As the Worm Turns
There are signs America has had enough of cancel culture and unfounded charges of "systemic racism"
The POTL (People of the Left) have learned that if you have a weak or absurd argument, and can’t win a public debate, you can win control of government and use it to shut down the debate. Through the combined power of government and their allies in social media and corporate America, they can shut you down and block you out.
Prevention of this is why America has a First Amendment right to free speech…and at least ostensibly, a free press.
One of the greatest dangers of living within a representative republic is that liberty can be used against a free people, enemies of a free and open society can hide behind the respect for liberty to do heinous things. The paradox is that the more free any society is, the more likely that freedom will be used to destroy that liberty.
It is remarkable that the racial majority in America is showing such restraint when they are called racists for merely existing. This is a testament to America's respect for the rights of others to say what they believe.
In a representative republic, we vote for individuals to act on our behalf – to represent us and to make decisions for us in accordance with the general positions held by a majority of those who elect them. While there is no legal requirement for any elected official to do so once elected, the check on such actions are elections held at regular intervals that give the electorate the opportunity to vote the representative out should they be disappointed with their actions while in office.
But a representative republic as established by and within our Constitution can only preserved as long as the electorate, in the words of John Adams, consists of “a moral and religious people” because “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Adams meant, not that Americans were required to exhibit a perfect Puritanical piety, just that they must be grounded and guided by the basic, shared moral strictures of America’s founding (more or less the Ten Commandments – concepts which, by the way, are not exclusively Christian), an abiding obedience to the enumerated, limited prescriptions for government included in the Constitution and a trust in their fellow citizens rooted in those common beliefs.
While the separation of powers and the decentralization of government makes an open, tyrannical revolution far more unlikely, the function of a representative republic retains the possibility for tyranny to be voted in. We are living it now with the Biden administration.
When any representative form of government becomes infected by statists and statism the danger exists, but the greatest danger is when a representative republic becomes infested with statolatrists. Coined by economist Ludwig von Mises, statolatry combines the authoritarian desires of statism with the religion of collectivism. These combine to yield a literal worship of government – but this worship isn’t the worship of a true religion, it is the worship of a cult.
Representative tyranny is not an eventuality. The elimination of even the possibility is very simple. It’s called the Constitution and a little thing called the Bill of Rights.
There are some signs the worm is turning.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:
“Every nation that has ended in tyranny has come to that end by way of good order. It certainly does not follow from this that peoples should scorn public peace, but neither should they be satisfied with that and nothing more. A nation that asks nothing of government, but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the depths of its heart; it is a slave of its well-being, ready for the man who will put it in chains.”
Parents are filing lawsuits to stop their children from being indoctrinated in white shame and racism. Cancelled and fired employees are fighting back, now that cancellations are beginning to burn POTL, they are realizing there is an issue. The Fall of Fauci may be a tipping point for the cycle of lying leftist bureaucrats and government officials who fail and still garner book deals and payoffs in "retirement" (Comey, Fauci, Cuomo). There is a building resistance to politicians and District Attorneys who are prioritizing illegal immigrants and criminals over law-abiding citizens.
It is a long slog, but if there ever was a fight that was worth it, this is it.