What exactly was the difference between the United States and the USSR? Both were political unions occupying large land masses. Both believed themselves to be unique political experiments which would redefine the nature of human governance around the world. Both even believed that government existed for the benefit of the people. Yet beyond the specifics, there was one fundamental difference between the two. Not simply in how they were governed, but why they were governed.
In the United States, government existed through the consent of the governed. Government was simply a mechanism through which the people ruled themselves. In the USSR, by contrast, government derived not from the people, but for the people. Not "Of" or "By", just "For". With the typical logic familiar to the nanny state, Communism existed to benefit the people, and so did not require their actual input, only their support. And their support was assumed to be a given, because, after all, the government existed for their benefit. Therefore it was completely impossible for them not to support it.
This kind of circular political logic routinely runs through the intellectual veins of progressives. It can be seen blatantly in the health care power grab, as Democrats insist that they are passing a bill for the people, while completely ignoring the polls showing widespread opposition to the bill. But that is the difference between the US and the USSR. While the US grounded its idea of "The People" in one man, one vote, representation-- ideological tyrannies such as the USSR or the EU, ground theirs in an ideological understanding of "The People."
When Americans used to talk about the "Will of the People", they meant the voting citizens. When the left talks about the "Will of the People", what they mean is the people's will as expressed in the tenets of their socialist ideology. Thus, when an American said, "The People Want Change", he meant that it was the express view of the American people, on a person-to-person basis that there be a change. When a Communist or Leftist said, "The People Want Change", he was expressing an ideological conception of what his ideological conception of the people wanted. It had nothing to do with what the people, individually or collectively, might want. Because they didn't figure into it.
To the left, "The People" were and are an ideological construct, not a real living and breathing group. But to poll them would in their mind be generally useless and redundant. Similarly, a scientist might conduct a research study to determine the healthiest diet for monkeys. But it would never occur to him to ask the monkeys what they want to eat. Because not only don't monkeys have any opinions worth listening to, but he considers his own research methodology to be the best way of finding out what monkeys should be eating. Similarly, when the left wants to find out what they people want, they wouldn't bother asking the people except as a political tactic. Instead they would read their Alinsky or their Marx or their Moore or Ehrenreich, if they want people they feel are "qualified" to talk about the working class, and what "The People" really want.
To understand this better, think about a theocracy. Imagine a country led by a man who claims to follow the Will of God. But he does not actually ask God what to do. God to him is a "concept". He uses that concept to justify his rule and his actions. He is not doing the will of God, he is doing his own will, as he derives from whatever framework of ideas and beliefs he uses to rule. He is sure that God would approve, but he is not actually interested in any feedback from him. So, too, the Left and "The People". The left rules on behalf of the People, and in their name. It just isn't interested in hearing from them.
Transition into a socialist nanny state moves it further from a nation of, for, and by the people
This in a nutshell is why the US is slowly becoming the USSR, the United States of Socialist Republics. Because its transition into a socialist nanny state moves it further from a nation of, for, and by the people-- and toward a generic socialist tyranny in which the people are not meant to have any say in its governance. As the Democratic Party has slid further and further to the left, it has parted from Jeffersonian democracy, and embraced an ideological radicalism in which the wishes of the people are already embedded in the ideology, thus making democracy itself redundant. And the result is tyranny, as liberals replace the Will of the People, with their ideology, while pretending that the two are really one and the same.
Where the United States believed that government exists as a tool of the people to manage their larger affairs, the USSR, both the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and Obama's United States of Socialist Republics, believe that government exists to manage the lives of the people in tune with their ideology. The ideology of the rulers, not the people. To the left, whether it be the Politburo or the present day Democratic congress, the people are the ruled, not the rulers. Where the United States was founded on the belief that the people are naturally free, the Left rules on the belief that the people are naturally slaves.
In the ideological formulae of the Left, the American people are slaves of capitalism, industry, and political elites, and the reactionary ideologies that these use to control them. The Left seeks to "liberate" them from their oppression, but since the people are not ready or mature enough to handle their own affairs, the Left's "activists" and "organizers" must first teach and enforce the tenets of their own ideology on them in order to set them free. Once again, this is the circular logic of the left at work, in which freedom and the will of the people can only be derived from and measured in relation to their compliance with the left's own ideology.
This is George Owell's 1984's "Freedom is Slavery", the formula by which the will of the people is defined as obedience to party doctrine. Anyone who disagrees with party doctrine is a reactionary, a tool of the astroturfing elites, a racist, a right wing extremist, a fascist-- and so on and so forth. But the essence is that the Nanny State disposes of democracy, replacing it with political conformity. Which is inevitable when you define the Will of the People based on ideology, rather than what they people actually want. That too is why the Republican Party goes back and forth in its positions, while the Democratic Party only grows more extreme in its own.
When you replace the Will of the People with ideology, what remains is the tyranny of the few over the many
When you replace the Will of the People with ideology, what remains is the tyranny of the few over the many. Power is concentrated in the hands of a small number, for the supposed benefit of the many. The state extends its control into the daily life of every man, woman and child-- for their supposed benefit again. There is no freedom anywhere, only an omnipotent tyranny that proclaims its own benevolence at every turn. And so in the "Name of the People", the people are deprived of their freedom, their income and their lives. This is the ultimate and final hypocrisy of the Left.
The Left is not democratic. It cannot be democratic, because it believes that the will of the people is knowable only through their ideology, not through the ballot box. And when and where it takes over, democracy and freedom wither and die. The left's takeover of America, at the cultural, economic and political levels is ushering in a United States of Socialist Republics, detached from the original America, even as it uses the old country's symbols. Much as Orwell predicted in the forties that a Socialist dictatorship in England would still make use of the monarchy as a symbol.
And that is why only the Will of People can defeat the Left and its tyrannical ideology. Because the Left is built on the lie that its ideological agenda is that of the people. Once in power, it works to suppress the people precisely because their will is a threat to it. The Elitism and Collectivism of the Left is built to dominate and control the people. And when confronting popular discontent, the Left's only mechanisms are political propaganda and tyrannical force. When the former is swept away, only the naked reality of the latter remains. And so the masks come off and the Left is seen for what it really is. Tyranny.
And the United States of America was built on destroying tyranny by the will of the people.
