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| Lamont |
The title of a recent newspaper story reads, “Lamont’s bid for a third term could make him the longest serving governor since colonial era.”
The colonial era, readers who have a nodding acquaintance with US history need not be reminded, was Connecticut’s pre-democracy era, a time when kings were kings and subjects were subject to the whimsey of monarchs.
The distinguishing characteristic of a monarchy, anyone associated with the “No Kings” movement would doubtless agree, is rule by a single executive – the king, his political court, and his political praetorian guard.
Thomas Jefferson, following in the intellectual footsteps of Voltaire, boldly declared himself an enemy of “every tyranny over the mind of man.” Jefferson kept a bust of Voltaire on his writing desk at Monticello. Modern journalists would do well to adopt Jefferson’s brash boast as their operative principle.
It is very much in doubt these days whether Jefferson’s offspring, the modern Democrat Party, most especially in Connecticut, is worthy of its antecedents.
Connecticut’s present government may most accurately be described, in Jefferson’s understanding of the term, as a practical and intellectual tyranny. The Republican Party in the state is not an actionable political entity. Connecticut is, for all practical purposes, a one-party state, even as colonial Connecticut was a monarchy by intent and design. Most of the state’s large cities have been Democrat Party appendages for decades. National representatives in the state, the members of Connecticut’s uniform U.S. Congressional delegation, are all Democrats. Registered Democrats in Connecticut outnumber registered Republicans by a two-to-one ratio. The governor and the state’s vast administrative apparatus, easily whipped into line, are Democrat members of a monarchical court. All General Assembly party leaders, the gatekeepers in the legislature who decide in impenetrable caucus rooms what bills shall be called in the state legislature, are the pretorian guard of Connecticut’s law-making body. Newspeople manning the political watch towers of a potentially tyrannical governing authority appear to have fallen silent precisely at the moment when courageous voices should be aroused to revive small “r” republican government in Connecticut’s “Constitution State.”
To be sure, there is no king presiding as chief executive, kings having long ago been consigned to the dustbin of history. The old king is dead, long live the new king.
The chief enemies of democratic government are agents of government who make use of democratic means for personal enrichment -- payment to be made in status or power. These pretenders to democracy feast on a complacent citizenry that no longer considers itself a free, independent and self-sustaining community of souls. After a time, the citizenry recovers a cleansing sense of the creative independence celebrated by Sam Adams when he reminded his compatriots, “It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
These brushfires of freedom still smolder in the national and state consciousness because freedom and liberty are not bequeathed to men and women by an overarching and ultimately dehumanizing government administrative political apparatus, powerful and oppressive.
No, men are born free, as both Jefferson and Voltaire well knew. The author of the Declaration of Independence told us that the US Constitution was ordained and established, “in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” The Constitution itself mirrors the constitution of man -– independent, liberty-loving and self-reliant.
It is generally not known that Karl Marx and Fredrich Engles wrote a book on the American Civil War. Marx communicated with Lincoln, and Lincoln referred the communication to one of his cabinet members who politely disagreed with the usual Marxian economic analysis. This matter was discussed at some length in a 2017 Connecticut Commentary posting, “Lincoln Alive: His Relevance To Modern Politics.” Lincoln agreed with Marx that labor was in many respects superior to capital.
This is what Lincoln said about the American economy, very different from a European economy rooted historically in considerations of social status and political power: “Again, as has already been said, there is not of necessity any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life [an inescapable class structure.] Many independent men everywhere in these States a few years back in their lives were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and improvement of condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.”
This remains the best brief answer to what we, from bitter experience, now recognize as the kind of Marxian economic analysis that willingly will burn down a house to catch a mouse.
It may take our politicians some time to catch up to Lincoln, always far ahead of the crowd of ambitious word masters who bewitch us and powerful politicians who in their course have learned nothing and forgotten everything.
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