This week, not one but two Democrats of national note have issued not-so-veiled calls for advancing the United States of America toward dictatorship by imposing further limitations on the already significantly diminished means by which American citizens can attempt to hold our government accountable. A massive, unaccountable administrative state, a judicial branch that is to an extent driven more by anti-American ideology than objective interpretation of the Constitution, and a White House desperate to limit the political speech of its opponents, are just some of the things that currently limit the ability of an individual who lacks the support of a powerful gang (a.k.a. pressure group), to wield any influence at all over a government with rapidly expanding power to dispose of his or her life in any manner it pleases.

But this is not enough, according to North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue [1],[3] and former White House budget director Peter Orzag [2].

Yesterday, Governor Perdue appeared before a Cary, N.C. rotary club and said the following:

You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things. I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.

What does she mean by "partisan bickering"? The political parties are supposed to represent distinct visions of the role of government in our lives and the kind of society America should be. Almost without exception, the Republican side of this equation falls far short of acting on its purported ideal of limiting government and protecting individual rights against the unmitigated blitzkrieg of statist assaults form the left. But to the extent that the Congressional Republicans do stand their ground, there is "partisan bickering" in Washington. There is not nearly enough of such bickering.

But any resistance to the advances of statism is too much for Perdue, and she sees that the next election cycle will bring in reinforcements to fight on the side of freedom, which is what she wants to prevent. Note that Perdue recognizes and is fully aware of the fact that elections are the means by which we, the citizens hold our representatives accountable, and that what might otherwise be done to us by those representatives is something for which we would be inclined not to thank them, but to "hold it against them". Thus, despite the pretense of wanting to save the economy -- as though a negative connection had been established between economic recovery and government accountability -- this contemptible woman reveals that what she actually wants is to empower the government further to act with impunity against our will and to the detriment of our freedom and well being.

Freedom is a necessary condition for human survival. What, then, is the objective of someone who wishes to destroy freedom? Draw your own conclusions.

And now for Mr. Orzag, who wrote the following:

In an 1814 letter to John Taylor, John Adams wrote that “there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” That may read today like an overstatement, but it is certainly true that our democracy finds itself facing a deep challenge: During my recent stint in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget, it was clear to me that the country’s political polarization was growing worse—harming Washington’s ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing. [...]

So what to do? To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.

Note that Orzag begins by employing a straw man in order to obtain sympathy for his position: he refers to the United States -- which is supposed to be a constitutionally limited representative republic -- as a democracy.  Then he quotes John Adams, who correctly observed that “there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”  True democracy, i.e. unlimited rule of the majority over the minority, is a form of tyranny.  There can be no such things as sovereign individual rights when the majority has an unqualified ability to impose its will on the minority -- millions of tyrants are no better than one.  But it is toward democracy that we have moved precisely because of the policies of leftists like Orzag, who reject proper constitutional limits on the power of government in order to empower the welfare state.  The entrenched system of pressure group warfare that has resulted from such policies comprises an accelerating assault on our individual liberties, and many Americans recognize and reject this very phenomenon, which they are correct to do.  It is, however, a product not of freedom but of statism.  But what is Orzag's solution?  To blame the results of statism on freedom, then demand more statism.

Note the term, "political polarization", which is very similar in meaning to Governor Perdue's "partisan bickering".  Politics is the application of the principles of ethics to the organization of society. "Political polarization" indicates a significant disagreement among different segments of the population, over what basic ethical principles should determine the course of the United States of America and, by extension, western civilization, since the latter could not survive without the former. It is, to say the least, a tremendously important issue.  Orzag is using an equivocation here: he implicitly conjures up the loathesome phenomenon of pressure group warfare by referring to America as a democracy, then jumps from this unprincipled grappling of rival mobs to wield power over one another, to a principled dispute between advocates of freedom and of statism over the proper role of government in our lives, as though both were aspects of the same issue.  He seems to hope that his readers will equate the two phenomena and dismiss them both in favor of a "benevolent" dictatorship that isn't so messy.

Mr. Orzag's proposed solution to the "problem" -- that many of us are voicing extreme concern for the future of our country and the threat that a continued decline into tyranny would pose to our future, to everything and everyone we value; that we are rebelling against that decline and resisting further power grabs -- is to rely more on "automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy solutions... to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic."   What Orzag proposes is, essentially, to shut us up and render our objections irrelevant by transferring power away from elected officials, who have some vestige of accountability to the individuals whose lives are impacted by their decisions, to a unilateral, unchecked administrative state. In other words, he proposes to end our "bickering" over the future course of our nation, by collapsing it into dictatorship.

Do not despair.  Hysterical, power-lusting freaks such as Perdue and Orzag are barring their teeth because they are cornered.  There are fewer rationalizations to hide behind, because we are onto them.  They feel threatened by the upcoming elections because they know that their side is on track to lose big, and perhaps permanently.  Our job is to take advantage of the opportunity to see these monstrous creatures for what they are, to identify them, expose them, call them out and show everyone why it is a moral imperative to reject them; and then propose better, more rational ideas to take their place.  If we do it, we will win.


links:
[1] http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/146041/is-gov-beverly-perdue-right-about-suspending-congressional-elections/

[2] http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/94940/peter-orszag-democracy?page=0,0&passthru=MGU3YjMxNDdlN2UyMjM2MTNhZGZjNDE2MjE2NjE2Nj

[3] http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/perdue_suggests_suspending_congressional_elections_for_two_years_was_she_serious