Equality Naturally Gives Men a Taste for Free Institutions - 11/11/2010

 [For the first time in 6 months, I am back to de Tocqueville and my pretrial journal. sch]

Conservatives love citing  Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom about how socialism enslaves people. I say there is more than one way to serfdom.

...For the principle of equality begets two tendencies: the one leads men straight to independence nad may suddenly drive them into anarchy; the other conducts them by a longer, more secret, but more certain road, to servitude. Nations readily discern the former tendency, and are prepared to resist it; they are led away by the latter, without perceiving its drift; hence it is peculiarly important to point it out....

Chapter I: That Equality Naturally Gives Men A Taste For Free Institutions; Democracy in America

During the Nineteenth Century and up to 1920, we had a more vibrant political landscape. We the Know Nothings and Free-Soilers that became the Republicans; Prohibitionists, and /Socialists, Democrats, and Whigs. with the rise of the Bolsheviks, America lost its leftist parties.

What criticism exists of the majority parties does not translate into electoral politics. The Libertarians come across as the eternal college dorm debaters, and the Green Party never recovered from the embarrassment of 2000. Neither have actively campaigned against the status quo, only joining it. I think the alternative parties will only be truly alternative when changing the constitution becomes their primary focus. Until then they will be only cranks. Which leaves them being ignored by the majority.

So long as no political force exists to criticize both major parties, the people of this country shall be at the mercy of the major parties. Call it an oligarchy or a duopoly. With the media owned by corporations whose interests may not always be the public's interest, there is no one to protect the general public. The judiciary has been filled with pro-government personnel. Meanwhile, the Democrats prove themselves feckless at political combat. From what I understand, Indiana's former Senator Evan Bayh prefers a Democratic Party that is Republican Lite.

Consider all these facts and ask if we have not been hustled, or are being hustled towards servitude.

sch

[Whew, there is a lot here that has changed in almost 14 years. Between then and now, we have had the Te Party and Donald J. Trump and the possibility of a dictatorship following this year's election. The United States Supreme Court has become not only more conservative but actually retrograde. We face the possibility of one political party taking power and keeping it at all costs, including the liquidation of political opposition. Servitude seems possible, if not even likely, through the agency of one political party that has acquired a religious component leaning hard towards white nationalism. The one good point is that the Democrats appear far less feckless than they did in 2010. sch 8/15/2024]