GEORGE W. Bush has been mandated to stay on in the White House in a far more decisive way than what he got in 2000. The coalition of factions which sees Bush as the man to advance their sectoral interests has prevailed. Dennis Francis' Letter of the Day in this newspaper (November 4) saying he did not vote because neither of the candidates addressed his issues, and the published responses to him, underscore the paramount role factions have come to play in combining their particular interests to subvert the general interest.
The Founding Fathers feared this situation which undermines the intent of democratic republicanism and sought to pre-empt it, as I discussed last week. Bush's Republican Party has also strengthened its hold on the Congress in both the House and the Senate. Eleven state governors were also elected. Despite the strenuous efforts of the founding fathers to constitutionally limit the powers of the federal government, and to retain the powers of the states and of individual citizens (as in Articles 10 and nine of the Bill of Rights), the federal government has grown into an out-of-control behemoth.
BIRTH OF A WORLD POWER
Today, November 11, is the anniversary of the end of the great war, World War I, in 1918. That war marked the emergence of the United States as a world power. That terrible conflict dramatically changed the character and power of the modern state, and none more than the United States. Paul Johnson tells us in A History of the Modern World from 1917 to the 1980s, "The effect of the Great War was enormously to increase the size, and therefore, the destructive capacity and propensity to oppress, of the state. As the war prolonged itself and the losses and desperation increased," Johnson writes, "the warring states became steadily more totalitarian."
President Woodrow Wilson mobilised the United States for total war through 'war corporatism'. According to Johnson, the War Industries Board, the central organ of government control, became the parent of the New Deal, the New Frontier and The Great Society, as the state expanded, and "culminated in the vast welfare state which Lyndon Johnson brought into being in the late 1960s". "Thus, the war demonstrated both the impressive speed with which the modern state could expand itself and the inexhaustible appetite which it thereupon developed, both for the destruction of its enemies, and for the exercise of despotic power over its own citizens."
Decades earlier, a great admirer of the young American republic, Alexis de Tocqueville, clearly anticipated its drift towards what can only be properly described as totalitarianism. In pursuit of "the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives", the people accept the rise of "an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate", de Tocqueville envisioned.
SHEPHERD OF THE FLOCK
"That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild." It assumes the authority of a parent, except that that authority is not exercised to prepare men for manhood but to keep them in perpetual childhood." That government becomes "the sole agent and only arbiter of happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry." And what remains, but "to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? The nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which government is the shepherd."
Dennis Francis complains in his letter that The Patriot Act, hurriedly rushed into law after 9/11, restricts freedom (his factional concern was for immigrants). But the Act, the people are assured, is designed to increase security. In an amazing analogy, Will Herberg, a professor of philosophy and culture, whom I mentioned last week, compares the totalitarian state, which he says is "illegitimate" and "an agency, not of God, but of the devil", to the beast power of Revelation 13. "Every established order desires to be totalitarian," Herberg points out. And "every device of modern mass control is employed to implement the totalitarian claim."
Martin Henry is a
communication specialist.
Martin Henry
