The creeping tyranny of America

[Dennis Olson]

Fascinating...

-----------------------------

(snip)

Paul Craig Roberts
September 27, 2000

Tyranny is creeping up on us

Tyranny is creeping up on us. If you don't believe it, consider the most prominent hallmarks of the Nazi and Communist regimes, which sought to supplant democracy in the 20th century.

In National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union, there were no First Amendment rights. No one could voice an opinion contrary to the politically correct views enforced by the Gestapo and the KGB. Media and education were used to instill politically correct thinking and bring denunciation upon anyone who departed from politically correct thinking.

This is precisely the situation that exists today in the vast majority of American colleges and universities. Verbal and facial expressions that are contrary to political correctness result in sensitivity training (a form of brainwashing) or expulsion for the offender, who may have done nothing more than laugh. If the source of mirth is an ethnic joke, a blonde joke or a hilarious claim by a multiculturalist, the hapless offender discovers that his constitutional protections do not exist.

In Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, there were victim groups that were championed and oppressor groups that were suppressed. In Germany, the "victims" were Aryans, who were said to be under the financial hegemony of Jews. In the Soviet Union, the hegemonic group was the bourgeoisie, who allegedly held sway over an oppressed proletariat. In both countries, victims were permitted to exercise violent language and actions against oppressors.

(end snip)

Link:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/paulcraigroberts/pcr2000927.shtml



------------------
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H.L. Mencken

 

[citizenguardian]

Tyranny is creeping up on us in America, and has been for quite some time. The recent hysterical responses to "hate speech", "dangers in school", etc., are examples of the way the government invents hobgoblins to increase its powers, there is no doubt.

I think, though, there is a more fundamental, and lasting reason for greater intrusive and arbitrary coercive control of the population. That is the long term tendency of the American government to experiment with economic planning. These experiments are more subtle than in pre-WWII socialist governments on the european continent. But the effects of these experiments are longer to develop as a result, and harder to notice.

However well-intentioned various social policies through the tax code are, they have the effect over time of granting the government greater and greater discretionary powers over the actions of individuals. One might way that this is because detailed tax policy initiatives require ever more detailed responses. More generally, the problem is that the government will lack the flexibility to respond to the detailed divergences from its economic goals unless it is given more and more discretionary power.

Consider, for example, the goal of greater economic equality. Tax changes designed to incent more egalitarian distributions will result in unforseen divergences from the goal of equality, which require still more policy changes. The nature of these changes, though, becomes increasingly arcane and technical. Their nature is less and less suited for debate in a legislature and more suited for the judgment of experts. Their nature becomes less and less amenable to the requirement of publicity in the law. That requirement, if we might formulate it roughly, is that the law acts as a clear and publicly understandable limit on the activities of individuals, and more importantly, acts as a clear and understandable limit on government ability to frustrate the aims of individuals.

As the law becomes less and less a guide to the limits of government action for individuals, more and more detailed planning is required to make the activities of individuals predictable, and hence amenable to planning. More and more discretionary power must be granted to the government. This makes the limits on freedom not just formally stricter, but is a clear invitation to abuse.

We can see this in America now. Most of the planning changes of the sort I've discussed are evident in the tax code. The code is famously complicated, so much so that the ordinary person is now not even presumed legally liable for understanding it. But it represents the trends I've discussed. If the tax code were penal law, organized with a vast and incomprehensible schedule of fines for various activities: buying too much gas, too much property, giving too little to certain charitable groups, etc., we would think we had woken from a nap to find ourselves in the Soviet Union.

As it is, the tax code encourages a political debate whose nature is, roughly, how _much_ planning the government should engange in to solve this or that economic or political problem. Witness the present discussion of Medicare, social security, etc. The public discussion is thus solely in terms of whether this or that policy is an efficient means to some end. Basic objections to such centralized planning appear more and more marginalized, as if the objectors were blind or wilfully ignorant of the need such policies aim to meet. The sense of government limits to exercise arbitrary power over individuals becomes judged more are more simply in terms of the expected local outcome, and less and less restrained in principle.

Hence we begin to have the spectacle of the government simply dismantling whole industries, not because of any solid foundation in the law, but because the products of these industries are not well-liked. We've seen it with tobacco-- a perfectly legal product with a long historical pedigree in North America-- and we're seeing it again with guns. Recently, the A.G. of South Carolina has been hunting up support to bring suit against movie studios, and video game manufacturers as well to recoup the costs of the "harm" they cause to the states. As many have pointed out, it's not clear how the basis of such suits is different from hypothetical suits against the auto industry, or junk food industries, or whatever. But these objections are quashed in the public arena, and are met with only the most facile and dismissive of responses. The de facto argument is simply this: governments can be trusted to exercise power at their discretion as to what industries can function and which cannot, and this power need not-- indeed, should not-- be subject to clear, public, understandable, and predictable limits. This policy should be judged only by its outcome, that is, how many industries we like are left standing and how many we dislike are gone.

But this is an invitation to tryanny, clear and simple. The irresistable tools of power are there for usurpation, well-intentioned or otherwise.

And this is where we're headed, less because of fashions like "school terror" but because of the long term desire to force individuals to act in ways seen as desirable.

One doesn't have to think that the goals of equality are in principle objectionable to worry about this, either. One might believe they are worthwhile, but worry that the only realistic means to their accomplishment will destroy political liberty.

Whatever the verdict on equality, it's becoming harder and harder to ignore the threat to liberty.

 

[scud]

Another reason to not work for the goverment, it is becomming no different then being a member of the mafia or a murderous street gang.