The shadow of that hideous strength / Six mile and more it is of length.
I promised myself (without success) that during Lent I would write fewer political screeds, and stick to topics less controversial but no less interesting for all that, such as science fiction. I am sure my father confessor, the Jesuit Father de Casuistry, will forgive me if I break my Lenten vow one more time, merely to comment on the passing away of the American Republic.
The experiment in government by the people was fascinating and brave while it lasted, I admit, and will inspire commonwealths of the future for as long as the grandeur and tragedy of the fall of the Roman Republic, or the fall of the corrupt democracy at Athens, inspired all Christendom for centuries. In the same way that barbaric kings among the Franks and Germans and Russians called themselves Emperor and Kaiser and Czar in imitation of the glory of Caesar, so, too, for many years to come, leaders in North America will call themselves President, Congressmen, Justices of the Supreme Court, and so on. They will continue to revere the US Constitution and do their works in its name, in much the same way the Imperators of Constantinople, who were military dictators of a totalitarian Christian Theocracy, still held up the standards before the troopers bearing the letters SPQR, and did their works in the name of the Senate and People of Rome.
The Internal Revenue Service is now in charge, and will be collecting the fines from anyone who does not buy health care insurance. The student loan programs of all lenders has been nationalized. The faceless and inert bureaucrats of 127 new bureaus, offices and divisions of the government will be the ones denying you health care, asking you to produce records, and sending you letters explaining that you claim is being reviewed. Everyone pays into the system, and a few people get the health care they need. If you are among those few, you may see nothing wrong with the system. The newspapers will never report anything wrong with it.
You children will never know a republic in which economic freedom and prosperity existed. Since this loss is a loss of opportunity rather than a loss of a concrete good or service, the general misery and squalor can be blamed on the free market, such as on the abuses of the health insurance industry.
The spirit and moral character will depart from the American people as it has departed from the English and the French. Once people are reduced to being dependents of an all-embracing government, they lack pride in their customs, institutions, and themselves, and instead of pride, they become whining and demanding and condescending: spoiled brats. The more literate among them become smug spoiled brats, and the less literate become violent thugs and yobs. The charity, forbearance, courtesy and common spirit necessary to maintain peace between the various classes, factions, and special interests of society diminishes, as the struggle over government-supplied goods and services, whose distribution from an ever-diminishing pool is based on political considerations, replaces the free and peaceful competition for privately-supplied goods and services, whose creation from an ever-growing fountainhead is rewarded by the self-interest and gratitude of the beneficiaries thereof.
I foresee cap and trade legislation being pushed through with the same kind of "deem and pass" nonvoting mechanisms; general amnesty for illegal aliens, who then vote as the Democrat political machine directs; the Fairness Doctrine to quell dissent; perhaps even, as society grows more restless and impoverished, private armies working directly for the Oval Office; and so on. The housing industry and the banking industry and the motor car industry are under direct fascist control, and the student loan industry, and the health care industry will be nationalized, slowly or quickly, as private insurers are driven out of business by the market price structure this legislation enacts. What’s next?
Our political masters have successfully built their Tower of Babel on the lives and debts of our children and grandchildren. And now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Can this Great Tower of worldly strength, once erected, be thrown down? Can the Lazarus of the US Constitution be called back out of the grave?
Since the martyrdom at Tiananmen Square, enough blood has been spilled in the crusade against socialism to sanctify our cause; since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Goliath of socialism shows it can be toppled. The condition of modern England shows the warning of things to come should we fail in the crusade.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
