George Rebane

As I look at the results of the mid-term election, it again confirms my take on the deep and, most likely, irrecoverable division in our country.  We are now split about 50-50 in how Americans view fundamental forms of governance that benefit society.  In days gone by Republicans and Democrats differed on policies that still lived under and maintained our constitutional republic.  Today Democrats want to fundamentally transform America into some collectivist form of government that rejects the founding principles upon which our Founders drafted and adopted our Constitution. We are effectively two countries within a single border.

As an example one remembers when the Dems and Repubs differed on issues such as public vs private education, segregation, farm and corporate subsidies, tax rates, infrastructure expansion/maintenance, etc.  All of these could be reconciled or compromised without shaking the founding principles which have endured (and even evolved somewhat) over 200 years.  But today half of our voters favor forms of government that are best described to be socialist, Marxist, or communist.  They favor radical forms of wealth transfer, envy the accumulation of wealth, nationalizing all major industries, minimizing private ownership and property, taxing unrealized income, eliminating national sovereignty, … .

The result is that we are now firmly in the process of abandoning free market capitalism and its attendant personal liberties, and on the road to ever more government ownership and control of the country’s means of production and distribution.  A quick summary of these  differences can be summarized by a short list of hits and misses that describe today’s electorate. 

Hit to those who know that any government is intrinsically corrupt to the degree that it can exercise power over the governed.  Ergo the bigger and more organizationally complex the government, the more taxes it extracts from people and commerce, the more laws and regulations it imposes, the more it participates in and manages the economy, the more it prescribes and enforces behavioral norms on its citizens, therefore the more corrupt it inevitably is.  It was ever thus.

A miss to those whose socio-political ideology is limited to a set of sclerotic slogans embraced axiomatically and fiercely defended without resort to reason.  Such people believe that more government increases its citizens’ quality of life.

A hit to those who understand that to control something, you must first be able to measure it.  And the ability to measure is only a necessary prerequisite that by itself is not sufficient.  Governments not only seek to control matters that they cannot measure, but also things they do not understand well enough to reliably predict the responses to policies they concoct and blindly enforce.

A hit to those who know that tyranny is the most stable form of organizing a society.  Once ensconced on a people, under successive regimes it can last for centuries.  Democracy is the least stable form, for human nature quickly devolves it into tyranny.  A constitutional or democratic republic with a yet unknown lifespan is the best compromise people have come up with and experienced.  America is fortunate to have enjoyed over two centuries of such a republic as bequeathed by our Founders.  We are now engaged in a fierce epochal debate on whether to remain a republic or succumb to the siren song of democracy.  Democracy is winning.