Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
A century ago, the Progressives were on the march. They had a simple straightforward argument: Industrialization, urbanization, the growth of corporations, the emergence of political machines, the invention of the telegraph and the railroad, and the like – these had so transformed the world that the old political formulas no longer applied. The species of government designed by the American Founding Fathers – with its division of responsibilities between the states and the union, and its implementation of a separation of powers at both levels of government – was, they claimed, an anachronism.
What was needed in its place was not governance, not law, not statesmanship. Ordinary human beings and the men they elected were not up to the task. What was required in this brave new world was regulation and rational administration by acknowledged experts trained in the social sciences at universities – such as Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Michigan – which had been constructed on the German model. Hegel had once spoken of civil servants as “the universal class.” We should train them and follow their dictates, and all will be well.
If you read the speeches that Woodrow Wilson gave when running for the Presidency in 1912 – they are conveniently collected in a volume entitled The New Freedom – this is the vision that you will find. If you examine the platform promulgated by Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Party that same year, you will discover within it the same principles. And if, after reading through both of these, you take a close look at the Commonwealth Club Speech, tellingly entitled “Of Progressive Governance,” which was delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in San Francisco twenty years later when he was first running for the Presidency, you will find more of the same.
There was one obvious objection to be made to this vision. It left something out. The Progressives told us that we were threatened by big business, big labor, the political machines – and that government had to be brought in to redress the balance. Their defense of what FDR called “rational administration” was reminiscent in many ways of the surface argument in Plato’s Republic: that the troubles besetting the world will not cease until kings become philosophers and philosophers kings and wisdom and rule are made to coincide. At a deeper level, however, Plato’s Republic is an argument for the limits of political life. It is an elaborate display of what it would take to make wisdom and justice reign, a parody of the pretensions of those who think themselves wise, but our modern the Progressives do not get the joke. What Plato mocked they want to institute. The obvious objection to the Progressive impulse is that, even if the Progressives’ critique of the old political formulas is true and even if they are right that our inherited institutions are an anachronism, the administrative state and the rule of the “universal class” is nothing other than tyranny dressed up in a new and fashionable outfit.
The question that needed asking in 1912 and that still needs asking today is the old Roman question: Quis custodes custodiet? Who will guard the Guardians? Put simply, what would lead us to think that this “universal class” of putative experts would administer the world in which we live in our interest rather than their own? What check is there to the power they wield? What have they done to deserve our trust? Even if we admit their expertise, what is to prevent them from using it to bilk us?
The administrative state depends on an abolition of the separation of powers. It presupposes the concentration of the legislative power, the executive power, and the judicial power within a single executive agency. That body is authorized to issue regulations that have the force of law, to enforce those regulations, and to adjudicate disputes arising in their regard. Those who run the executive agency are not elected; they are appointed; and, once appointed, they are accountable to no one. That is, as Montesquieu pointed out in the sixth chapter of the eleventh book of his Spirit of Laws two hundred sixty-three years ago, the very definition of despotism – and nothing has happened since to prove false his insight concerning the concentration of power.
As I pointed out in Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty and again in Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, because of his book, Montesquieu was cited in North America in the period stretching from 1762 to 1800 more often than any other figure, and his argument provided the underpinnings for the deliberations that took place in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 at the Federal Convention. When the Progressives of 1912 and their heirs rejected the American Founding, it was Montesquieu that they were rejecting, and it was his question that they were resolutely refusing to ask: Quis custodes custodiet? Who will guard the Guardians?
