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Sunday, December 19, 2004
The Quilt
Not too terribly long ago, your Curmudgeon devoted a series of essays to the strategic and tactical problems of the American pro-freedom community. He left it unfinished, largely because at the outset he'd hoped to propose a solution to the most trying of all obstacles the freedom lover faces -- the special-interest dynamic -- but had failed to find one.
As a consequence of a long discussion he had yesterday with his friend and colleague Pascal, he has begun to think that a solution is in sight.
Maybe.
The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it. -- Adolf Hitler.Hitler imposed himself upon the world both by promoting Nazism and by forcing the democracies to become zealous, intolerant and ruthless. Communist Russia shapes both its adherents and its opponents in its own image. -- Eric Hoffer
If one were to judge by anecdotal reports such as this one, one might say that the regulation of the German economy in our day is little less than that imposed upon Germany by its most famous, ruthless, and thorough regulator, Adolf Hitler. In this light, one might say that our forces were able to defeat Hitler and the Nazis, but they were unable to defeat fascism, or at least the German inclination toward it.
Fascism, be it remembered, is about State control over human activity, principally commercial activity. The nominal title to private property remains in private hands, but taxes and regulations are used to transfer all rights to the property -- all decisionmaking about how it may be used and to whom the gains shall flow -- to the State.
Far too many persons confuse mechanism and intention. Yes, Hitler was a megalomaniac. Yes, his intentions were those of a conqueror. Yes, he did much more, and much that was far more horrible, than hogtie the German economy, even if we omit consideration of the war. But fascism, as defined by Benito Mussolini and practiced both in Italy and Germany, is not necessarily wedded to either conquistadorial intentions or the oppression of any identifiable group. Its essence is as stated above: the separation of nominal title to property from all the rights normally associated with ownership, which are absorbed by the State.
That pattern is enlarging and strengthening here, under what we might call "quilted" ideological cover. The "national purposes" that characterized European fascism are conspicuous by their absence from these shores. Here, we have instead a patchwork of excrescences of State power, alike only in their possession of government's privilege of coercion, each one the preserve of some special interest that devotes the whole of its efforts to defending, preserving, and extending its demesne.
In one sense, the differences in intention between the European fascists and the architects of American fascism did matter. "National purpose" fascism promotes some lofty goal intended to rally the sentiment of essentially the whole citizenry to its advancement. That goal might be the glorification of the Reich, or it might be the rallying of the people to avert some impending disaster. Quilted fascism, in contrast, focuses on causes that appear modest and partial to everyone except the interest groups that champion them. John Q. Public is highly unlikely to feel as strongly about environmentalism as a member of Earth First!, or as strongly about population control as an activist for Planned Parenthood, or as strongly about the separation of church and state as Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Yet the odds are good that he'll sympathize to some milder degree with one or more of their theses. He might even donate to them, as a "good cause" that doesn't quite rise to the level of urgency that would mandate more direct involvement.
"National purpose" fascism is the easier sort to defeat in the field. It marches under a single banner. Ideologically, it possesses only a single string for its bow. Being thus concentrated, it can be isolated and killed, whether militarily or argumentatively.
Quilted fascism is a far more tenacious foe. As a force opposed to liberty, it's far more insidious and tenacious than "national purpose" fascism. Perhaps the first important politician to understand this truth was the principal architect of American fascism, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Roosevelt's first thrusts at breaking the American economy to his will were justified by the seriousness of the Great Depression, admittedly a serious matter indeed. Most of his opening maneuvers took the form of large centralized bureaucracies, such as the National Recovery Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and other New Deal bureaucracies. But these proved ineffective in the main -- one, the NRA, was shot down as unConstitutional by a less-than-pliant Supreme Court -- because, although there was surely a crisis in progress by anyone's standards, the overwhelming majority of Americans nevertheless did not experience it directly.
"A recession is when your neighbor loses his job; a depression is when you lose yours." Though unemployment figures ran as high as 25% in the deepest abyss of the Great Contraction, 75% of American households were still no more than marginally affected. If John Q. Public were one of the fortunate three-quarters, he would sympathize with his fellow citizens in the unfortunate fourth, he might be moved to help them personally, but he was unlikely to feel the sense of nation-girdling crisis that FDR needed to use large, showy measures as effectively as his ideological kindred in Europe.
Roosevelt and his New Deal lieutenants struggled with this obstacle until America became embroiled in World War II, which provided the national purpose he needed to override it.
