In February 2009, a Newsweek cover story proclaimed “We are all Socialists Now.” In the corresponding article former Newsweek, editor John Meacham cited the fact that “The U.S. government has already – under a conservative Republican administration – effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries. … Whether we want to admit it or not … the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.” Meacham accurately identified “the architect of this new era of big government as George W. Bush, who moved to bail out the financial sector last autumn with $700 billion. Bush brought the Age of Reagan to a close. …”
As Meacham himself admitted, however, “polls show that Americans don’t trust big government and still don’t want big government.” This implies that the “we” in Newsweek’s famous title is not “we the people,” but “we the educated, literate, successful elite.” With the usual elitist prevarication Meacham goes on to assert that Americans “do, however, want what government delivers, like health care and national defense, and now, protections from banking and housing failure.” Yet just as “polls show” Americans rejecting big government, they also show them rejecting the bank bailout, the stimulus package and Obamacare. Indeed, they indicate a rejection of the whole self-serving, elitist, sham Democrat/Republican party system. Meacham correctly observes that both parties encouraged the trend toward government domination that culminated in G.W. Bush’s treacherous leap into overt socialism (when, as he later explained in a CNN interview, he “abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”)
Bush claimed that he hoisted the jolly roger of socialism “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.” But there’s more than enough of the wary “yankee trader” left in the American body politic to keep many American’s from ignoring the truth: The socialist skull and crossbones flies over rampant acts of elite piracy. Whatever elitist mouthpieces like John Meacham may claim, these Americans aren’t so stupid as to clamor for more government spending. They realize that the only “welfare” really served by the “welfare state” is the advantage of the elitist cliques as they build and lubricate the machinery of their power. To this end money is unconstitutionally extorted from entrepreneurs and working people by the federal income-tax system. To this end the elitist banking system is abused to pillage the good faith and credit of the American people, burdening their posterity with gargantuan debt for generations to come. To this end feckless, purposefully incompetent national-security policies are implemented. They sap the nation’s material and moral strength while generating an atmosphere of perpetual threat that masks the real war of attrition, the one the elitists are waging against the constitutional liberty of the people.
As we approach the critical months of the 2012 election cycle, we should keep in mind Newsweek’s smug proclamation of socialism’s conquest of America. In that moment of triumphant exclamation, the mask of the twin-party sham didn’t just slip. It fell entirely away, to reveal the divide that is and always has been the fulcrum of human politics, the divide between the many and the few, the feudal lords and the serfs, the oligarchs and the people, the self-approving, self-serving elitists and the multitude of God-approved humanity they are pleased to regard as common, unintelligent and unclean. The triumph of socialism in America, in whatever guise, marks humanity’s retreat from the high-water mark of the tide of government of, by and for the people Tocqueville accurately predicted as the destiny of the United States.
Even now, however, I do not believe this regression toward elitist rule stands confirmed and irreversible. To be sure, the elitist machinations of the sham party system are predictably moving America toward another false choice between an avowed socialist Democrat and a prevaricating socialist Republican. Yet, like the countless unemployed people who have given up on an elite manipulated economic system in which they can no longer find work, there is a countless multitude of Americans who have given up on an elitist political sham in which they no longer find representation. If roused to self-conscious unity and political involvement against the Democrat/Republican sham party system, this multitude would be more than sufficient to garner 35-40 percent of the vote, winning three way contests at every level.
There are Americans who know and declare that the sham party system offers no choice but evil (more or less) for America’s future. They know and admit that the Democrats who pretend to respect God and the principles of liberty are lying. They know and admit that the Republicans who pretend to oppose socialism and the abandonment of moral decency are prevaricating. They know and admit that the elitists in both parties promise jobs and responsible government, but deliver instead irresponsible, self-serving government spending and perpetual debt slavery. They promise security, but deliver instead the fear-inspired surrender of the unalienable rights of life, family and decent political liberty. They promise tolerance and the freedom to choose, but deliver instead the bondage of addictive, self-destructive passions, and the intolerant persecution of moral and religious faith and conscience.
Thanks to such people, the elitists can continue to pretend that there is no hope outside the sham twin-party system. Like all actions taken in bad conscience, the actions that result from this surrender to more or less evil lack the courage of true conviction. As the infamous promoter of political evil (Machiavelli) surely understood, such actions will more often than not be defeated by those whole heartedly committed to their goals, however wicked. Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney may lash out against Obama because of his socialist health-care policies, his commitment to more taxes and debt to finance government expansion, his promotion of so-called gay or abortion rights. But Obama in reply will only need to cite their own word, their own votes, decisions and policies against them, to show that they supported views and measures very like his own. Then he or others will charge that the Newt/Romney party’s attacks against him are motivated by low partisanship. They will go further, wondering aloud whether those attacks insidiously pander to the discredited racist elements whose heart’s desire is to see the first black elected to the White House shamed and defeated for the world to see and history to remember.
Who can know with certainty whether these scurrilous tactics will succeed or fail? What we can know is that the unprincipled, self-contradictory prevarication now characteristic of the choices offered by the GOP set the stage for deploying these tactics in ways that rouse Democrats to go to the polls to vote their anger, and Republicans to shun the polls as they remember how they are being deceived. Last week I observed that in 2012 the GOP elite offer no choice for principle. Despite what their apologists contend, it’s more than reasonable to foresee that they will offer GOP voters no choice for victory either.