Thanks to the Progressives, we now live in the worst of times, and we also live in the best of times. Our greatest misfortune is our greatest good fortune. Thanks to our benefactor Barack Obama, we live at the moment – one hundred years after the initial victory of Progressivism – when the tyrannical character of the administrative state is becoming evident to one and all, when with the help of what my friend Michael Barone calls “gangster government,” we are being made aware that, due to our abandonment of federalism and the separation of powers, we now live under a government that is irresponsible in every sense of the word. Put bluntly, President Obama is giving us the political education that we were denied in the schools and universities that the Progressives have crafted for our indoctrination. Unpleasant as it is to be confronted with gangster government, it is enlightening – and now, for the first time in my lifetime, we are in a position to think clearly about our options. No one is kidding anyone any more, and no one is pretending. We are witnessing the Great Unmasking. As William Blake once said, it is the road of excess that leads to the palace of wisdom. For us, alas, there is no other road.
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Apr '11
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
It is sobering to see the politicians I was taught to admire, Wilson, TR, FDR, as the soft despots they were. Ah, those benign black and white portraits! I wonder what I would see now, if I were to go back and read again my high school and college history texts. More than one observer has said that Obama's greatest gift is to energize an informed opposition to big bossy government. But I fear it is too late, as many of our citizens, uninformed and easily persuaded by emotional talking points, shuffle along to their coddled fates. Slouching toward Bethlehem, as it were.
Edited on June 27, 2011 at 3:33amOct '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
"No one is kidding anyone any more, and no one is pretending." Paul, you might actually believe what you wrote here, but I believe you are the one kidding yourself. The comfort of self deception is the anesthetic that puts the lie to your hopes.
Do not for a moment deceive yourself into believing that the aphrodisiac of a free ride isn't occupying the American mind. We have gone over the edge already, and are simply experiencing the euphoria of jumping from a plane... but of course, no parachute.
Sep '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
Glenn Beck deserves credit for making many aware of these connections.
Jun '11
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
I don't know exactly when the American people became unfit for self government but I know exactly when I knew it: when Al Gore received a significant bump in the polls because of the way he kissed his wife at the convention. At that moment I knew that this great experiment in self government was doomed. It has been said that you get the government you deserve. Any populace that views a kiss as evidence of great leadership qualities deserves to be ruled by the administrative state proposed by the progressives.
Oct '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
raycon, I think that is too pessimistic. We may be reaching the tipping point, but I don’t think we’re there yet. If we can nominate a candidate who can articulate Professor Rahe’s points in common sense terms we can defeat President Obama in 2012, and begin to turn this around. Obama does not have over 50% approval on any of his major policies. It’s anecdotal evidence, but I have friends who have never been involved in politics in all of the decades I have known them, and they have said they will be working hard in 2012 to ensure that Obama is not re-elected. The average American knows in their heart there is no such thing as a free lunch, and believes that they are better equipped to decide what kind of light bulb they should use, what kind of car they should drive, and what they should feed their children than an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy of “experts”. Maybe it’s a belief on my part, but I think the good sense of the American people is going to prevail and I’m going to be working hard to help make that come true.
May '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
The "Progressives" were very clever in labeling themselves progressive. It sounds sort of cool. If you oppose them, it sounds like like you oppose progress. You are uncool.
Your homework assignment: Come up with a one sentence put-down of progressives that doesn't sound uncool or nerdy and puts the onus on them.
For example: It's easy to be progressive when you're rolling downhill.
Sep '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
Your homework assignment: Come up with a one sentence put-down of progressives that doesn't sound uncool or nerdy and puts the onus on them.
A: Liberals live in an a priori universe, where sentiment is the emotion that greases the endless slippery slope of good intentions on its way to bankruptcy, perdition and Sarah Palin's uterine wall.
Edited on June 27, 2011 at 6:34amMar '11
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
Thank you for posting this. Before I knew any better, I thought Wilson and TR were fine Presidents. I don't think I can quite express my horror properly when I read histories of the Wilson Administration and read, with my own eyes, quotes from his staff extolling the virtues of total state control and describing individual freedom in terms that made it sound like a backwards vice. The Progressive's obsession with the cult of the "experts" still lives on today, unfortunately.
One thing that struck me about Wilson was how two-faced he was. He campaigned on keeping America out of the war in Europe while simultaneously doing his damnedest to get us in it. His stances also, shall we say, varied greatly.