All the squares in the patchwork of American quilted fascism are sewn to our hides with the same thread: a generic argument about public policy that calls for an exception to the overarching principle of individual liberty on the grounds that "[insert issue here] is too important."
Ironically, in most cases the argument for the exception is phrased as a matter of "rights." Such "rights" never owe anything to the Lockean / Jeffersonian reasoning that undergirds rights-based law and jurisprudence in America. Classical, Lockean / Jeffersonian rights are defensive; they establish boundaries around one's life, liberty, and honestly acquired property that are morally inviolable. The "rights" promulgated by interest groups -- e.g., a right to "decent housing"; a right to "medical care"; a right to "a clean environment"; a right to "self-esteem"; a right "not to feel offended" -- are assertive claims upon the money, property, or latitude of others. They are utterly inimical to classical rights, directly counterpoised to them and bent on their destruction.
Yet they prevail more often than not. They prevail because of the well-known special interest dynamic:
- An interest group forms around some claim.
- Its members are politically oriented, have a short agenda that's common to all of them, and will receive strong compensation, whether material or psychological, if their efforts are successful.
- By outreach and publicity, the group succeeds in identifying itself with its pet cause. The general public responds to some degree with approval and donations, which the group's activists and PR types will strive to magnify for the consumption of the press.
- "Puff adder" PR is used to persuade elected officials that the group can deliver a bloc of votes to politicians who'll pledge to support its objective, and can deny those votes to politicians who don't.
- Some politicians "buy in," seeing danger, opportunity, or both in the issue and the group behind it. Those who are elected become bastions in legislatures and executive mansions for the group's aims.
- Those politicians who intend careers in politics find their futures substantially mortgaged to the groups that backed them. They can never be sure which ones they can "do without" come Election Day.
- Some interest groups thus succeed, through persistence, intimidation, and a carefully cultivated partial ignorance among the wider citizenry, in getting their objectives written into law. Bureaucracies form to implement those laws. Those bureaucracies acquire specialized budgets spent on specialized goods, and vendors gather round to sell to them. Thus begins the construction of an "iron triangle," partly within the government and partly without, whose components are powerfully motivated to defend their jobs, their benefices, and their government accounts.
- The cost and intrusiveness of the program mounts over time, and some opposition to it emerges. The interest group and its "iron triangle" allies work to discourage, deflect or defame the opposition by any means necessary, including slander, logrolling, sub rosa legislation in the form of riders and elastic clauses, and the Washington Monument Defense.
- Because the opposition normally has much more on its mind than any one program or law, it can usually be defeated by attrition. Nearly any successful interest group will have the perseverance and the means to outlast a diffuse, less well motivated general opposition.
Note that none of the above mechanics depends to any degree on whether the cause is truly a good one, or whether governmental action can do the least little thing to advance it, whatever the cost.
The support base for any freedom-infringing cause can be partitioned in a number of ways, but one among them eclipses the others in importance: the well-intentioned versus the power-seekers.
No cause with a shred of justice to its name can slow-dance with State power and keep its bloomers on. They who seek State power are almost all motivated principally by the desire for power itself, as Friedrich Hayek explained in The Road To Serfdom. Because ruthlessness is the most important attribute that conduces to success in the quest for power, over time any organization that entangles itself with the State will become dominated by the most ruthless, least inhibited of its activists. The worst will rise to the top. Once there, they will prove superbly skilled at fighting off those who would pull them down.
But beneath those heights will be the ranks of more-or-less well-intentioned activists who genuinely believe in the importance of the cause and are part of the group specifically for that reason. The first task of the power-seekers is to enlist the activists' allegiance; the second task is to keep them in line. They are the conduit through which the group will seek to keep its feeding trough filled: the willing hands (and legs) who stump among the rest of us, entreating us for monetary contributions and pledges of electoral support.
As for John Q. Public, who sees the cause as moderately good, worthy of his vote or a few dollars a year but not of his direct involvement, he's merely checkbook fodder for the cause. "Stand still, little sheep, and be shorn." More is not asked of him; indeed, some danger would accrue to the cause were he to draw nearer, for his allegiance is too weak for him to be an asset, and his range of concerns could threaten the group's focus.
Your Curmudgeon can almost hear his readers thinking, "All very well, but where's the matched strategy by which we can undo it?" Allow him an anecdote and perhaps it will become clear.
Some years ago, a friend named Paul, who was very active in the pro-life movement, confided his frustrations and his accumulating despair to your Curmudgeon, knowing him to be a kindred spirit. He'd spent hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours on conventional pro-life activism, and had reaped next to nothing from it. He was uncertain that he'd influenced anyone's views; he was all but certain that he'd saved no lives.
