The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Are you sure it can't happen here?

If it doesn't it won't be because nobody thinks it would be a good idea.

An essential piece of fascist propaganda and dogma is the fecklessness, futility, and paralysis of legislatures, coupled with emphatic support for the idea that the cure is relocation of power from idle and hopelessly deadlocked legislatures to strong, vigorous executives capable of acting with necessary decision and dispatch.

Authoritarian presidents or prime ministers or ruling parties.

Actual military men or figurative Men on Horseback.

Sometimes literally a unique national Leader, a Fuhrer, a Duce.

This is not the first piece Pat Buchanan has written in recent months or weeks in that vein.

He has taken a big step closer to supporting literally fascist government.

He is already supporting literally authoritarian government incompatible with the American constitutional order, with the American Republic Franklin warned we might not be able to keep.

Trump Dumps the Do-Nothing Congress

We could be looking at a seismic shift in national politics, with Trump looking to centrist and bipartisan coalitions to achieve as much of his agenda as he can. 

He could collaborate with Federalist Society Republicans on justices and with economic-nationalist Democrats on tariffs.

But the Congressional gridlock that exhausted the president’s patience may prove more serious than a passing phase. 

The Congress of the United States, whose powers were delineated in the late 18th century, may simply not be an institution suited to the 21st.

. . . .

In the age of the internet and cable TV, the White House is seen as a locus of decision and action, while Capitol Hill takes months to move. 

Watching Congress, the word torpor invariably comes to mind, which one Webster’s Dictionary defines as “a state of mental and motor inactivity with partial or total insensibility.”

. . . .

At the onset of the post-Cold War era, some contended that democracy was the inevitable future of mankind. 

But autocracy is holding its own. Russia, China, India, Turkey, Egypt come to mind.

If democracy, as Freedom House contends, is in global retreat, one reason may be that, in our new age, legislatures, split into hostile blocs checkmating one another, cannot act with the dispatch impatient peoples now demand of their rulers.

In the days of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, Congress was a rival to even strong presidents. 

Those days are long gone.

It is perhaps no accident that Trumpists and Bernie supporters ("but Congress is broken!") both spent the campaign of 2016 denouncing both parties, denouncing "the swamp" in DC, shouting about "the rigged system", denouncing the essential institutions and the unavoidable results - chief among them that even large, angry minorities can't always get what they want - of the checks and balances built into the constitution and the American Republic.

On the left, these are ideas used to validate socialist revolution.

They were used to validate the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, and every successful or attempted Communist Revolution since those from Cambodia to Cuba, from Peru to Nicaragua.

On the right, they have been used to validate military coups and fascism.

They were used to validate Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco.

Throughout the campaign of 2016 and every so often since, Bernie has called for a "political revolution" while refusing to offer any significant clarification of exactly what it is he means by that, despite its evident, terrifying, and treasonable literal meaning.

During that same campaign, Trump came within an ace of calling for an actual revolution by his supporters in case he lost the election - and when he did that Pat Buchanan defended him.

And now, and not for the first time since the election, PB has again come out against the US constitution, against checks and balances, against the separation of powers, and for "authoritarian rule".

No comments:

Post a Comment