"War isn’t declared in the name of God; it is a human affair entirely."
Unless it isn't...
"When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare."
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think "Holy" is exactly how the men at Ypres felt about the whole thing...
Apr '11
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
Thank you Paul for reinforcing what I have been coming to understand in finishing, for the second time, "No Ordinary Time" by Doris Kearns-Goodwin about the war years of the Roosevelt presidency. Looking at it with a different vision now after experiencing the last three years of Progressive policies I'm amazed at the impression Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor made in convincing the American people that they, sitting on their lofty perch, were able to see the problems of mankind and legislate their cures.
Doesn't seem to be much different from what we are experiencing at present. They then, as our leadership now truly believed that they were mankind's only hope. Their arrogance of, on one hand praising the american "Can do" spirit in bringing victory over the Axis powers, but on the other of never seeing the soft despotism of the very policies they claimed were instrumental in causing we americans to succeed.
I always enjoy the insightful conversations you initiate Paul...Thank you
Jun '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
If I were still in the classroom, I would love to assign a paper contrasting the wisdom of our Founding Fathers with the assumed wisdom of Woodrow Wilson and his ilk. I would hope that at least one of my students would start by comparing men who actually did things (printing, brewing, farming, etc.) with a pure academic who spent his time thinking about things.
Another good question would be to ask if the United States joined the wrong side in World War One. Was Austria-Hungary a precursor to European Union? Wilson decided to dismember it only to see the Europeans themselves cobble the whole thing together again a few generations later. For all it's faults the European Union has succeeded in its primary mission. No European nation has gone to war against another in three generations. Food for thought.
Feb '11
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
I read Plato's Republic back in my sophomore Philosophy 101 class. The book made me physically ill. I never read it as any type of parody but as a blueprint for hell on earth with people ruling others because they were the best and the brightest and all the rest of the people had better do what they say to do. Frankly, my Philosophy 101 instructor read it the same way and thought it was great -- after all he was one of the best and brightest and the only question was whether we were going to be worthy of carrying on. Utterly repugnant.
I have no problem with experts in areas where it possible to demonstrate something works or does not work, i.e., in a scientific area. But social science, philosophy, and politics are not science. That's why I view what Claire Berlinski and the creationists and intelligent design people to be dangerous just as the climate change people are dangerous -- they're pushing propositions that have little or nothing to do with science claiming the mantle of science while not adhere to the rigors of science.
Feb '11
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
~Paules:
Another good question would be to ask if the United States joined the wrong side in World War One. Was Austria-Hungary a precursor to European Union? Wilson decided to dismember it only to see the Europeans themselves cobble the whole thing together again a few generations later. For all it's faults the European Union has succeeded in its primary mission. No European nation has gone to war against another in three generations. Food for thought. · Jun 27 at 5:05am
The blink of an eye in European history. Give it time. They will be at it again.
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
~Paules:
Another good question would be to ask if the United States joined the wrong side in World War One. Was Austria-Hungary a precursor to European Union? Wilson decided to dismember it only to see the Europeans themselves cobble the whole thing together again a few generations later. For all it's faults the European Union has succeeded in its primary mission. No European nation has gone to war against another in three generations. Food for thought. · Jun 27 at 5:05am
It had dismembered itself before Wilson got there. But you are right to mourn its collapse, and Wilson may have contributed before the end of the war by enunciating the principle of national self-determination. In Austria's case, that was a catalyst for revolution.
We were not wrong, however, to attempt to stop the Germans from dominating Europe. Our interests were like those of Britain. If a single power could command the resources of Europe, it would be a real threat to us.
Edited on June 27, 2011 at 3:33pmApr '11
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
It's been stated with such eloquence that I dare not attempt to state it better.
