WhatFinger


Slow contraction of freedom through vast increases of power accruing to central government, whether federal or state

Justice, The social contract and freedom



Currently America is being ruled in an imperial manner masked as democratic rule of law, while being anaesthetized in a hi-tech lounge where We Know What Is Best For You is boomed into its brain through the most advanced head-phones, while visions of a comfortable future promised by the Ruling Class dance in the virtual reality goggles strapped to its head. Have Americans decided to give up freedom for a promised idyllic kingdom? Hopefully the mid-term elections of Nov. 2, 2010 registered a resounding No!

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Can leaders now emerge who acknowledge that authority is limited and derives from God, the fountain of righteousness and justice? Or, do Americans in the next two years again succumb to the fantasy of a messianic figure? Friedrick Hayek once commented that it is but a step from the idealist to the fanatic. Socialist-statist notions have so pervaded the American media and populist sentiment that they ensure self-fulfillment through enactments by Congress which speedily and mindlessly pass, impelled by the urgency of perceived economic and social crises. Such are the pivots on which politics, economics, and social revolution turn. However, what is being implemented and the manner in which it is being implemented is different from that which is traditionally known as Socialism. I call it “Soft Fascism,” the autocracy of The Leader and the Ruling Class. By this I do not mean the fascism that perpetrated the horrific barbarisms leading up to and during the Second World War, but the early forms of the 1920s Fascism which is parallel to the American Progressivism at that time and is espoused by today’s Ruling Class. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and other leading left-wing Democrats prefer to call themselves Progressives rather than Liberals. From generation to generation during the past hundred years their mantra has consistently been unprecedented crisis calls for unprecedented action. In a modern democratic society implementation of Progressivist ideals can occur only on a wave of adulation and mindless media enthusiasm which ask no serious questions and probe no background. Once in power the identifying mark of soft fascism is either central government power play by personal fiat masked as ordinary administrative procedure (government plays hardball vs. business executives play hardball) or, preferably, as benign crisis intervention -- Pierre Trudeau: “Just watch me…;” Barack Obama: “We won…” Even cabinet members are circumvented, as John Heilemann notes in his recent New York Magazine essay – several cabinet members saying that in the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency they never had one call from him. Heilemann adds the devastating comment that Obama didn’t know what he didn’t know, yet his self-confidence was … stratospheric. So much for consensus politics, ideological dialogue, freedom to amend legislation, and congressional comity. No longer vigorous, rational debate; only stratagems to cut off debate. No longer speaking to the point but personal attacks. No longer expounding ideological differences on the floor of the House followed by convivial camaraderie at night to hammer out solutions to issues. Personal destruction is the hallmark of fascist politics. Soft Fascism dresses in the guise of social concern and “awareness.” But it is fascism nonetheless. It ever lurks close to the surface and to the unwary will quickly breach the surface of a democratic society. It should be remembered that during the mid- and late-1930s there were many admirers of the fascist ideal in Britain and the United States. Its mantra was, and is, that societal meaning and authenticity are found in collective enterprise, managed by self-appointed elites. The key is statism of a particular kind: you are welcome to own anything and to think that you control it -- property, shares, a corporation, a family – so long as it serves what is deemed by those in power to be in the interests of the community and the state. Hillary’s attack on “patriarchy” and “outdated motherhood,” in favor of the community controlling how children are to be raised -- it takes a village -- is a case in point, as are Obama’s “czars” and the recent takeover of major sections of the USA economy. I am a Liberal in the classical sense of what Liberalism was politically and economically in its late 18th and 19th century beginnings: the ideals of political and economic freedom, competing political parties, a free-market economy, freedom of speech and a free press, religious freedom, separation of religious authority from the power of the state, government by the consent of the people as enshrined in the American Constitution, an open and transparent political process, and justice in independent courts. Today that seems to be called Conservatism. So much for labels. I call to mind the many formative influences in my life, from ancient classical writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius and the Bible, to modern writers such as Isaiah Berlin on the nature of political freedom, Friedrich Hayek and the Vienna School of economics, and Karl Popper whose writings on the concept of an open society became a secretly circulated “bible” during Stalin’s despotic Communist rule in the Soviet Union. The authoritarianism of which I speak is the gradual imposition of state control over the economy and its resources, through control of the individuals within the economy by myriads of rules and regulations which are imposed for what the planners deem to be the greater good. Please notice how often President Obama uses the first personal pronoun “I” and the word “must” in addressing what he intends to do; or the pronoun “my” when referencing members of his administration who are mandated to take certain actions.

Man is not free unless government is limited -- as government expands, liberty contracts

Keep Ronald Reagan’s aphorism in mind: man is not free unless government is limited -- as government expands, liberty contracts. This, in fact, is the fundamental tenet of the Founding Fathers and the bedrock of the American Republic. What is happening is not sudden takeover, but the slow contraction of freedom through vast increases of power accruing to central government, whether federal or state. Over a century and a half ago Alexis de Tocqueville pondered the future of American democracy and worried about its inherent danger: paternalism, the seduction of rescue and promised protection from uncertainty which entails tiny controls that morph into vast power. The end? Obsequious compliance. The death of liberty by a thousand little cuts. This is not a haphazard plan. It is well thought out, not only for the United States but for the New World Order. That is what social engineers do when they believe they and their principles transcend the free-spirited entrepreneurship and pursuit of opportunity that are built into the American Constitution.


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Dr. Samuel J. Mikolaski -- Bio and Archives

</em>Dr. Samuel Mikolaski, is a retired theological professor.  His curriculum vitae and published work are on his website: drsamstheology.com</em>


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