Open Letter to the Air

Now nobody knew quite what to make of him or quite what to think, but there he was and in he walked.

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Location: Scottsdale, Arizona, United States

Monday, February 04, 2013

Democratic Despotism

Shortly after the 2012 election, I began to have difficulty shaking off the feeling that the world was ending.  I tried to convince myself that I was over-reacting to the election and that soon enough life would begin to feel normal and everything would be fine.

Then I read a quote by Alexis de Tocqueville that was eerily prophetic about the shape our Republic is now taking.  I encourage anyone to read for himself "Democracy in America".  Since the election, in which Conservatives were run over by a freight train, I've been asking myself how a nation of free-thinkers could elect a government that seems bent on taking away our freedom.  I think Toqueville has really got his finger on the answer.

Living among Americans in the early 1830's, the French historian observes:
an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.
How much more accurate can this description be in the modern era of the smartphone and earbud?  We've grown accustomed to tuning out our fellow human beings, content to let strangers remain unknown to us, even if we see them every day.  How are we to have any sense of compassion for our fellow man when we are all so content to not know them or what their needs might be?
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood.
We are each so absorbed with our own lives, we are content to let the government decide what our neighbor needs, unaware of the great cost:
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
As "sheep", men have less opportunity, or desire even, to exercise their own free will.  The "free" choices we do make center on our private whims, but we don't bother with self-governing our appetites, and our morals are dictated by the State rather than the other way around.  We have lost the higher powers of thought that were used to forge our nation in the first place.  We've lost sight of first principles, the ideal of the common good, the virtue of hard work, and the willingness to suffer for these things.  It is a kind of decay Toqueville foresaw affecting the health of our government:
It is in vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.
Toqueville believes that what separates man from beast is his ability to rise above bodily instinct and strive for higher things.  When he exercises this faculty, he rises above the animals in his goods and achievements.  However, if he neglects it, he loses both bodily goods and the art of achieving them, rendering man capable of enjoying life only "like the brutes, without discernment and without improvement."  This is what he predicts will bring about the ultimate demise of the Republic:
It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people...The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.
When I hear the words, "single master" some might think of Obama.  He's not it, but I do believe one day the world will face it's Antichrist.  It would seem America finds itself nearer the edge of a crucible inside of which it will be tested by fire.  Of course, I would prefer that "freer institutions" would arise from the ashes, but two things temper those hopes:  the sinking feeling that moral turpitude has rendered us incapable of imagining let alone bring about a better, freer institution, and a fear of the crucible itself.

It would seem that this sense of apocalyptic doom has even seeped into the mind of Hollywood, judging from the surge of new films coming out that depict either the end of America as we know it, or the demise of the entire planet.  If even the heralds of "hope" and "change" can't come up with more optimistic visions of tomorrow, you know the looming dread is palpable everywhere.

If/when America falls, it will be recorded in the history books alongside the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of Rome.  That is if the fire doesn't consume the history books themselves.

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