The New Despotism, Part II

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 21^st 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.