I receive a daily dispatch from Doug Casey that I find enlightening in these difficult times. It is a free subscription that some readers may find of interest. Today the following missive came from the dispatch that I found most interesting considering the polarization of politics currently taking place in the U.S..
Of course what happens to the U.S. will dramatically affect the rest of the world so maybe reading the real downside might give pause to some and help them to consider taking steps to protect their assets and their families. To sign up for the free daily dispatch just click here.
Are we sliding into a tyranny of good intentions?
‘Nationalizing the moral life of the people is the first step toward totalitarianism’
Nearly 50 years ago, Kenneth Minogue, a professor of political science at the London School of Economics, published The Liberal Mind, his classic study of the dominant philosophy of the 20th century: radical niceness. Rooted in extreme liberal optimism and salvationist aspiration, this triumphant ideology (Prof. Minogue said) tenaciously advanced the notion that history requires the perfection of human society, that governments – in pursuit of this perfection – are obliged “to provide every man, woman, child and dog with the conditions of the good life." Prof. Minogue ended with a warning: “A populace which hands its moral order over to governments, no matter how impeccable its reasons, will become dependent and slavish."
Now professor emeritus at LSE, the 80-year-old has published a remarkable sequel – The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life. He picks up where he left off, documenting the ways in which democracy (which once expanded freedom) requires strict obedience to the state – and to the bureaucratic moral order that sustains it.
An elegant essayist of the old school, Prof. Minogue advances his argument by small steps that can end abruptly in crisp revelation.
“I am of two minds about democracy," he writes, “and so is everyone else. We all agree that it is the sovereign remedy for corruption, war and poverty in the Third World. We would certainly tolerate no other system in our own country. Yet most people are disenchanted with the way it works. One reason is that our rulers now manage so much of our lives that they cannot help but do it badly. They have overreached. Blunder follows blunder."
Far worse, traditional democratic theory has been flipped upside down: “Our rulers now make us accountable to them."
Count the ways.
“Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes or drinking too much. Most of these governments think we borrow too much money for our personal pleasures and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading bedtime stories to our children.
“Many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.
“Debt, intemperance and incompetence in rearing our children are no doubt regrettable – but they are vices, and – left alone – they will soon lead to the pain that corrects. Life is a better teacher of virtue than politicians and most sensible governments in the past have left moral faults to the churches.
“The point is that governments have no business telling us how to live. They are tiresome enough in the exercise of authority. They are intolerable when they mount the pulpit. Nor should we be in any doubt that nationalizing the moral life of the people is the first step toward totalitarianism."
Original article here.
Sound thoughts.
But you don’t need anyone to tell you that an increasing number of Americans are fed up with the government’s daily intrusions into everyday life. Just yesterday I was informed by the local gas company that, due to a change in government regulations, they could no longer service my back-up generator (a must-have in the rural northern climes) or even provide the gas required to run it. So I have two choices – spend a thousand dollars or so to move it further from the garage or shut it down. Fortunately I have the money, but what if I didn’t?
Of course, griping about government is nothing new and, frankly, begins to bore. There is, however, something a bit more exciting that’s come to mind of late – though only as a thought experiment. And that is whether one of the possible outcomes of the current crisis might be the overthrow of the U.S. government.
If you have nothing better to do, stick with me while I ponder the imponderable.
The End of Democracy?
As evidenced in the essay above, and in a growing number of comments made by people on both the left and right of the political spectrum, there’s widespread and growing discontent with the institution of democracy in these United States.
On the left, there is an emergent view that the perfect-world agenda is being stymied by the obstructionist curmudgeons on the right. On the right, there is heartfelt anger at the blunt-force passage of populist anti-business, anti-liberty legislation by the controlling leftists.
In fact, just about the only thing both sides of the political spectrum can agree on is that democracy is not working.
It’s hard to argue the point, but I have long come to accept this polarization as natural, given the age of the U.S. democracy. Decades of political pandering, payoffs, and proliferation have reformed the societal landscape, building a wall between the productive elements and the net recipients of government largess. In the latter category, I’m not just referring to the unfortunates who have to rely on government checks to cover the food bills, but including all the corporations and non-governmental organizations whose long and cozy relations with their cronies in Congress allow them special favors.
There is an old adage that one should lead, follow, or get out of the way. At this point, our democratically elected government is doing none of the above. And so here we are, passengers on a runaway train with effectively no one at the controls.
As the situation seems irresolvable at this point, I can’t help wonder what might come next? Especially after the train leaves the rails, followed by a second and far more devastating round of economic destruction?
At that point, with tens of millions of people suffering the indignity and privations of long-term unemployment, and their ranks swelling by the day, could we actually see an overthrow of the American democracy?
Leaning once again on the astute observations of Machiavelli in his masterpiece The Prince, I’d like to try to imagine just how such an overthrow might occur.
