12/11/00 8:35 a.m.
The Clinton-Gore Counterrevolution
The prospect of tyranny in America.

By Michael Ledeen, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Tocqueville on American Character

he American Revolution is the only real, and only successful democratic revolution in modern times. The French and Russian "revolutions," so dear to the hearts of the leftists, were monumental failures. The first led quickly to terror, then to Bonapartism, then to the restoration of the monarchy. The second created the most durable tyranny of the twentieth century. The American Revolution created a stable republic that has lasted more than two centuries, and is now threatened by a counterrevolution, led by Al Gore and his allies.

The various court and street battles have been so intense and so dramatic that we have lost sight of the real stakes: the survival of the American republic. Our revolution created a system — the famous checks and balances — designed to thwart the effective concentration of power. The Founders dreaded any sort of tyranny, whether from the executive, the legislature, or the judiciary, and they hoped that each branch of the government would fight furiously to maintain its powers and privileges against the others.

The founders knew the system was not foolproof. Benjamin Franklin warned that the republic would survive only if we knew how to defend it against ambitious politicians who would inevitably try to subvert it. He would not have been surprised to see Franklin Delano Roosevelt attempt to pack the Supreme Court with his political cronies, so that he could impose his own policies on the country without the annoying necessity of passing Constitutional muster.

Al Gore comes from that anti-democratic tradition, and he is using the same methods that Roosevelt employed: Rally his political followers, enrage the electoral masses, and demand that his own version of justice be imposed, the Constitution be damned.

It is no accident that Gore's allies attack the Electoral College system, and demand that our national leaders be chosen by national referendum. That well-trodden road leads, as it has ever since the days of the French Revolutionary Terror, to what is known as "totalitarian democracy": Checks on power are bypassed by direct appeal to the electorate, and plebiscites replace orderly political processes. They want to roll back the great revolutionary victories of the past and replace the Constitution with a European-style regime.

No wonder this counterrevolution is led by those who want the federal government to meddle in every aspect of our lives. As Alexis de Tocqueville predicted nearly 200 ago, if we are to lose our freedoms we will do so by electing leaders who will dramatically expand the powers of the state, and who will regulate all aspects of human activity. No wonder that Hillary Clinton, still smarting from the embarrassing rejection of her nanny-state medical care scheme, leads the charge against the Electoral College. No wonder that Al Gore, whose pagan goddess Gaia justifies an econihilism virtually indistinguishable from the rantings of the Unibomber, now heads an army that brags about its efforts to subvert individual electors, and thereby destroy the republic at a single stroke.

They think they are smarter and more worthy than the rest of us, and they do not trust us to make our own decisions. Armed with pious arrogance and as certain of their infallibility as they are ignorant of the historic ruin of their vision, they now demand that we permit them to do whatever they wish. And, in the malevolent tradition of all tyrants, they claim their right to do it in our name.

Do not think that the counterrevolutionaries will accept any defeat as final. They are not using their politicized lawyers and judges to uphold the rule of law, but to bend the law to their purposes. If they lose today, they will rearm and fight again tomorrow. These people have long since realized that the American political process is too slow and too uncertain to enable them to impose their collectivist vision on the country. Like their collectivist heroes in Europe, they have turned to activist judges to give them in the courtroom what they have been unable to win in voting booths and legislative chambers. Theirs is a political war on all fronts, and they will not soon surrender.

Faced with this mortal peril, we desperately need political leaders who understand the gravity of the moment, and are willing to fight passionately to defend our revolutionary tradition. If we are to survive the counterrevolutionary assault, we will need men and women in all branches of government who will fight against the arbitrary use of power, who will delight in frustrating the enactment of the latest utopian vision, and who will insist on going by the rules, and on fighting corruption wherever it flourishes.

One does no — even now — sense that the Bush people understand the drama of the moment. With the exception of a few-far too few--carefully crafted words from the elegant Jim Baker, our leaders-in-waiting have fought a dangerously limited battle instead of a grand campaign against the counterrevolution. Electoral fraud has run rampant in the voting booths of the nation. In the most blatant example, votes were illegally counted in St. Louis County, Missouri, in defiance of an explicit court order. Instead of howling "stop, thief!" the Republicans acquiesced, and even hailed the fecklessness of Sen. Ashcroft. In Wisconsin, Marquette University students bragged of voting multiple times, and not a one of them has been prosecuted for his admitted crimes. It brings to mind the darkest moments of the Impeachment "trial" in the Senate, where the likes of Joe Lieberman and Robert Byrd openly proclaimed the guilt of the impeached president, and then blithely voted for acquittal.

One does not save the republic by ignoring the constitutional imperatives on which it rests.

The struggle against tyranny is our national mission, and it requires revolutionary leaders who fearlessly and tenaciously fight freedom's enemies wherever and whenever they challenge us and our ideals. It would be one of history's most bitter ironies if we were to succumb to the counterrevolution less than a generation after destroying the Soviet Empire, freedom's most monstrous enemy.

But then, history is full of such bitter ironies.