On the 23rd of December 1776, a young Tom Paine wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” At the time, a young idealist nation was crawling forth from the first battles of revolution into a world being born anew after the Industrial Revolution. This nation, spearheaded by the (wealthy) intellectual Renaissance men of the new world, cherished their opportunity to create a nation based upon the most noble philosophical ideals which would provide the most happiness for the people they affectionately called their neighbors and fellow citizens. They wrote their ideals with careful eloquence and their principles are stained in the parchment of each of our founding documents. Little would they know that this nation, within the first years of it’s creation, would inspire the world and alter the course of human history.
Much has changed since then. As Karl Popper wrote, we live in a world still recovering from the shock of it’s own birth. It has been said, and rightly so that in the past two hundred years we’ve seen more change than in the last thousand years before them. And while these shifts in technology and culture have decreased by great measure the presence of human suffering they have also managed to bring forth a world more adequately governed by reason and the principles of liberty. Unfortunately, these ideals have not fully circled the globe yet, and in some instances haven’t left the room that they were born in.
At the inauguration of our republic, we were handed a blank slate, and we seem to have made the most of it given our social progress in spite of what we, by today’s standards, consider evil being prevalent throughout the nation’s culture in the 18th century. Around two hundred and thirty years later, with nearly every social standard of the past antithetical to liberty being changed on paper by our government, we still find ourselves fighting the same anti-intellectual battles with stubborn supporters of ideas that refuse to see their way from this world. This begs the question – how can a nation founded on such principles and ideals by such revered men who valued virtue in their lives and as a nation’s backbone become so adversative to these simple principles of liberty?
Part of the answer is simply in education and reflection. These issues: namely ones of racism, homophobia and the insistence that what our government has done over the past four years amounts to a socialist takeover are rooted into our society due to the natural hereditary transference of these beliefs and by people being generally misinformed by sources that have a façade of reliability. But while most free-thinking adults have the ability to reconcile the fact that they hold what under usual circumstances would be minority beliefs because they’re incorrect (much the way a five year old reconciles the belief that they are in fact, not a dinosaur) or abominable, there is present among the people an interest in inflaming and justifying these opinions for what I and others believe to be nefarious purposes.
It has been for a while inexplicable to me how a platform could exist in American politics that justifies religious intolerance, outward racism, rampant militarism, sexism and historical revisionism; but we see it every day. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.” After following the money, it becomes all too apparent where the degeneracy is coming from.
While spin and incitement is nothing new to electoral politics most should realize that these outward incitements to intolerance are resurrected and exacerbated by those in our midst who would rather see the world burn than come close to sacrificing a fraction of their personal empire to the common good of the nation they reside in. To them, the common good is unworthy of their contribution. They believe their status should exempt them from contributing their capital to society because they could use it for other, more productive things. In other words, they would much prefer expanding their personal wealth as their contribution to society, thereby establishing themselves into a permanent hereditary aristocracy.
Frequently enough, I’ve read that we’re deadlocked in a battle of individualism vs. collectivism. We’re not. We’re engaged in a battle regarding whether or not wealth can buy an individual sovereignty from their nation as far as they wish to be dissolved from the union (of course, they would never turn down the ancillary benefit which has been provided by governments across the globe lately which is to socialize investment risk and financial losses while privatizing the profits reaped from public money). The foremost reason for the wish for disunion amounts to nothing more than simple unmitigated greed as participation in a society once you have extraordinary wealth becomes a superfluous expense. Societies exist to provide service and security to a large number of people and for the wealthiest among us who decry this expense it is an unneeded burden. Those that can afford these things on their own, no longer need the investment in these services. If you can afford private education, what is the need to be forced to subsidize public education? If your family can afford to eat, why be forced to pay for another? If you can afford private insurance, why should you subsidize somebody else’s private insurance? In black and white, it sounds like a justifiable question, especially when the individuals receiving the benefits are accused of being lazy, degenerate or collecting these charitable benefits to the point of having a high quality of life while providing nothing to society. But the answer to the “why” in this case, lies specifically in the social contract, the cultural want and benefit of a natural aristocracy and in the economic concept of a diminishing marginal utility of currency.
What one has earned, one has earned, in a state of nature. An individual in nature is entitled to all they collect; however, in nature there is no law or code of justice preventing someone else from taking that you have and giving you in return a life that Hobbes described as “brutish and short.” This is where the social contract comes into play. The social contract states consensually, individuals in a society willingly sacrifice some of their liberty to protect themselves from the anarchy of nature. This contract is obviously based upon mutual benefit and provides all members of society the benefit of safety from the callousness of nature.