In The Prince, Machiavelli describes how it is relatively easy to capture a country whose society is divided into principalities (or dukedoms, tribes, etc.), each of whom has their own loyal following. That’s because leading a successful revolt can be accomplished by lining up the support of a group of ambitious princes who then act in concert against the person at the top.
Once you capture such a country, however, it’s very hard to hold it. That’s because, in the same way that you can corrupt a few well-placed princes, so can any would-be usurper. A good example of this axiom is provided in the movie Braveheart when a handful of the Scottish lords, each with their own following, are bought off. At a decisive moment in a battle against the English, they lead their followers away, leaving William Wallace to his unhappy fate.
For the sake of this discussion, I’m passing over the republics that were the topic of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, because I think we’re well past the point of a functioning participatory government at this point. In my view, we’ve been effectively taken over by the professional politicians and the entrenched bureaucrats that serve them.
And so, having dealt with countries replete with princes and their pockets of local loyalties, we turn to those countries that are led by a central authority and administered by bureaucrats.
While one could debate as to whether the U.S. is such a country, my assessment is that it is. Though the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches are supposed to provide checks and balances, the unfettered growth of government power to the detriment of the individual makes it clear that, no matter who occupies which positions in government, the net result is the same: the government tells us, the citizenry, to jump, and the legions of bureaucrats institute and enforce the rules determining how high.
In any event, back to Machiavelli and my thought experiment, it was Machiavelli’s observation that a country led by a central authority is very hard to overthrow. That’s because the public has no strong loyalty to anyone in power and thus can’t be encouraged to rally around that personage, prince, or tribal chiefdom in order to rise up and seize the controls. This point is easy to understand by asking yourself if anyone would rally to a battle call issued by Barney Frank or Nancy Pelosi, or any congressman or state governor, for that matter.
Hardly.
So a country with a centralized power, in this thesis, the United States, tends to be very hard to overthrow. But once you have done so, Machiavelli informs us, it’s very easy to hold power. Modern examples of the truth of this observation are plentiful, including China, North Korea, Libya, Zimbabwe, Burma, etc. That’s because, again, the population has no loyalty to any potential opposition that can be used to rally them to action.
With that background, I turn now to how an overthrow might occur. Paradoxically, it begins with the strongly held cultural beliefs in the United States surrounding freedom, justice, and liberty for all. Even though these principles have been ground into the dirt by the politicos, we Americans still like to believe that these American virtues live on in our very cores.
So be it.
Now imagine a day in the not-too-distant future when something terrible happens that shakes America to its core. It could be a collapse of the U.S. dollar that literally wipes out the wealth of the majority of population.
Or it could be an atomic bomb going off in a major city.
Neither of those two possibilities are out of the question, and they are just a couple of any number of equally frightening potential scenarios. If such a scenario came to pass, what do you think the public reaction would be, especially of those of a more conservative political mindset?
Do you think their already seething anger at what they see as a wholesale stomping on the underlying principles of America might boil over and send thousands into the street? I do.
However, rather than democracy as we know it being swept away by a popular uprising, complete with the whole pitchforks and torches thing, I see a far more likely scenario being a military coup – though that coup would likely only take place once the streets were filled with angry citizens.
A military coup? Impossible, I can sense many of you thinking… but stick with me for just a moment longer and I’ll try to explain how it might work.
So, the tipping point event has occurred and the Democrats are seen as being at fault, either for mismanaging the country into economic ruin or for failing to properly look after national defense. Angry citizens take to the streets, and ugly confrontations are broadcast around the clock on the cable news. The National Guard is called out and people are killed, and nothing the politicians on either side say in press conferences given in undisclosed locations can mollify the angry masses.
At which point a general, called to the White House for a crisis consultation, arrests the president and the military moves in.
“Never gonna happen!” you say. “We Americans may have our differences, but a dictatorship? Never!”
Not so fast. In fact, I think a number of Americans, though initially shocked, could quickly find themselves supportive of the military’s coup.
Keep playing along with the thought experiment and see if it’s even a remote possibility.
For instance, imagine the words that General Petraeus might use as he addresses the nation for the first time.
“My fellow citizens, it is with deep regret that I must announce that in order to defend the nation and the Constitution, a joint military administration has temporarily removed the president from office and disbanded the legislative branch until the period of crisis has passed. This action has been taken only after much deliberation and only after it has been determined that the nation’s leadership has failed in its constitutional responsibilities and, in so doing, led us to this dark chapter in American history.”
With a backdrop of a waving American flag and a speech replete with patriotic quotes and references to the Constitution, freedom and liberty, I think the repugnance that most Americans feel for the politicians would override any deeper sense of outrage at the military’s actions, especially in that those actions would only come in the context of a whopper of a crisis and would be positioned as being only “temporary.”
