Living in Interesting Times

 With the advent of resurgent conservatism comes a heady and perhaps irrational political exuberance.  On the right there seems good cause for celebration.  The Tea Party constitutional movement, the hide-tanning of liberal senators and congressmen at town hall meetings, emerging assertions of state sovereignty under Tenth Amendment initiatives and polls that show a healthy majority of conservatives in America.   Add the successes of new media (and the corresponding decline of liberal network TV and once-dominant newspapers), FNC and talk-radio and we seem to be on a clear path toward the restoration of responsive, smaller conservative government.  But something very different may be in store for America.

I am concerned that conservatives may be naive in their optimism; that they fail to understand the fragility of the republic, assume the operation of a civil society (which today barely survives), attribute to their hard-left opposition the motives of honorable men and place their faith in the notion that a voting majority may still regain political control.  In short, they appear grossly to underestimate the power and single-minded determination of the left permanently to seize power.  In short they have not acknowledged the transition from civil discourse to politics-as-war.

In my view the most disturbing development in American politics is the liberal government's (and their allies') willful abandonment of prudential behavior.  In the case of the congress and the administration, the will of an increasingly hostile majority is either ignored, demeaned or openly challenged.  The consent of the governed is an idea that has lost all relevancy.  Liberal politicians who have voted in open opposition to their own constituencies are aware that they will be punished in the next election, yet they persist.  Similarly, liberal media clearly understand that their editorial positions and skewed news reporting are responsible for revenue losses leading toward bankruptcy, yet they persist.  How to explain these behaviors?
One accounting posits loyalty to principle, but the left has earned a condign reputation for holding party above principle.  Another -- and one I find deeply troubling -- is that the left is convinced that it has accumulated sufficient power to grant themselves immunity from political accountability.  In other words, that they hold requisite powers of coercion to enforce their will on the nation.  As I hinted earlier, they may be gambling with great confidence that they are in a position to overturn the republic. (1)  The image beside the title (above) is one of George Washington voluntarily relinquishing power.  Let us pray the tradition holds.

The Locus of Government Power

Relentlessly, over the course of the last century, American government has been accumulating power -- always at the expense of individual, group and state liberty.  If that power were entirely centralized, it would be easier to deal with; but it is broadly distributed power -- partly under centralized control and partly autonomous.  In almost all cases government agencies are ideologically liberal. (2)  Recent administrations, especially the current one, also wield power informally by proxies, such as unions -- the SEIU, ACORN, NEA, AFT and others, as well as other groups such as the Black Panthers and various other activist organizations and urban dependencies.  Often, intimidation of the government's enemies (including voters) is the weapon of choice.
Distributed power, such as that vested in bureaucracies, is often nearly autonomous.  And bureaucracies have taken on a political inertia that often defies the will of changing administrations; they are not only predominantly liberal, but they screen job applicants and candidates for promotion on the basis of ideology.  A careful and thorough analysis of the role of government bureaucracies can be found here.

How Much Power Does Our Government Have?

