have the ability to promote and obstruct policy.  For the triumph of a political ideology, perhaps especially a totalitarian one, all that is necessary is the support of the strongest coalition of economic and political powers.  Here, it can be argued, liberals may hold the trump cards.  Consider the vast (in number and power) and proliferating government bureaucracies (institutionally liberal), the activist liberal judiciary, tort lawyers, the news and entertainment media, the education establishment, government (and other) unions, elitists of every stripe and even conservatives who, for reasons of comity, have failed to understand that the politics of the left is war behind an increasingly thin pretense of civility.  Add to the list all the carefully cultivated "victim" classes and the well organized and funded activist groups such as Greenpeace, womens' rights, gay rights -- well, the reader knows the motley.  The point is that in the course of a century the utopian ideology of collectivism has displaced the vision of the founders.  At heart that ideology is anti-capitalist and against any form of meritocracy.

Spin The Wheel (2)
In my view the left has assayed the battleground, and it is convinced that it will defeat the enemy. By that I mean the administration and its surrogates have seemingly grown so confident of their power that they have abandoned customary prudential considerations.  I cite for example the unashamed bias of liberal media, who appear to have recklessly (or not?) placed their bets on the triumph of the left’s political agenda. Market be damned.  Or the equally elitist majority in congress, who have assumed a similar stance toward voters.  This abandonment of caution leads me to infer that the left believes it has accrued enough power to carry the day.  It may be so.

I have come to believe that post-modernist momentum cannot be halted in traditional, incremental ways, i.e., by political discourse or short-term election outcomes.  How, then to stop it?  First, one has to acknowledge that P-M thinking and behavior are firmly established in the West and beyond.  They seem to have infected the ubiquity of the English-speaking world (a language corrupted to serve as a carrier?  Bears thinking on...).  For Western Europe it is probably too late.  There is a dedicated strain of conservatism there, but it tends to hide itself in aid of survival.  Ann Frank's attic might be the appropriate metaphor.

I think America is once again the last, best hope. Conservatism in America is to some extent also hiding.  As in Europe there is a conditioned fear of PC non-conformity.  But in America that fear is not yet existential.  Polls in the U.S. indicate that as many as 80% of Americans describe themselves as conservative.  Given the K12 legacy it's impossible to know what they mean.  However, I think there is reason to believe that persons outside of government and between the coasts are at least less liberal than the party in power.  Secondly, I believe there remains some of the native distrust that Americans traditionally have had for government.  Finally, I think that the administration's overreach fuels distrust. 
The Tenth Amendment initiatives in a growing number of states are a good sign that there exists a will to revive state sovereignty (true federalism), and it is seen as a threat by statists.  The question is whether the states can successfully assert their sovereignty in the face of Washington's power, particularly in federal courts. If the 'states rights' movement is met with coercive force, then seriously entertaining secession may be the necessary alternative. In the end our choices may be stark.  Eventual widespread civil unrest, anarchy and bloodshed, on the one hand, or the uncontested loss of liberty under the rule of a collectivist authoritarian state on the other. 

Sadly, in this gamble the left puts little at risk.  If they lose, they may be out of majority power for a while, but the accumulated legacy of dividing the nation into competing entitlement camps and the pervasiveness of collectivist ideology will proceed unabated.  The left will see an electoral defeat (if it comes) as a minor and temporary set-back.  The rest of us will not fare so well; we will see our wealth destroyed -- and worse -- the liberty that enabled its creation.



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1.  I am, of course, aware of Mike Godwin's admonitions, regarding the facile use of references to Nazi Germany.  For purposes of this essay I refer to the observations of F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) near the end of WWII.
2.  Most of this section is taken from a comment I made to an excellent essay by Thomas Bertonneau at The Brussels Journal.