 |
| Pyrrho of Elis, early Greek Skeptic |
This writer has called himself, variously, a political skeptic and a contrarian. But what is the difference between them?
The real difference is slight. The expression political “skeptic”
and its various iterations has become a devil word among supporters of the status quo. Here in Connecticut, the status quo has been reliably Democrat
for thirty years and more. Democrats control by a significant margin the
General Assembly the Executive and its administrative arm, and the Judiciary –
all three branches of government.
Additionally, Democrats have controlled large major cities
in Connecticut for about half a century. All the members of the state’s U.S.
Congressional Delegation are Democrats. These numbers are infallible indicators
of a one party state. Should the electorate in Connecticut be concerned with
this political evolution? The answer to that question is an unvarnished “Yes!”
– Exclamation point! The founders of the country were the natural enemies of
the one-party state. And it is a considerable misstatement to say that politicians
who sucked at the breasts of John Locke, Edmund Burke and Cicero were not
political skeptics.
Some people have asked: Why do we have to tie ourselves to
the apron strings of the revered founders? Progressive President Woodrow Wilson
thought the U.S. Constitution should bear no more weight in the deliberations
of men than state statutes.
Citing Jonah Goldberg’s book, Suicide of the West, Randolph
J. May tells us in a Washington Times piece, “Woodrow Wilson’s case against the
Constitution,” that Wilson, a much lauded progressive, leaned heavily
upon “19th century German social scientists who stressed that ‘modern
government’ should be guided by administrative agency ‘experts’ with
specialized knowledge beyond the ken of ordinary Americans — and that these
experts shouldn’t be unduly constrained by ordinary notions of democratic rule
or constitutional constraints.”
Modern day neo-progressive politicians – Connecticut is flush
with them - are counter-revolutionaries. Why not abolish history, when history
becomes an impediment to forward – revolutionary – movement?
That question was presented implicitly in Vice President
Kamala Harris’ failing campaign for the presidency when she sought to overcome
the corrective weight of history by suggesting, it has been said elsewhere,
that history is bunk.
The historical architects of the modern one party state –
socialists all – have seconded that sentiment. Hitler and Mussolini, the fathers
of fascism, were socialists before they became fascists. Stalin, who stands at
the apex of the communist revolution, was also a socialist, and communism is
simply socialism in practice raised exponentially.
The movement towards the one party state comes historically
from the left. And, in fact, the one party state marks the highest point of
“scientific socialism.” The “terror,” for which we must thank French 18th
century atheist revolutionists, and the gulag are the most effective
instruments in the left’s totalitarian tool box.
The totalist state is the one party state. So, if the
question before us is, “Should we react negatively and skeptically to the one
party state?” the obvious answer is: “Of course, stupid.” History teaches us
that it’s not always about the
economy. Sometimes the political struggle is about the use and abuse of
unvarnished, unchecked power. The US Constitution and the division of political
power into federal, state and municipal dominions, represents an effective
check on political abuse.
But, some will say, all this is political theory. Why should
we bother with abstruse theories of government?
If you are unwilling, as the founders were, to incorporate
democratic and republican theories into a workable political pragma, a
constitutional system of government, others, mostly with revolutionary knives
in their brains, will shape the future for you. The 20th century,
the bloodiest in world history, has shown us its distorted leftist face. Must
we repeat the errors of the past? That is what skeptics want to know.
Why is it so difficult for honest journalists to adopt a
skeptical posture with respect to political incumbents – other than, of course,
President elect Donald Trump, the most mauled and abused politician in the
western hemisphere?
Why is there in Connecticut so little skeptical analysis of the
one party state, the enemy of both democratic and republican forms of
governance? Pragma, (πράγμα) among
ancient Greek philosophers, was a kind of love based on duty, reason, and
shared goals, far less exciting than erotic love, but a fructifying social component
without which even powerful states may only lumber, permanently wounded, into a
future beset with difficulties that spell the end of small “r” republican and
small “d” democratic forms of governance.
Comments