After the Republic

Marxists make much of the "contradictions" in capitalism.  Turns out their notion of contradiction is trivial, if not vacuous.  However, in his long-ish but fascinating, and depressing article, After the Republic, Professor Angelo Codevilla makes me think of the real contradiction in American democracy.

The foundational idea of the American experiment is that individuals should mind their own business and government should mainly stay out of the way.  If this idea was ever valid, it was valid for only a fairly narrow slice of the population that existed at the time of the American Revolution.

Please remember that the American Revolution was really the first American civil war.  Fully half the population remained loyal to the English crown, there was considerable internecine fighting, and a significant portion of the population decamped to Canada, mainly southern Ontario, where the Loyalist heritage is still remembered.

In other words, lots of people, maybe most people, want to be slaves.  For example, there is an entire civilization, of some 1 1/2 billion people, predicated on the notion of abject submission.  Now, it is one thing to be born into Islam, quite another to see Westerners voluntarily converting to a religion in which they are promised slavery, most especially women.

The will to slavery reveals itself in many other ways.  Socialism is nothing but a cri de coeur of the large mass of the people who want somebody else, the government, to run their lives for them.

Conversely, there are a few people with a "will to power", which brings up the other part of the American contradiction.  One can imagine a government of limited power, but it is harder to think of individuals who voluntarily decline power.  George Washington, the towering figure of the American Revolution, did something that, if not unique, most certainly is very rare in the human experience.

After the victory over the British, Washington was offered the crown.  He was, actually, invited to become king of the United States.  A lesser man would have accepted.  Washington replied something like, "Thanks, but I'd rather go fishing."  And for nearly 100 years, the U.S. was true to its ideal of private property, limited government, and rule of law.

But George Washington was exceptional in almost every way imaginable.  What you have to imagine now is a POTUS who wants less power not more, senators who want less power not more, congressmen and judges who want less power not more, etc.  Friends, this is not the way of the world.  And that is the American contradiction:  the powerful few want power and most people want to be slaves.  The mystery is that the American Experiment lasted as long as it did.

I am glad to have lived in it for a time.  I am very sorry to see it wither away.  And I am very sorry for the America our children will inherit.  If Donald Trump is elected president, it may wither slower;  if Hillary Clinton, then faster.  But the withering seems inevitable.  I suspected this in 2008 with the election of the fatuous and vacuous Barack Obama.  President Hillary Clinton would bring certainty.