"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions"
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
You might want to consider re-reading the book with an eye to the possibility that it is a reductio ad absurdum. Each of the "three waves" described by Socrates is insuperable. Private property cannot be abolished. Nor can the family. There is no one as wise as the philosopher described in that book. And Plato knew it. The metaphor for perfect wisdom is being able to look directly at the sun. In The Phaedo, Plato's Socrates acknowledges that this is a formula for going blind.
Jun '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
Paul A. Rahe
We were not wrong, however, to attempt to stop the Germans from dominating Europe. Our interests were like those of Britain. If a single power could command the resources of Europe, it would be a real threat to us. · Jun 27 at 6:31am
Edited on Jun 27 at 06:33 am
I wish I could name the Danish sociologist who claims that wars are frequently caused by a population bubble. The bubble is specificallty a demographic group consisting of young, unemployed men who will cause civil disorder if their aggression is not otherwise directed toward an external enemy. Imperial Germany suffered from just this sort of bubble prior to World War One. The Dane makes the case that both the Crusades and the Spanish conquest of America were efforts to redirect the energies of second, third and fourth sons who had no future because of primogeniture, the practice of giving the father's entire estate to the eldest son. The Dane goes on to claim that current problems in the Middle East can be traced to this same demographic group. I think his thesis has merit.
May '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions"
One of my father's oft-stated aphorisms:
"If you find your self in Hell just because you followed the road paved with good intentions, where you're at is still Hell -- and you deserve to be there. You are responsible for the pernicious outcomes of your good intentions."
Unless, of course, you are a Democrat.
Dec '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
As it was with the founders, it remans today: government exists to rationalize the problem of scarcity. Back when the founders walked the earth, they designed a federal government to be run by rich white property owning males. In those days, if you wanted to join that class (and you were white) all you had to do was move west a few miles and stake a claim. The 19th century was a contest about claim staking in the west. The progressive movement arose when the frontier closed and when the accumulation of wealth became more obviously a zero sum game. Economists refer to this as creative destruction. The old republic did not manage creative destruction very well. Once Lincoln established the system of industrial wage slavery as victorious in the Civil War, the system proved time and again incapable of dealing with the displacement of large groups of wage slaves when new industries crushed old ones. The problem today is displacement caused by "globalization" of markets. A federal system is a highly inefficient means of curing displacement. Progressivism offers the best hope once it has in place the means to guarantee life's necessities to the wage slave class.
May '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
Lady Kurobara recently recommended a book to me entitled, "10 Books Every Conservative Must Read: Plus Four Not to Miss and One Imposter" by Benjamin Wiker. I only started to read it last night, so I'm still reading about Aristotle's "Politics". The books that Dr. Wiker put through a Conservative analytical filter are:
Aristotle's Politics
Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton
The New Science of Politics, by Eric Voegelin
The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis
Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke
Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville
The Federalist Papers
The Anti-Federalists
The Servile State, by Hilaire Belloc
The Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek
And the four he listed as not to be missed (and one impostor):
The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Jerusalem Bible
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
Like most everyone else, I received an education through a liberal filter, so these historical analyses by Dr. Rahe, VDH and others are invaluable in helping me make sense of a world that never truly made sense to me.
Thank you, Dr. Rahe!!!
Oct '10
Re: Tyranny’s Steady Progress: The Foundations
~Paules
Paul A. Rahe
I wish I could name the Danish sociologist who claims that wars are frequently caused by a population bubble. The bubble is specificallty a demographic group consisting of young, unemployed men who will cause civil disorder if their aggression is not otherwise directed toward an external enemy. Imperial Germany suffered from just this sort of bubble prior to World War One...The Dane goes on to claim that current problems in the Middle East can be traced to this same demographic group. I think his thesis has merit. · Jun 27 at 7:11am
A York University research team reached the same conclusion in '98, arguing that if men between 15 and 29 represent more than 35% of the adult population, there is an increased likelihood of frequent and intense wars. That was the case in Chechnya, is often so in Africa, but was not in the US or USSR during the large-scale-conflict-free Cold War.