During the Civil War and then being made permanent in 1913, the United States had a progressive tax system with graduated marginal tax rates. The benefit of this system is that it can be skewed to avoid placing an unneeded burden on low wage earners, allowing them to thrive, while shifting the burden to higher wage earners who can afford to be taxed at a higher rate. Taxes collected by the government, obviously go to public projects whether it’s defense and research, social programs at home and abroad, support for state governments in disasters and in financial distress, interest on incurred debts, preservation of monuments and areas deemed national treasures or just the cost of running the government itself. More recently, this tax money has been used to prop up failing corporations that the wealthiest among us ran into the ground after lobbying incessantly for deregulation, taking excessive risk and thereby causing a series of collapses that created systemic risk to the stability of the overall economy.
The social contract can clearly be said to benefit everyone. But in our present case, the wealthiest among us are trying to recuse themselves from the parts of the social contract that make him or her less wealthy by exhibiting to the people through their networks of communication (mainly talk radio and television) incoherent arguments, the sense of fear and victimization and by stoking the flames of intolerance from one abominable opinion to another.
Before I conclude, I’m sure some will be quick to say that this entire article is an insult to the Republicans and their principles. So let me be the first to admit that it is not. As Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural address, “…every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle”, and some would be surprised to know that I have a lot of respect for individuals who respect personal liberty in a much more sacred way than I do and favor a smaller government for the sake of smaller government rather than for the benefit of having fewer guards watching your business pillage for profit. Furthermore, it is my belief that while we shouldn’t expect people to understand our beliefs, we should expect them to understand that we believe them for a reason and I assuredly offer that to my Republican friends. We live in a nation where making error is without consequence except for having to revise our own opinions and I’m surely not advocating for those who believe in different principles as I do to give up their stances in favor of mine. I only wish to illuminate what I consider to be the manipulation, extraction and destruction of American society by what is in comparison to the national population, a handful of outright tyrants.
It is wholly possible at top of the mountain it becomes impossible to see the bottom from your point of view. Ascending to the highest rungs of society must inspire reflection on an inspirational scale, and similarly inspire a focus on the sacrifice and hard work it took to get there. While this much can never be denied of a modern aristocrat, the potential ascendency of an entire nation shouldn’t be sacrificed as an added benefit to the power gained from wealth. Part of the American social contract is to promote the general welfare and amongst the founders was the desire to a natural aristocracy built upon a foundation of virtue and talent rather than from wealth and birth. We can look to Benjamin Franklin, America’s first success story or to the countless that followed from the lowest rungs of society to the highest through perseverance, genius and luck rather than inheritance, surname and nepotism.
So with that being said we’re left to acknowledge that we live in the midst of people who, while caring less about the nation’s well-being when next to their own affluence, have nothing to lose through promoting destructive, divisive issues and policy as long as it helps to move forward their personal ambitions. Preying on those with the irrational fears and phobias carried forth from previous generations and disseminating outright propaganda into the political sphere, this direct manipulation of the American people has catastrophic consequences for American democracy that are felt both across the country and around the world. This new American fascism, by Franklin Roosevelt’s definition, has both preceded and is continuing during the extraction of wealth that is at hand by those in the self-regarding aristocracy. Their regard for society outside of their own benefit is null and if anyone considers denying their loyalty to money over country, I’d like them to look at the number of high-earners expatriating; likely for this very reason.
As for solutions, education is always the place to start. Some would consider me over-optimistic but I believe as Thomas Jefferson believed, “that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.” There is a clear information deficit present in the United States regarding current events and politics at large. This is evidenced not only by the general clueless nature of the public regarding current national and world events (such as how in 2007 Newsweek reported, among other things, that 41% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was involved in planning 9/11) but also how people in the United States are manipulated by political advertising and dishonest reporting. But it isn’t entirely the fault of the people. The prevalence of “fact-checking” in the media is also cause for concern. Not because searching for the truth is bad, but because the media is supposed to be the “fourth pillar of democracy” rather than a soapbox for spun political rhetoric. Second, I would advise to no longer tolerate the intolerance and willful ignorance both manufactured and present in our society. I defer to Popper, “If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” Third, advocate when you can for the society that you want to live in. Even if it is just to your friends, your parents or a spouse. Advocacy for the society you want to live by rises and falls upon your ability to speak up for it. Democracy, as it has been said, is not a spectator sport and it has also been said that it is the absolute worst form of government except for all of the others that have been tried. But regardless of your influence, we must speak up in a collective voice. If we want peace and for this intolerance to end, we’ll have to fight for it.
