“The truth is that we face a degeneration of a whole society and not an evil limited to some parts of it.” – Ludwig von Mises
In the Declaration of Independence we find the following words: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” These are not the most quoted or most remembered words from the Declaration; but they are wise words nonetheless. Political life is complicated and the slogans that arise from discontented minds are not, in themselves, solutions. The best institutions in the world may be depicted as the worst, merely because they are imperfect. Citizens should be reminded that revolution is a terrible business. The process of revolution is violence, which is evil.
I receive many emails from readers. A significant percentage of these express violent hatred of the government. Many are those who think they can diagnose a sick republic, when the correct diagnosis is a sick society. The government in our time reflects the condition of the governed. We have become a permissive people. We tolerate what should not be tolerated. We have become consumers instead of citizens. We have become narcissistic and foolish.
The United States is a great country, even now. But the country has followed a path of degeneration via political correctness. To recognize this truth one only has to read Mariam Grossman’s Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student. Grossman is a psychiatrist who works at an American university. “Radical politics pervades my profession,” she explains, “and common sense has vanished.” According to Grossman, “There is a tacit approval of promiscuity and experimentation…. Infection with one of the sexually transmitted viruses is a rite of passage; it comes with the territory. Abortion is the removal of unwanted tissue, sort of like a tonsillectomy.”
The main threat to any great country, quite naturally, comes from within. If we abandon traditional folkways, traditional rules, traditional patriotism, what is left? For those who are paying careful attention, the United States is much weaker than it used to be – economically, morally and politically. Internal weakness carries many dangers; but the most fatal, in the nuclear age, is the opening that internal weakness gives to foreign enemies. Today’s totalitarian powers are akin to scavengers who patiently wait on progressive enervation to do most of their work. They see the advance of American decadence. They see our rising debt. They see that a great financial correction is coming.
Those who think a revolution would put things right, who think a particular politician or institution is to blame, have missed the bigger picture. A revolution has already been underway and the country’s institutions are about to undergo significant changes. The minimal welfare state of the past has gradually extended itself, with the tacit approval of the middle class, into something much less minimal. The culture has shifted to the left, so that ideas once thought to be radical are now “mainstream.” Meanwhile, our conservatives have sought to emphasize economic optimism and consumption while ceding the educational establishment to the “left.” The revolutionary process has been gradual, indeed, but the country as a whole is now ready for the next big step. At present we have a far-left senator running for the presidency, and if the election were held today he’d probably win. The Gallup Daily Poll gives Obama 47 percent to McCain’s 43 percent. The Ramussen Tracking Poll shows Obama “leading in states with 200 Electoral College votes while McCain leads in states with 171 votes.” According to the Time Magazine poll Obama is five points ahead.
What would the Founding Fathers say?
The principles of political economy of today’s Republicans would shock Adams and Jefferson, not to mention the statist policies of the Democrats. There can be no doubt, whatsoever, that ideas and standards have changed. In a book titled Omnipotent Government, written at a time when totalitarian socialism had overrun Europe, Ludwig von Mises asked: “Who is responsible for the deplorable events of the last decades?” According to Mises, “Almost all the fathers of socialism were members of the upper middle class or of the professions.”
That same analysis holds for the United States, as well. “It is not true,” wrote Mises, “that the dangers to the maintenance of peace, democracy, freedom, and capitalism are a result of a ‘revolt of the masses.’ They are an achievement of scholars and intellectuals, of sons of the well-to-do, of writers and artists pampered by the best society.” It seems that the socialist revolution of our time is born out of bourgeois affluence. Therefore, the greatest affluence promises the greatest of all revolutions.
In his Farewell Address, President George Washington warned: “Towards the preservation of your Government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite … that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles however specious the pretexts.” Those who would overthrow the Constitution may form a party, announcing their good intentions. But beware party spirit, continued Washington: “It serves always to distract the public councils, and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and will of one country, are subjected to the policy and will of another.”
