Again, my friend Larry Johnson wrote the outstanding essay below.
| Larry Johnson Christian essayist |
In Part I we learned that humanistic definitions of
equality have played a central role in the ascendance of a new despotism in
America.
| The route of De Tocqueville's travels |
About
175 years ago, Tocqueville gave a vivid picture of this new type of oppression that
would threaten democracies and which “…which will not be like anything there
has been in the world before…” He
admitted that he was having trouble naming this new despotism but “wished to
imagine under what new features despotism might appear in the world”: came to
the U.S. in 1831.
 |
| Alexis deTocqueville |
I see an innumerable crowd of men, all
alike and equal, turned in upon themselves in a restless search for those
petty, vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls…Above these men stands
an immense and protective power which alone is responsible for looking after
their enjoyments and watching over their destiny. It is absolute, meticulous, ordered,
provident, and kindly disposed. It would
be like a fatherly authority, if, father-like, its aim were to prepare men for
manhood, but it seeks only to keep them in perpetual childhood; it prefers its
citizens to enjoy themselves provided they have only enjoyment in mind. It works readily for their happiness but it
wishes to be the only provider and judge of it.
It provides their security, anticipates and guarantees their needs,
supplies their pleasures, directs their principal concerns, manages their
industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances. Why can it not remove from them entirely the
bother of thinking and the troubles of life?
Thus, it reduces daily the value and frequency of the exercise of free
choice; it restricts the activity of free will within a narrower range and
gradually removes autonomy itself from each citizen. Equality has prepared men for all
this, inclining them to tolerate all these things and often see them as a
blessing.
Thus, the ruling power, having taken
each citizen one by one into its powerful grasp and having molded him to its
own liking, spreads it arms over the whole of society, covering the surface of
social life with a networked of petty, complicated, detailed, and uniform rules
through which even the most original minds and the most energetic of spirits cannot
reach the light in order to rise above the crowd. It does not break men’s wills but it does
soften, bend, and control them; rarely does it force man to act but it
constantly opposes what actions they perform; it does not destroy the start of
anything but it stands in its way; it does not tyrannize but it inhibits,
represses, drains, snuffs out, dulls so much effort that finally it reduces
each nation to nothing more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with
the government as shepherd.
The word Tocqueville was
searching for in describing this new despotism was socialism, and his words
have painted a prophetic and hauntingly real picture of the United States in
the 21st century under the humanists’ leadership in the institutions
of American life: government, education, economics, the sciences (physical,
biological, and social), popular culture, and the family. Socialism
is the end result of a society that pushes towards the humanist worldview of
which the humanists’ definition of equality is central.
Why
does humanism require a society organized under socialistic principles? First,
socialism is a prerequisite for a humanist society. It is a cardinal tenet of the Humanist
Manifesto I of 1933 which says: “A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that
the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible.” For the humanist, equitable distribution
means re-distribution and redistribution means socialism. Second, if one examines humanism and its
goals, those goals can only be achieved through the imposition of a socialistic
system of controls because the fundamental nature of man conflicts with the
humanistic worldview. Being created in
the image of God and given a free will, humans have an innate thirst for
freedom which socialism suppresses.
The restrictions of the humanist society are decided by the
social engineers of that society, (The Illuminati) the elites or “conditioners”
as C. S. Lewis called them. Thus, humanism is a top down
affair. Its leaders determine what is
best for the masses based on man’s laws, not God’s laws. Socialism is humanism’s default
setting for organizing society and is inherently domineering, restrictive, and
restraining in the details of life and ultimately leads to loss of freedom in
every aspect of life.
In a society built upon the biblical worldview, men join
together and voluntarily limit their freedom.
But the imposition of limits comes from a group of like-minded
individuals whose central cultural vision reflects the same biblical worldview
of freedom and the nature of man.
In concluding his description of the new despotism,
Tocqueville stated that, “The vices of those who govern and the ineptitude of
those governed would soon bring it (the nation) to ruin and the people, tired
of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions or would soon revert to its abasement to one single
master.” Given the apparent
abdication by Congress of its designated role in the separation of powers and
the proclivity of the Executive Branch in disabusing the judiciary, ignoring
enforcement of the laws passed by Congress, and governing through illegitimate
executive orders and presidential whim, it appears that America, through the
ineptitude of the electorate, has chosen its abasement through one single
master.
It’s time for pushback.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
Paul
Kurtz, ed., Humanist Manifestos I and II,
(Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1973), p. 10.
Tocqueville, Alexis De, Democracy
in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books,
2003), pp. 805-806, 808.
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