Francis Meyrick

photo by Thomas Arhelger

Is America turning to a different path?

Something has changed in America. Or, to be more precise, a gradual change, a drift, over a period of decades has accelerated. Not only has it sped up, but if we draw an extrapolation, if we take an informed guess of where we will be in another decade or two, then the speed of that change resembles a headlong rush. A slow trickle has become a torrent.

There has been a strange death of liberalism in the classic sense of the word. Before the socialists hijacked the word, and it came to mean something different. A strange death in laissez faire. Translated from the French as “let them do their thing “.
Let the system do its thing. Let market forces rule. Let human ingenuity flourish.
It seems reasonable to ask why? What happened?
F.A. Hayek, in his soft spoken, quiet, meticulous style, in Chapter One ( “The Abandoned Road “) documents several causes. He says that by the demise of the nineteenth century into the twentieth, that “the belief in the basic tenets of liberalism was more and more relinquished “. (page 72).
“What had been achieved, came to be regarded as a secure and imperishable possession, acquired once and for all. The eyes of the people became fixed on the new demands, the rapid satisfaction of which seemed to be barred by the adherence to the old principles. ”
One of the most interesting books I have ever read was “The strange death of Liberal England ” (George Dangerfield), and in that work too, one senses the puzzlement of many observers. It was as if a system that had worked so well, and for so long, was suddenly discarded with impatience. Society was to be re-modeled. For the better. In a hurry.
And a critic of the old order did not have far to go to find rocks to hurl. There were indeed injustices. There was hypocrisy, and those who cynically “used liberal phraseology in defense of antisocial privileges “.
Many good and well meaning folk thought -sincerely- that they could do better. And they turned their attention to achieving power, through Government, and increasing the sum total of human happiness by their unique wisdom and insight.
They were helped in this by an Old Guard, who resolutely refused any change. Who insisted on a rigid adherence to ‘laissez faire’ with zero compromise.
This, if you like, was ground zero. The early twentieth century, and an impatient surge of intellectuals who wished for more. But how did we get from there to here? Allow me to draw a pencil line on a white sheet of paper, from the lower left of the page, representing the ending of the age of the “individualist tradition “, right up to the 1920’s, with minimalist government intervention in the lives of its citizens, to the middle of the page, half way up, representing the current state of affairs in the year 2009. This period covers some ninety years or so. What a sea change in the role of government! What a massive increase in the Federal tax burden! What a massive reduction in personal Liberty….?
And, if the left half of this sheet of paper represents the period 1920 to 2009, I ask you, what will be yet written on the remaining right half? Will this curve drop back down? Or will it rise until it intersects the top right hand corner? And if it does strike the upper right hand corner, a doubling of the effective current tax burden on ALL Americans, need we wait another ninety years for this to happen?
I suggest not…

I believe in the spontaneous forces of society. Forces for good. Forces of human energy, ingenuity, creativity, and compassion. I once had somebody sneeringly ask me if I wanted to go back to a society with child labor, fourteen hour work days, no social security and no health care.
This is an easy contrivance: the allocation to an opponent of a position that they do not hold, and then a subsequent onslaught on an indefensible position. But it is also not helpful. It smacks of a hard eyed party political position. A dogmatic approach, that admits of no good in an opponent’s point of view. We only have the (good) White Hats and the (really, really bad) Black Hats, right?
Before the advent of FDR’s Social Security, a theoretically reasonable system but not without very serious flaws, there were many charitable organizations at work. The State -for political propaganda reasons- has often intruded into social areas that were actually well catered for on the local level. Before the advent of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, it has often been argued that individual effort counted for more. A man had to be seen to be trying. But then his community would help.
The laggard, the drunk, the drug addict, the child molester might go hungry. If work was about, and you didn’t work, well, you might just go hungry. Certainly, there was no system that permitted any individual, regardless of his blatant lack of effort, to receive massive Government Aid. At the expense of his hard working neighbors. Housing, food stamps, and medical care. There was no system that effectively taught a man that he was entitled -by government decree- to live, eat and procreate. The meaning of work, many say, was debased. The value of family cohesion was undermined. The result was a permanent underclass, who were placed effectively on a 100 per cent tax rate. It would cost them more to go to work, on account of the government benefits they would lose.

We have, undeniably, abandoned a road. A road that served us well for a long, long period of time. The road that applied to everybody, equally. The road of hard work, of individual responsibility, of striving to be better. We have turned down another path. Swept along by seemingly unstoppable forces, we are wandering along a path of surrender of responsibility. It’s the Government’s job. Not ours.
And politicians, with varying motives, and varying degrees of intellect and foresight, are frequently all too willing to dress themselves in the robes of the White Knight. To make promises, and -worse- half promises, that they know will be very hard, if not impossible to keep.

We have abandoned the individualist tradition which has created Western civilization. We are relying on a handful of elite planners in Washington. Power has fled from the States, and is still -effectively- being concentrated in fewer and fewer technocratic hands in Washington. Brace yourself for more Presidential, regal, Executive Orders. Bypassing not just the man in the street, the humble peon, but even the elected members of Congress and the Senate. Stifling debate.
Many point out that this is not a democracy, but a republic. But the cynics remark that it increasingly looks more like a drift towards a collectivist , totalitarian state. With dissenters branded as unpatriotic, right wing zealots.

Freedom, it has been said, is often lost piece meal. In small, incremental steps. A nibble at a time.
If you consider that white sheet of paper I mentioned, ask yourself where you think that graph, and our taxes, and Central Big Government, are going.

And, sadly, our Liberty.

Francis Meyrick
(c)

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Last edited by Francis Meyrick on September 2, 2010, 11:02 am