Freedom or Coercion, Leadership or Authoritarianism
Republicans and Democrats are vying to see which party will exercise the most influence over our nation for the next four years. Sadly, most of the campaigning has been focused on trying attack their characters of the various candidates (and there are plenty of grounds to attack the character of very one of the Presidential and Vice Presidential characters if you dig deep enough and uncover the skeletons in their respective closets). But all that “noise” is a distraction from what direction we want our nation to go… and by “direction” and “we want”, I don’t mean to imply we are all on the same page, but we are all facing the same decision.
Freedom vs Coercion
Whether you are talking taxes, regulations, laws, mandates, or executive orders (TRLME), you are talking about “Coercion”. The power of the government to pass taxes, regulations, laws, mandates and executive orders lies in both their authority to do so (except when those things violate our Constitutional or “human rights”) and just as importantly the “power” the government has through its various enforcement agencies to coerce compliance. Whether you agree or disagree with individual TRLME or not, your freedom is being constrained.
In some cases, our individual freedom has to be constrained to protect the individual freedom of someone else. In other instances, our individual freedom is constrained because the majority of Americans have decided that something is worth doing like providing a social safety net for our fellow citizens that cannot care for themselves. And in many cases, a politician (like the President), a bureaucrat (at a regulatory agency), or a bunch of people (like Congress) decide that it is for the “greater good” that people be coerced to do something.
It is this last reason that troubles me the most. We established the government in this country to protect our individual human rights and our civil rights and we rebelled from England because it violated that obligation. And yet brick by brick, we are establishing a new “nobility”, that while it may go by other names including “the Swamp”, the “elite”, the political class feel as if they have the right to take away our individual freedoms for the “greater good”.
Inherent in this belief is that “the group’s” interest is more important than the individual’s freedom. That is a very “Marxist” belief. Even worse, this concept version of “neo-Marxism” can be quite appealing the wealthy and powerful elite, who can seize control of the “the group” and justify their coercion on the basis that their decisions are for the “greater good”. Which gets us to “leadership” vs “authoritarianism”.
Leadership vs authoritarianism
When humans have individual freedom, they are difficult to “control”. You have to persuade them on a course of action and if you fail, they simply choose not to go along. A great example is a “charity”. Charities for the most part rely on persuading people that they should give their time and money to the organization because they can trust those heading the organization to do the thing that the charity stands for. The requires leadership.
While many of those members of “the Swamp”, “the elite” or the “political class” have power, many don’t have leadership skill. Instead of deriving their “power” from the people, which is what leaders do. They derive it from “the position” which is what authoritarianism is all about. Perhaps the greatest example of political leadership was expressed by JFK in his speech where he called upon people not to ask what the country could do for them, but what they could do for the country. This call for public action and service stands juxtaposed to a mandate, which essentially says, “I am President, so you have to do what I say”. Or the head of a regulatory agency, that says, “you have to comply with this regulation, you don’t get a say in it.”
The Election of 2024
It seems our country is headed down a path in which “democracy” will be simply a “pretty wrapper” on what is essentially an authoritarian government that operates on coercion rather than focusing on preserving freedom. The real threat to democracy is not some single leader, it will come from a party that feels it is entitled to “rule”. It will come as more and more power gets concentrated into Washington instead of distributed to the states. The most “democratic” process in the world is the “marketplace”, consumers decide what to buy to satisfy their wants (the ultimate pursuit of happiness) and sellers are free to decide what they want to make knowing that the marketplace will ultimately determine its value.
Alternatives, to this “most democratic process” is rationing, price controls, subsidies, and regulations. In the first case, some entity steps into the marketplace and uses its coercive power to determine what is “fair”. In the second case, some entity determines how much of a good should be produced by determining its price and thereby changing the natural supply/demand balance. In the third case, some entity influence demand for something by artificially lowering the price and funds those subsidies by coercively taking money from citizens to fund the subsidies.
And then there are regulations. Most of us accept a degree of regulation in order to ensure the safety of workers and consumers. While coercive, the “rub” is that to the degree that most people support the regulation, it is not as “coercive” as when the regulation seems to reflect an ideology more than a safety measure.
Some people want a “nanny” state. Various psychologists have written on the subject that many people feel more secure as adults when “the state” takes the place of their parents. They want to be treated as “minors” incapable of making good decisions and so relying on the state to make the tough decisions for them.
America was not set up to cater to those people. In fact, the founding fathers took steps to avoid the government becoming the authoritarian coercive power that parents represent in families. They did this having observed that throughout history, the government tends to become more of an abusive parent than a loving one. And so they opted to try to create a series of checks and balances, that forces the state to keep returning to “the people” for “permission” to enact some law or regulation either directly or through what was supposed to be elected “representatives”.
I say “supposed to be elected representatives” because the evidence is in that these “elected representatives” do not in fact represent their constituencies but based on voting analysis these elected representatives tend to represent their party who are largely under the influence of those who “fund” the party (namely the wealthy).
A “populist” revolution
It is time for a second revolution. Not a violent one like the last one, but a non-violent reassertion of the role of government to protect our freedoms. We need to remove elected representatives that have been in office so long, they have become part of “the Swamp” and not representatives of the people. Ideally, we need to install term limits.
It may be time for us to simply begin “voting against the money”. We need to track which candidates get the most support from the wealthy and vote for the other person. We need to support those that understand “regulations” exist to keep people safe, not to control them. We need to oppose any attempt to systemize discrimination or to preach group identity over individual identity. We need to preach tolerance of differences rather than the pressure to conform or risk ostracism (cancellation in modern parlance).
Our greatest “inheritance” is that we have been born into a Republic and not an authoritarian state. Our responsibility is to preserve it.
