The Soft Despotism of Comfortable People
The greatest threat to liberty may not be tyrants demanding power, but citizens volunteering to hand it over.
Fox News just ran a segment on the rise of the so-called “democratic socialists,” and as I was catching up on the news, I found myself struck by something far larger than the fortunes of one political faction. What caught my attention was the sheer number of formerly free, or at least mostly free, nations across the Western world that have adopted increasingly autocratic policies in pursuit of some socialist, progressive, or utopian vision of society.
The pattern is difficult to ignore.
Governments that once celebrated free speech now regulate it. Governments that once treated citizens as sovereign individuals increasingly treat them as subjects to be managed. Political leaders who once spoke the language of liberty now speak the language of safety, equity, sustainability, misinformation, public health, or social justice. The terminology changes, but the result is remarkably consistent: more power concentrated in the hands of government and less freedom left in the hands of ordinary people.
The United Kingdom may be the most visible example. This is the nation that built the foundations of the English-speaking world’s understanding of liberty. It gave us Magna Carta, common law, parliamentary government, and many of the traditions that shaped the American founding. Yet today it often appears more interested in policing speech than protecting it. Citizens have been questioned by authorities for social media posts. Protest rights have been restricted. Government surveillance continues to expand. The country that once ruled the seas increasingly projects an image of managerial bureaucracy and cultural uncertainty.
It has literally become the IngSoc dominated Airstrip One of Orwell’s imaginations.
Britain is not unique.
Across Europe, governments increasingly dictate acceptable speech, regulate political dissent, and expand state control over economic and social life. The justification is almost always noble. The goal is always presented as fairness, safety, inclusion, equality, or social harmony. The problem is that nearly every expansion of government power throughout history has been accompanied by a similarly noble justification.
What puzzles me most is not the behavior of governments. Governments have sought more power since the first king discovered that taxes were easier to collect than permission slips. What puzzles me is the apparent willingness of free people to surrender freedoms that previous generations fought, bled, and died to secure.
Why are the people not fighting back?
Perhaps prosperity has made people complacent. Perhaps several generations removed from genuine tyranny have left many unable to recognize it in its early forms. Perhaps modern citizens have become accustomed to viewing government as a provider rather than a servant. If government is responsible for your healthcare, education, retirement, housing, and security, eventually it becomes difficult to tell where citizenship ends and dependency begins.
America remains different, though not immune. Even here, people who promote freedom and independence draw scorn and are treated like heretics and Chicken Littles —but we are none of that. The comments from global visitors at the World Cup, freely given, indicate that they are experiencing a level of freedom here that doesn’t exist in their homelands.
I genuinely believe that if it were not for the desperately clinging remnants of our federalist system, a Supreme Court that still contains some originalist instincts, and the existence of the Second Amendment, we would be traveling down the same road to perdition at roughly the same speed.
Federalism has been weakened but still creates barriers to centralized power. The courts still occasionally remind politicians that constitutional limits exist, and the Second Amendment serves as a constant reminder that the American citizen was never intended to be a passive subject of the state.
Those protections are imperfect, they are under near constant attack, and yet they remain among the last structural obstacles preventing the concentration of power that has become commonplace elsewhere in the West.
The real question is not why governments seek power because they always will. Just as it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, accumulating power is the nature of government. I guess my increasing disquiet concerns whether free people still possess the will to resist giving it away.
Exactly right. Comfortably numb. We complain about the culture and corrupt government, rightfully so, but I'm always astonished how many people don't vote. Granted the elections are rigged a thousand different ways but if people took the time to be even modestly informed and exercise the right to vote we could overcome the theft.
"I guess my increasing disquiet concerns whether free people still possess the will to resist giving it away."
No.
It's not just comfort either. That's part of it, sure. Why should I have to work for my survival when I can just sit in my government funded recliner watching my government funded big screen TV in my government funded apartment eating my government funded food?
Part of it is ignorance of economic reality. Magical thinking if you will. The government is some sort of magical unicorn that craps money. A job is not me trading my labor, skills and abilities to someone who needs them in return for currency, it's being exploited by an evil corporation. Why should they be required to spend their time in a "thankless job" when they can "get off the hamster wheel" and presumably just let the government take care of them? (I was recently in a discussion with someone who made that exact argument to me, hence the quotes).
Part of it is institutionalized dependency. Less than 20% of the population lives in rural areas these days. 80+% of the population lives in cities and suburbs. So what, right?
I grew up on a farm "middle of nowhere" adjacent. When and where I grew up, when you needed food, you grew it. When you needed a barn, you built it. When your truck or tractor or plumbing or heater (didn't have A/C) broke, you fixed it. If it was a big enough job, you'd call relatives to come help provide labor. If it was something you didn't have the knowledge to do, you'd call friends and family and someone would know how to do it and be willing to teach you.
When a tornado went through between the house and the barn, knocked a tree down across the county road and took out 40 feet of fence, we and the only neighbor we had that lived within two miles of us who owned the land the tree was on, had the tree cut up and off the road (we split the firewood), the fence patched up and the animals that escaped rounded up and back in the barnlot by the end of the day. That's just how rural folk, live. Something needs done...do it.
I joined the military after high school and have lived most of my adult life in cities...in absolute wonderment of the mostly forced, but completely accepted dependency and helplessness of city folk. Urban and surburban people have been taught from birth NOT to do things for themselves, but to call the "professionals" to handle it. Many people don't think it's even legal (and in some localities it isn't) for them to do things themselves. Of course, even if they choose to, they still have to beg permission from the government, and then get their work approved after they're done, which, of course, the government makes as difficult, painful and expensive as possible in order to discourage self-help.
When they need food, they go to the grocery store where the food comes neatly packaged in cellophane, cans and cardboard boxes. When they need a shed (no room for a barn), they get planning permission, zoning permission, a survey, a building permit and if they want it to have lights, an electrical permit, and then hire people to build it. Or pay someone twice as much to do the whole deal including handling all the permits and inspections. When their government approved, licensed and inspected car, or permitted and inspected plumbing or heater or A/C breaks, they call a mechanic, or a plumber or HVAC tech to fix it.
When a storm comes through and a tree falls across the road and onto their property and destroys their fence, they call the government and hope the tree gets removed this week so they can get the permits they need and hire someone to rebuild their fence maybe within a month and hope that someone turned the pets that got out get in to the pound so they can go pick them up.
80+ percent of the population have been born, browbeaten and brainwashed into believing that not only is it illegal for them to take care of themselves and do things for themselves...but that it's impossible for them to do so. And it naturally follows that if I can't, under any circumstances, take care of myself, then it's obviously someone else's responsibility to take care of me right?
That's the government's job.