By Daniel Greenfield ——Bio and Archives--November 7, 2010
American Politics, News | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
"I glorify in Lenin World faith and glorify my faith" Mayakovsky, 1920 "O great Stalin, O leader of the peoples, Thou who broughtest man to birth. Thou who fructifies the earth, Thou who restorest to centuries, Thou who makest bloom the spring, Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords... Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou, Sun reflected by millions of hearts." Hymn to Stalin “thou shalt smile! for our President is smiling just a man openly smiling... let him beam let his raw laughter flow where the fruited plains have faded, have dried. let them slowly soak it up, that nurturing laughter. let all the hillsides bloom with colors that no one’s seen for eight long years. let Obama laughter ring. long may it let it flood the high skies and tie sparkling wonder up in a silver bow." Diane Wald, Starting Today, 100 Poems for Obama's first 100 DaysAn impossible mission demands symbolic figures, leaders who transcend the political and ascend to the mystical. Who are somehow inhumanly inspirational, able to elevate their followers to a new state of being. Messiahs, so to speak. Leader-worship underlies the impossible mission. With faith in our leaders we can succeed. Faith is required because the mission is inherently impossible. Only by believing in the latest Camelot in the latest "Communism-Over-the-Hill", can people suspend their disbelief, committing themselves to the thrill of Hope and Change, to "Yes We Can" and "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For." The ecstasy is religious or rather pseudo-religious. It is government masquerading as god, anointing messiahs and trying to hide policy flaws under the veil of charisma. Leader worship serves as a cover for tyranny, but more importantly as a cover for failure. Many people react to personalities, more than to policies. It is the antithesis of democracy which treats politicians as representatives, rather than saviors. But to god as government, democracy is heresy. It presumes that the people are qualified to elect leaders, rather than fainting before them and falling down at their feet. It presumes an equality between the electors and the elected. And equality is what the champions of equality promote, but not what they believe. If we replace god with government, then it stands to reason that the government are on another plane of being above ordinary people. They may not be quite gods, but they are certainly more than mortal men. Their election is premised on our failure to conduct our own affairs, requiring wiser benevolent folk to step in and look after us. To guide us in the proper path. And so government goes from tool to minister to deity, deciding who will eat and who will starve, who will live and who will die. This is the essence of that arrogance, that grasping for absolute power in the name of a lie. Government as god is always looking forward, to a new deal, a new frontier or a great society, some vast project of social justice always out there, a faint vision of a Communist future that is always hovering over the next horizon like a mirage in the desert. A future always out of reach because human greed is in the way. And since underneath it itself is also built on human greed, like the worst of fanatics, socialism maddeningly chases its own tail. And sooner or later it always turns on the people it claims to want to help, unless they turn on it first.
View Comments
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City writer and columnist. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and his articles appears at its Front Page Magazine site.