The Ant and the Grasshopper

[Stonehead]

Chomsky is not "my man", but I don't disagree with much that is said here. Despite the Teabagger use of the words "liberty" and "freedom", authoritarianism, racial purity, and corporatism is always the subtext as evinced by the appeals to the "real America", "economic freedom", "God and guns". As I've said in a previous post, the surest way to squelch fascist populism is to meet the underlying conditions that fuel it. Thirty years of trickle-on economics, the fusion of State and corporate power, bloated militarism, neglect, and retrograde antisocial philosophy should be countered by revitalizing the democratic aspects of governance, not by rejecting governance altogether. Drowning the State in the bathtub through tax cuts, removing its regulatory and social function, and paring its authority down to its basest level, the exercise of force, is the surest way to the authoritarian dystopia the Teabaggers claim to fear most. Concentrated power doesn't evaporate, it only consolidates in other institutions, I'd rather have it concentrated in something with mechanisms for citizens to control, rather than stockholders.

 

I agree in general with what you’re saying but there’s a subtle point of departure in the way you’ve framed the issue.

 

In their collective wisdom, the founding fathers recognized the corrupting influence of concentrated political power and this recognition resulted in the codification of this knowledge into a body of law. Now, I certainly don’t ascribe supernatural qualities to documents such as the U.S. Constitution or the ideas embodied in such. They’re only as good as we continue to believe these are valuable guidelines. That said, I also don’t believe that the constitution as originally written is the end-all and neither did the founding fathers (re: Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the original Bill of Rights and the subsequent amendments following the Civil War).

 

However, the contemporary question appears to be: what is the proper role of government? Your prescription for all of society’s ills is the guiding hand of government but what if there is an inherent contradiction between praxis and theory in the global extension and the top down emanation of that value of human dignity? Is it too radical to believe that dignity and emancipation begin with the individual? Certainly, it’s a worthwhile goal for idealists but when did the idea of democracy mutate into self justification for government to continually grow tentacles into our lives? Is it because government parasitically latched onto the idea that it would solve all or the majority of the problems of the human condition and that that goal could be actualized when in reality we’ll never reach the end of rainbow? Why did the concept which could be characterized as socialism with a democratic veneer become the pinnacle of values over and above the wisdom of limitation of powers condensed in a fairly conservative rendering of constitutional government? Did people change the social compact that gave birth to liberal democracy so that we heading in our political evolution to an absurd choice between totalitarian democracy and totalitarianism sans democracy?

 

Now, it takes a cynical reading of the world to see that the revolution failed, that today’s democracy and its benevolent government are the big lie, that the natural order has always been the will of the stronger and that we’re thrown a bone once in while to placate the masses. I don’t necessarily blame the progressives. They’re just pawns like the rest of us. It sure would be nice though to step off this train for awhile to take a pause.

 

Seriously, we should just feel good that the question, quid sit deus , is being answered, immanent in the world of the living. We should just bask in the feeling that we’re living free in this semblance of an equitable society and it could be more so if we consent to government’s hydra-like growth and penetration. Hallelujah.

 

[j_b]

So, as it turns out, progressives are the genuine republicans who invest in democratic ideals and give government the means of its policy. In the meantime, regressives are busily trying to recreate feudalism, all in the name of "freedom" of course.