Your Curmudgeon mulled it over for a while and said, "Why not go private?"
"What do you mean?" Paul said.
"Well, if saving lives is what you want to do, why bother with politics? Politics saves no lives. You've proved that to my satisfaction. Become a pregnancy counselor. No, wait: become a pregnancy counselor at an abortion clinic."
For a good thirty seconds, Paul was too stunned to respond. His eyes bulged out most impressively. His mouth worked a bit, but nothing intelligible came out.
"Think about it," your Curmudgeon said. "To save a life, that life has to be in danger, doesn't it? Where do women take their unborn babies that puts them in danger?"
It was then that your Curmudgeon learned the meaning of the cliche "a light dawned in his eyes." Paul is a very sharp fellow. He immediately grasped the opportunities involved, and he did exactly as your Curmudgeon had suggested. Today he can speak of dozens of young women who turned away from abortions specifically because of his counsel. He has made a perceptible difference -- an important difference, that allows him to feel that his time was worthily spent.
Paul possesses the motivational profile of an activist: he's passionate enough about his chosen cause to immerse himself in it directly, not merely with his vote or a monetary contribution, but with his labor and attempts at outreach. He merely needed a way to be palpably effective -- a way to do good and know that he was doing it. He is a perfect analogue to the freedom activist who, by dint of his toils at promoting the reduction of government and its intrusions upon the sovereign individual, has worn himself out without achieving enough to avert the soul-destroying sense of wretched futility that afflicts so many in the freedom movement.
Perhaps Paul is you, gentle reader.
The heart of the thing might have been best captured by L. Neil Smith, longtime freedom activist, who argued that a diffuse threat like terrorism must be met, not with a centralized security regime that would destroy all that remains of freedom, but with a diffuse defense: a nationwide militia of citizens in arms, who understand the menace and are committed to thwarting it personally.
Quilted fascism is a diffuse threat. The many interest groups are essentially independent of one another ideologically, tactically, and logistically; they cannot be defeated by any single thrust. But each one can be opposed on its own dubious merits, and should be. The special-interest dynamic should be countered by a diffuse group of specialized opponent-groups, each of which targets the viability of a single statist interest group and nothing else. Each square of the smothering fascist quilt must be snipped loose from the rest and countered on its own ground.
Indeed, we're in the process of making this happen even now. In the most visible single case, there exist institutes specifically formed to argue against the claims and programs of statist environmentalists. Their specialization allows them to achieve more with their resources -- to be more efficient -- than generalist think tanks with a pro-freedom slant.
The Internet and its steadily improving interactivity will be a key to this effort. The passion devoted to statist causes often overrides obstacles that a more general devotion to freedom would not. Thus, in the days before the Internet arose, groups of activists centered on getting political enforcement for their cause were more likely to gel, and more likely to endure over time, than groups dedicated to the defeat of such statist initiatives. But Internet communication has lowered the "barrier to entry" adequately to bring freedom activists together, and to coordinate their activities, just as effectively.
The conceptual step that's hardest is choosing a single battle to fight, and then giving all one's activist efforts to that battle and no other. It's hard because most of us in the pro-freedom community are about equally passionate about all the smaller issues within it. We don't like to feel that we're neglecting anything, or that anything might be neglected. One must see this impulse as what it is -- a lure to self-defeat -- if one is to set one's feet upon a constructive path.
There's more to be said upon this subject -- much, much more -- but your Curmudgeon hopes that today's thoughts have whetted your appetites. He'll return to the subject and its implementation tomorrow.
The Devil will be in the details. He always is.
Comments
A strategy similar in logic to this one is the #1 reason I still discuss politics with Democrats.
Posted by Matt on 12/19/2004 at 02:41 PMBravo, Francis. Very thought-provoking. I feel less despairing already.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/19/2004 at 07:02 PMI still think hanging enough politicians and anti-liberty activistd from lampposts will get the point acrost.
Admittedly, my method will get a bit messy in the short term…
Posted by Ironbear on 12/19/2004 at 07:45 PMThe National Rifle Association has been quite successful in defending that patch of liberty to which it is dedicated. That being said, the obvious downside to the NRA’s approach is that even a collectivist can earn the NRA’s endorsement, so long as (s)he opposes legislation that abridges the Second Amendment.
Posted by AuricTech on 10/04/2010 at 07:34 PM
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