But once the overthrow is complete, it would be very hard to overturn, and a new American era would begin. In time, I would expect the military to step aside, but only after American democracy had been reformatted and streamlined.
Do I think this scenario could actually come to pass? Not really. But I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.
And it is no certainty that a suspension of American democracy will come from the right; in the teeth of a crisis, anything can happen. Including that a Democrat president, faced with widespread rioting, could declare martial law and shut down opposition media and websites for a “cooling period.”
I’m not predicting some sort of dystopian future for the U.S., but there’s no ignoring the almost infinite number of historical examples of political systems and arrangements being suddenly tossed over the side. That the U.S. democracy has become so degraded and discredited, and appears to be on track to only degrade further, seems to me to make it vulnerable.
While I can’t be sure how things will evolve from here, I have a hard time believing that we’ll get through this crisis without big changes, if for no other reason than that it’s clear to pretty much everyone that the status quo isn’t working.
Other than idle musing, is there anything actionable in this discussion?
Not really, other than as a reminder to take general measures against uncertainty – laying a solid foundation in precious metals and giving thought to establishing a second home, or at least a bank account, in another country you like to spend time in. In order of priority, the collapse of the dollar is far more concerning to me than a military coup.
With the basic preparations, you can get on with enjoying your life. Because if you dwell too much on this sort of thing, you’ll become paranoid and miss the best this wonderful world has to offer.
Echoes from History
At the risk of being labeled an incurable doom-and-gloomer, I want to share the contents of an email I received yesterday from Rob Roper, a sound-thinking friend. Rob forwarded excerpts from an interesting historical document: the 1920 Nazi party platform, which, according to Rob, was authored for the most part by Adolf Hitler. I am pasting it in here without comment, simply because I found it interesting and thought you might too.
12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the Nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the Nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises (already) converted into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large enterprises.
15. We demand the large-scale development of old-age pension schemes.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class; the immediate communalization of the large department stores, which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities.
17. We demand land reform in accordance with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes. Abolition of ground rent and prevention of all speculation in land.
18. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities. Persons committing base crimes against the People, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death without regard of religion or race.
19. We demand the replacement of Roman Law, which serves a materialistic World Order, by German Law.
20. In order to make higher education—and thereby entry into leading positions—available to every able and industrious German, the State must provide a thorough restructuring of our entire public educational system. The courses of study at all educational institutions are to be adjusted to meet the requirements of practical life. Understanding of the concept of the State must be achieved through the schools (teaching of civics) at the earliest age at which it can be grasped. We demand the education at the public expense of specially gifted children of poor parents, without regard to the latter’s position or occupation.
21. The State must raise the level of national health by means of mother-and-child care, the banning of juvenile labor, achievement of physical fitness through legislation for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and maximum support for all organizations providing physical training for young people.
22. We demand the abolition of hireling troops and the creation of a national army.
23. We demand laws to fight against deliberate political lies and their dissemination by the press. In order to make it possible to create a German press, we demand:
a) all editors and editorial employees of newspapers appearing in the German language must be German by race;
b) non-German newspapers require express permission from the State for their publication. They may not be printed in the German language;
c) any financial participation in a German newspaper or influence on such a paper is to be forbidden by law to non-Germans and the penalty for any breech of this law will be the closing of the newspaper in question, as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-Germans involved. Newspapers which violate the public interest are to be banned. We demand laws against trends in art and literature which have a destructive effect on our national life, and the suppression of performances that offend against the above requirements.
24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations, provided that they do not endanger the existence of the State or offend the concepts of decency and morality of the Germanic race. The Party as such stands for positive Christianity, without associating itself with any particular denomination. It fights against the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a permanent revival of our Nation can be achieved only from within, on the basis of: Public Interest before Private Interest.
25. To carry out all the above we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the Reich. Unquestioned authority by the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and over its organizations in general. The establishment of trade and professional organizations to enforce the Reich basic laws in the individual states.
The Party leadership promises to take an uncompromising stand, at the cost of their own lives if need be, on the enforcement of the above points.
Munich, February 24, 1920.
That’s It for Today
I promise I’ll write something on a more upbeat theme tomorrow. If only because I really am positive about the world we live in. Yes, I think we have serious challenges ahead, but provided you live within your means and take certain precautions, then almost no matter what comes to pass, you’ll be able to enjoy a fulfilled and happy life.
If you are unclear what precautions to take, then I would urge you to buy the set of CDs from Casey’s Gold & Resource Summit (more here), and if you already have the means and are looking to enjoy life to the fullest while diversifying internationally, give thought to attending the Sights & Sounds Celebration at La Estancia de Cafayate, Oct 20-24 (visit www.LaEst.com, or write [email protected] for more information).
Until tomorrow, thanks for reading and for being a subscriber to a Casey Research publication.
David Galland
Managing Director
Casey Research
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