Coercive government power is essentially unlimited.  Beginning with the power of the purse-strings, the government (federal, state and local) can exert enormous pressures on individuals, groups, businesses and communities.  If, for example, a state government becomes recalcitrant, federal government can withhold funding in any number of areas important to the state's economic viability.  Such action has been threatened -- most recently in the case of Arizona in connection with its immigration law.  The feds can withhold funds for highways, education, housing healthcare.  It is done usually to enforce federal mandates, or conditions set by government.  If a mandate cannot be found to have been violated, the government can simply craft a new one.  Real ID, healthcare reform, energy and climate change mandates are unfunded, punitive and take effect when congress passes law.  It is economic pressures that I expect the federal government will invoke first when the inevitable confrontations emerge over state nullification movements.  It will be followed by the courts and Justice Department.
One of the greatest powers that government has over citizens is the selective enforcement and interpretation of law.  When a federal suit is filed against individuals or businesses, a conviction is all but certain.  Justice is what power says it is, the merits of the charges aside.  Federal penalties for felonies have become draconian as the laws have become increasingly vague and subject to such interpretation as suits the purposes of the prosecutors.  Frivolous prosecutions -- with or without convictions -- exact from defendants near-total ruin in terms of wealth and reputation and banishment from civil society.  Because penalties for conviction are so severe, 95% of cases are settled by plea-bargain, and never go before a judge and jury.  If cases were heard in court, many laws and their ad hoc interpretations might be struck down.  Perhaps the worst abuse of the legal system has been the parting from English Common Law, which among other things, established the principle of mens res under which a prudent person is held to account only if he has knowingly broken the law.  Strict interpretation has taken its place, often with disastrous consequences. (3)  In the case of state nullification, mentioned above, I think the federal government will also resort to the courts by way of injunction and law suit.
If economic and legal coercion fail against the states, the federal government has near total control -- direct or indirect -- over the nation's infrastructure.  It can shut down power, communications, water, banking, transportation.  It has the power to declare even peaceful opposition a civil disturbance, insurrection or rebellion, and it can, at its own discretion impose martial law.  Theoretically, government controls all the power of police an military forces, but that may be problematic.  Whether the military and local law enforcement would turn against citizens cannot be known, but some members of those groups have anticipated the possibility.  The Oath Keepers is an organization that has sworn to uphold the constitutional restraints of government against it citizens, even in defiance of orders. (4)

The Growing Conflict Between Citizens and the Federal Government


The conflict is a work in progress; how it will turn out is anyone's guess.  It could be a civil contretemps with negotiable outcomes or a full-blown civil war.  I think it will be something in between.  On the one hand we have states prepared to nullify federal law (healthcare being at the forefront) and some openly discussing secession.  On the other we have a statist government apparently seeking at every turn to expand, consolidate and ultimately seize federal power.  The former seeking increased liberty and sovereignty and the retention of wealth and the latter seeking overweening control of every aspect of society.  Two primal and opposing forces of human nature that can never be resolved permanently.  Thomas Jefferson observed the tendency of government to vitiate liberty: “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”  It has come to that.
We know the extent of government powers; what we do not know is the extent of countervailing power of citizens.  Another thing we do not know -- and this I believe is crucial -- is how the federal government will respond to open challenge.  I think it likely that they will use every means of coercion available to them short of violence.  If that fails, they will attempt to provoke a violent response from citizens, and if that fails they will initiate violence while characterizing it as defensive action.

Still, I think a political solution is possible.  But only if some substantial element of the left turns moderate and cautious and aggressively opposes the administration. I see that as improbable, and it would only postpone an inevitable confrontation.

On a closing note I should add that contempt for the will of the majority and the seizure of political power by the left is not limited to America.  It is well along in Europe, and it threatens the survival of Western Civilization.  When the EU could not achieve voter endorsement for its constitution, it simply smuggled it into force under the Lisbon Treaty.  The EU is super-liberal governing body that is not accountable in any practical way to its constituent member states whose sovereignty it has usurped. Our current government seems to find the European model congenial.


Qui vivre verra


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1.  I do not entertain this possibility lightly, though -- because I think it a very real one -- I do intend to be provocative; to encourage others at least to consider it.  To conditioned-response liberals who will characterize me as an unhinged Tea Party violent nut-case, I would recommend reading two books that, for me, have become increasingly relevant in today's milieu: Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and Hoffer's The True Believer. Both are analyses of dynamics in catastrophic political change.  Historical precedents abound.  My recommendation would, of course, be a vain one.
2.  This is so for at least two reasons that come to mind.  Governmental institutions are controlling entities, and if there is one trait that most characterizes the left, it is the desire for control.  Second,  government employees hold a stake in the size and growth and power of their employer since salaries, promotions and job security depend upon it.  Government expansion is a fundamental tenet of the left, and it barely divides them from the moderate right.
3.  Two very good books on the subject of malfeasance in the writing and enforcement of law are Three Felonies a Day, Harvey Silverglate, and The Death of Common Sense by Philip K. Howard.
4.  About this organization I know little besides articles I have read and information from their website.  I have heard and read harsh criticism, but it mostly comes from big government proponents.  In any case I believe the central idea is an honorable one.