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This writer has called himself, variously, a political skeptic and a contrarian. But what is the difference between them?
The real difference is slight. The expression political “skeptic” and its various iterations has become a devil word among supporters of the status quo. Here in Connecticut, the status quo has been reliably Democrat for thirty years and more. Democrats control by a significant margin the General Assembly the Executive and its administrative arm, and the Judiciary – all three branches of government.
Additionally, Democrats have controlled large major cities in Connecticut for about half a century. All the members of the state’s U.S. Congressional Delegation are Democrats. These numbers are infallible indicators of a one-party state. Should the electorate in Connecticut be concerned with this political evolution? The answer to that question is an unvarnished “Yes!” – Exclamation point! The founders of the country were the natural enemies of the one-party state. And it is a considerable misstatement to say that politicians who sucked at the breasts of John Locke, Edmund Burke and Cicero were not political skeptics.
Some people have asked: Why do we have to tie ourselves to the apron strings of the revered founders? Progressive President Woodrow Wilson thought the U.S. Constitution should bear no more weight in the deliberations of men than state statutes.
Citing Jonah Goldberg’s book, Suicide of the West, Randolph J. May tells us in a Washington Times piece, “Woodrow Wilson’s case against the Constitution,” that Wilson, a much lauded progressive, leaned heavily upon “19th century German social scientists who stressed that ‘modern government’ should be guided by administrative agency ‘experts’ with specialized knowledge beyond the ken of ordinary Americans — and that these experts shouldn’t be unduly constrained by ordinary notions of democratic rule or constitutional constraints.”
Modern day neo-progressive politicians – Connecticut is flush with them - are counterrevolutionaries. Why not abolish history, when history becomes an impediment to forward – revolutionary – movement?
That question was presented implicitly in Vice President Kamala Harris’ failing campaign for the presidency when she sought to overcome the corrective weight of history by suggesting, it has been said elsewhere, that history is bunk.
The historical architects of the modern one-party state – socialists all – have seconded that sentiment. Hitler and Mussolini, the fathers of fascism, were socialists before they became fascists. Stalin, who stands at the apex of the communist revolution, was also a socialist, and communism is simply socialism in practice raised exponentially.
The movement towards the one-party state comes historically from the left. And, in fact, the one-party state marks the highest point of “scientific socialism.” The “terror,” for which we must thank French 18th century atheist revolutionists, and the gulag are the most effective instruments in the left’s totalitarian tool box.
The totalist state is the one-party state. So, if the question before us is, “Should we react negatively and skeptically to the one-party state?” the obvious answer is: “Of course, stupid.” History teaches us that it’s not always about the economy. Sometimes the political struggle is about the use and abuse of unvarnished, unchecked power. The US Constitution and the division of political power into federal, state and municipal dominions, represents an effective check on political abuse.
But, some will say, all this is political theory. Why should we bother with abstruse theories of government?
If you are unwilling, as the founders were, to incorporate democratic and republican theories into a workable political pragma, a constitutional system of government, others, mostly with revolutionary knives in their brains, will shape the future for you. The 20th century, the bloodiest in world history, has shown us its distorted leftist face. Must we repeat the errors of the past? That is what skeptics want to know.
Why is it so difficult for honest journalists to adopt a skeptical posture with respect to political incumbents – other than, of course, President elect Donald Trump, the most mauled and abused politician in the western hemisphere?
Why is there in Connecticut so little skeptical analysis of the one-party state, the enemy of both democratic and republican forms of governance? Pragma, (πράγμα) among ancient Greek philosophers, was a kind of love based on duty, reason, and shared goals, far less exciting than erotic love, but a fructifying social component without which even powerful states may only lumber, permanently wounded, into a future beset with difficulties that spell the end of small “r” republican and small “d” democratic forms of governance.
