For centuries now, revolutions—be they violent or be they peaceful—have been the modus operandi of the elite who fancy themselves as benevolent. The dyed-in-the-wool Left have fully adopted this position of noble elites guiding the peasants for their own, greater good in an enlightened new feudalism. Rather than preserve checks and balances and the rights they protect, the new purported rulers sought centralization and rule by the enlightened with power to be wielded like a weapon if need be. In this view, the government is meant to impose the correct thinking and beliefs. And this drive for beneficent overlordship by both technological exploitation and a myriad of hydra heads striking independently, is a culmination of that long march through the institutions that seek to overthrow by through the very institutions that stood against them.
But differences in the methods or the particular eschaton being immanentized do not and can not alter the core problem: The enlightened few, acting for the sake of the greater or common good, seeking not to constrain the exercise of abusive power but to coopt that power to defeat the hated abusers. This is the lure of Tolkien’s One Ring. This is true even in democratic forms.
An existing system implemented imperfectly, as all systems by nature are, is vastly superior to an idealized system. To fight an ideology that exploits and seeks to replace a superlative if imperfect framework responsible for much of America’s greatness by exploiting and replacing it yourself is to become the very threat that you seek to fight.
The elite, then, become opposed with an anti-elite that it just as much of an elite as the old elite it wishes to supplant. That anti-elite who seek, for the greater or common good, to coopt power to defeat the previous elite. This is the post-conservative populist Right seeking to supplant the established Left in the exploitation and replacement of that superlative if imperfect heritage that made America exceptional amongst the nations of the world.
As with most elite led revolutions, many on the Right seek to portray their actions as “the people” exercising control over the elites, over whom duty to the people and sacrifice thereto is exacted. Much as with the French Revolution, the “devine right to lord it over the plebs” is not eliminated, but simply transferred to an anti-elitist new guard for whom duty and sacrifice is something for them to impose on others. Populism isn’t a rejecting of being ruled by elites, but by demanding that their elites be the ones ruling over those elites. It must be noted that anyone, elitist or otherwise, in government has a duty and obligation to perform their duties to the utmost in accordance with the law and the highest standards for their expertise; but this does not and can not extend to private parties who have no duty to any government or state other than fulfilling their obligations and adherence to the law—to extend it as such is to become the very elite that the anti-elite sought to slay.
People came in time to regard their rulers rather as their own agents and the depositaries of their own power than as antagonistic powers to be kept in check, and it did not occur to them that their own power exercised through their own agents might be just as oppressive as the power of their rulers confined within closer or wider limits.
— James FitzJames Stephen
Daniel Hannan, now Baron Hannan of Kingsclere, noted the coincidence of doctrine does not establish consanguinity of doctrine. A corollary of that is disparateness of doctrine does not refute consanguinity of doctrine. To use the power of the state for the greater or common good is dangerous; to dispense with the rules and constraints against this is doubly so.
The Left, be it monsters like Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Republicans like Theodore Roosevelt with his “New Nationalism”, or the OG Presidential authoritarian Andrew Jackson, have all sought to break the Constitutional binds that constrained them. Many on the Right now eagerly seek the same.
They do not want to reverse what the Gramscian Marchers have achieved, but to take it for themselves via their short march through conservative institutions. They seek not a restoration of the American Republic, but a Red Caesarism as some call it, that seeks to act without constraint and dare people to try to stop their Second American Revolution.
We need to limit the power of Leviathan, not foolishly try to ride it. You can not impose a great America, like some (pseudo-) intelligent designer. What made America great was organic and came from the wisdom of centuries. Centralized planning like this won’t do that. Do not confuse institutions with those who march through them. Bringing to heel an institution will not get rid of those who marched through it previously. That’s what the corruptors who had previously marched through them ultimately want.
In the zeal to crush the Leftist elites, do not to seek to emulate them, for as beneficent as it may seem, your eschaton will work no better then theirs by the same immanentization. Before joining the Leftist elites in tearing down the constraints that you so loathe to be placed upon you, perhaps instead we should all heed the wisdom of G.K. Chesterton.
A little mood music:
