Political Issues

Good Intentions and the Seduction of Power

C. B. Thorington

Sen. Susan Collins’ full speech explaining why she would vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
YouTube / CNN

One of the major lessons  to take away from the outlandish spectacle of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings is just how far American progressives will go to retain power. Although they might wish nothing more than the public good, they are not resisting the seduction of power. Democrats have given every sign they have fully imbibed their own kool aid.

Why the Bitter, No Prisoners Taken,  Fight?

At first,  the confirmation hearings were a rather ordinary set of hearings in which Democrats could gain no advantage over Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh had been nominated by President Trump to be a justice of the Supreme Court, a nomination bitterly opposed by the Democrats. At the end, however, the hearings unexpectedly devolved into something resembling a gladiator’s fight to the death. Kavanaugh was suddenly accused of being a serial rapist while in high school. No matter that every witness cited by his accusers would not or could not corroborate the accusations. No matter the behavior of which he was accused was completely at odds with everything we know of his character from acquaintances and co-workers. A veritable army of friends who also happen to be women have testified Kavanaugh was invariably courteous and polite. Indeed, the so-called “evidence” against him was eventually debunked. The committee Republicans had hired a veteran sex crimes prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell, to investigate the accusations. Here is her summary judgement.

In the legal context, here is my bottom line: A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that. Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them. For the reasons discussed below [in her report], I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the Committee. Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.

The preponderance-of-the-evidence standard is the weakest possible reason for believing anything.

However, absent any believable evidence that Kavanaugh was guilty of sexual crimes, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee still insisted Kavanaugh’s nomination must be rejected simply because he was accused.

Why the hateful, spiteful treatment of Kavanaugh by the committee’s Democrats? They had to know they were embarked on a campaign of character assassination that, if successful, would destroy Kavanaugh’s life and career. What they were practicing was precisely the same method of destroying opponents used by the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Eventually, McCarthy’s machinations collapsed as they became too ridiculous to be believed.  Famously, as he was attacking a young Army lawyer in a televised Congressional committee meeting, the Army’s chief counsel thundered back, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”  That is essentially what Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked of Judiciary Committee Democrats in the video below.

 

What could have motivated the Democrats to attempt something so despicable?

 

Good Intentions and the Seduction of Power

Recently,  I ruminated over American political dysfunction in the post Polarization, Not Partisanship, Is Causing U.S. Political Dysfunction. The Kavanaugh confirmation hearings seem to be a perfect example of such dysfunction. In addition, it is also an example of how this dysfunction is leading Democrats into increasingly authoritarian methods.

The progressives of the Democratic Party are terrified they might lose actual control of the Supreme Court to the neoliberals (usually mislabeled “conservatives”) of the Republican Party. A stand-off with court progressives exactly balanced by neoliberals and a swing-vote justice might be briefly acceptable. However, progressives would find being outnumbered on the court by neoliberals to be absolutely intolerable.

The reason for this Democratic terror originates precisely in the dysfunctional nature of today’s U.S. Congress. In the past few decades as the American polity grew ever more polarized, Americans began to realize Congress was having increasing difficulties in solving problems. Gridlock began to freeze its operations. Almost equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats were enough to thwart the will of both parties. Even if a single party held majorities in each congressional house, most bills could usually be filibustered to death in the Senate by the opposing party. This is the situation today. Only if a party held a majority in the House of Representatives and a super-majority of 60 votes in the Senate, could a party expect to pass its agenda.

In earlier periods of our history, one could find sufficient overlap of views in both parties to bring them together sometimes. They could find solutions for the most serious and pressing problems. In the one historical exception to this rule, when political opinions could not be reconciled over slavery, the nation suffered the most horrific war in its history. Now we once again find ourselves in a situation where large fractions of the electorate and of political leaders hold antithetical and irreconcilable views. Very few overlaps in convictions will allow compromises. More than that, the primary disagreement is not over just a single issue or a small set of issues, but over the role of government itself. Progressives strongly believe government should be the principal tool to solve social and economic problems. Neoliberals are just as strongly convinced that not only is government usually incompetent to solve most problems, but quite often it makes such problems worse. More than that, neoliberals also believe granting more powers to the government in order to address the problems is a threat to individual liberty. There can be little compromise between these two incompatible pictures of social reality.

Long ago, ever since the administration of Woodrow Wilson almost exactly a century ago, progressives discovered they could get much of what they wanted through the federal court system. Chafing at the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution to progressive policies, Wilson pioneered a revolutionary change in how we view Constitutional constraints. Instead of the old notion of the Constitution limiting the powers of government with a separation of powers between the branches of government, he wanted Americans to take the Constitution as a “living”, evolving document. Instead of a Constitution guaranteeing ironclad rights for individuals, Wilson wanted a Constitution constantly evolving the relationship between government and its citizens. Instead of a separation of powers between government’s branches, Wilson believed society’s needs required an enforced cooperation between the branches. In particular, Wilson wanted to protect the newly constructed administrative state and rule by technocrats in independent agencies. They needed protection from a strict constructionist or originalist interpretation of the Constitution.

From these developments came a progressive dependence on the Supreme Court as the arbiter of what the U.S. Constitution demands. In practice, the Constitution’s requirements were considered to be mutable, changing with social conditions. By comparing current social conditions with what they thought the founders required through the Constitution, progressive federal judges and justices of the Supreme Court would find implied constitutional “penumbras” and “emanations”, effectively modifying the Constitution on the cheap and without the consent of the people. Once the the original court precedents allowing such informal “constitutional amendments” were decided, nothing could be done short of an actual constitutional amendment to “repeal” the court fashioned amendments.

In the last several decades with the advent of legislative gridlock, the federal court system has become ever more important to protect and advance progressive policies. This is particularly true with the federal administrative state, composed of technocrats in independent government agencies. These agencies include such organizations as the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). These agencies have wide powers to promulgate “administrative law” without the approval of Congress. With many of these independent agencies, including the three just cited, the federal judiciary has actually acquiesced to the Congress granting limited judicial power as well, effectively erasing all separation of powers in the domain of the independent agency! Under the protection of progressive judges in the federal court system, progressives have declared  a virtual war on the separation of powers.

You can now understand the panic Democrats are feeling about a Supreme Court possibly controlled by non-progressive justices. With justices interpreting the Constitution more strictly, progressives’ ability to modify society through the federal courts themselves, or through the regulations of the administrative state, might be greatly curtailed.

By their own lights, progressives want only to promote the well-being of the American people. When Barack Obama’s administration was coming to a close, they thought they were close to perpetual control of the federal government and to perpetual improvement of the common good. As Obama’s designated successor, Hillary Clinton was thought to be a shoo-in. Then came the shock of Donald Trump’s election as President. Instead of being a triumphal movement, progressivism began to look like a house of cards.

What are Democrats willing to do to reverse this slide from power? What are they willing to do for their own view of the good of the country? Quite a lot apparently, to include the attempted character assassination of a good and honorable man to keep him from the Supreme Court. Can you hear the echo of Lord Acton from the 19th century?

Even before the end of Obama’s regime, Democrats showed a perverse willingness to use government power to punish their enemies and reward their friends. Consider the testimony of the following posts.

Year by year, the Democratic party has grown increasingly authoritarian as it attempts to centralize ever more power in the federal and state governments. Although Democrats delight in accusing Republicans of being fascists, they should reconsider the actual historical meaning of the word. There is little that separates historical fascism from the communism of the soviets. Both were forms of socialism that maximized the state’s control over society. Fascism offers a comforting fiction to the owners of companies that they indeed control and manage what they nominally own. Nevertheless, the fascist state retains total control through regulations and other means. Russia shows every sign today of being a classic fascist state. The evolution of American progressives since Woodrow Wilson shows that far from being liberals, they would like to move the United States toward a more fascist form of social organization.

The Seduction of Power: A Confirmation of Friedrich Hayek’s Insights about the Road To Serfdom

We have seen this trajectory of progressives   before in history. One particularly acute observer of this process in 1930s Europe was a young Austrian economist by the name of Friedrich Hayek. He observed the transformation of the Weimar Republic in Germany into the fascist state of Adolf Hitler. He recorded his observations in the book The Road to Serfdom, written between 1940 and 1943 and first published in Britain in 1944.

Friedrich Hayek, 8 May 1899-23 March 1992
Friedrich Hayek, 8 May 1899-23 March 1992
Wikimedia Commons/DickClarkMises at English Wikipedia

One of his principal objectives in writing the book was to disabuse a common notion of the time that fascism was the final evolution of a failed capitalist system. He accomplished this by noting there was no fundamental difference between the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini and the communism of the Soviet Union.

However, Hayek also showed how countries entered into and traversed the road to serfdom, the path from a democratic free-market country to a totalitarian socialism. According to Hayek the beginning of the road to serfdom is found when economic or other distress causes people to demand the government do something, anything to relieve their misery. Well-meaning politicians then institute government programs that necessitate increased government control over society. In Hayek’s view government regulation of the economy, particularly centralized economic planning by government, is intrinsically undemocratic. As a government gains more control over the economy, it gains an ability to impose its will over that of its citizens. In chapter 7 of The Road to Serfdom, Hayek immediately reminds us with a quote from Hilare Belloc that, “The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.” Then he declares

Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable.

A developing fascist state is characterized by a government seeking ever more roles in and power over society in general and the economy in particular. Eventually, the amount of power residing in the state becomes irresistible to would-be autocrats, who then compete for complete control. Is this not the path progressives are following, even though they are still far from the destination at the end of the road to serfdom? If they keep following this highway to hell, however, they will eventually get there.

What of the progressive claims that Donald Trump and the Republicans are the real fascists? Yet, the neoliberals of the Republican Party are doing the very opposite of accumulating more power for the government. Rather than increasing government regulation over society, Donald Trump is deconstructing the regulatory state at a record pace. At the same time, the Republicans are releasing more economic assets to companies and the people through tax cuts and tax reform. Where is there any similarity between the Republicans and fascists? There is no resemblance at all.

One of the dead give-aways for the authoritarian proclivity of progressives is the number of lies they tell to justify increasing government power. Of course, Donald Trump has his own occasional problems with the truth, as Democrats and their media allies never tire of telling us. However, Trump’s sporadic prevarications pale beside the huge whoopers proclaimed to us by the Left. Progressives tell these lies to themselves as well as to others.The most fundamental of these lies (one they keep telling to themselves) is that government always has the capacity to solve economic and social problems without unacceptably large, unintended and deleterious consequences. This claim is directly contradicted by history, as I have tried to show in the following posts.

In order to motivate additional accumulations of government power, progressives have told us other falsehoods. These include the assertions:

  1. The ideological opponents of progressives are mostly racists and fascists, who constitute a large fraction of the American people.
  2. American businesses are basically enemies of the American people; they must be closely regulated by the government.
  3. Free-markets encourage increasingly unequal income distribution.
  4. In  economic bad times government spending is necessary to stimulate the economy.
  5. Because of tax breaks American businesses do not need and should not get tax cuts.

These derivative lies of the Left are debunked in the posts More Lies Progressives Tell To Themselves and Even More Lies Progressives Tell To Themselves!.

The behavior of Democrats — and for that matter of their media allies — during the Kavanaugh hearings is a chilling warning of how far they will go to promote their vision of the public good. They are succumbing to the seduction of power. As long as they continue to progress along the road to serfdom, progressives are running the very real danger of losing their souls to the same demons they profess to abhor.

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