Yesterday, Kevin Williamson published an important piece, “Democrats Defend Political Persecutions in Texas,” which connected corruption among Texas politicians, Democratic ones particularly, with the deeply shocking David French story on “John Doe” political persecutions in Wisconsin. French added more to his piece today.
These Texas and Wisconsin stories show us why America so badly needs a reform movement to get under way among contemporary Democrats. Those who claim to be moderate Democrats or highly ethics-concerned liberals, either have to push for a movement to punish or disown the Democrat politicians who instigate these kinds of things, or they need to give up all claims of being moderate, civil, ethics-concerned, etc. If they continue to let the likes of Rosemary Lehmberg, John Chisholm, Lois Lerner, Al Sharpton, Jonathan Gruber, Dan Rather, Rod Blagojevich, Anthony Weiner, George Lakoff, and Harry Reid define the character of the Democratic Party, they will become accessories either to destruction of that party, or of America itself.
The Williamson piece also illustrated, however, one of the key challenges of rhetoric facing conservatives as it becomes more plausible that America has entered a late-republican period, a period in which talk of America’s dissolution or descent into despotism has to be taken seriously. How do you ring the alarm bells so that they resonate deep within your fellow citizens’ hearts, but not in a way that drives them into an unhealthy alarmism that tends to de-legitimize your warnings?
Here’s a paragraph from Williamson:
When a governor can be indicted for vetoing a bill, when a university regent can be threatened with criminal prosecution for exposing corruption, and when you have armed men kicking down your door because you signed the wrong petition, you don’t live in a free society—you live in a police state. And that is what Democrats are building, from Austin to Milwaukee to Washington.
And here’s what one NRO commenter, “Walking Horse” said in response to this:
A police state is not dismantled at the ballot box. Historically, police states fall when (a) the people revolt, or (b) the economy supporting the police state collapses, or (c) a more thorough-going police state takes over through military action.
I objected to this in the comments as follows, but I will first note that “Walking Horse” and I are in agreement that what he aptly calls, in another comment, “the normalcy bias,” is keeping most Americans from seeing that if current trends remain at work they will lead us into late republican times. Here’s the lion’s share of my reply:
What Williamson does say is basically “If x comes to pass, and if this y is allowed to stand, then you will live in a police state.” He says some significant number of Democrats “are building” such a system…. It is effective rhetoric, but is essentially focused on the future. And Williamson should note that sharp rhetoric that pricks the spirit can also wound those who embrace it. Here, it leads you, Walking Horse, into some unhelpful lines of thought. Do you really think Williamson wants you to start planning for a)? But if you love freedom, and we really are in a police state, why wouldn’t you be planning for a)?
I edited a book about the Stasi in East Germany. We do not live in a police state. Period.
I should say here that I had no real objection to Williamson’s “police state” sentence–it simply is true that the tactics used in the Wisconsin “John Doe” investigation were reminiscent of the sorts of actions that were routine in East Germany. I’m rather trying to point to where a steady diet of such sentences might lead.
I should also say here that I am not worried about the likes of “Walking Horse” actually concluding that revolutionary action is necessary. Not yet, at least. My present concern, rather, is that the rhetorical stance of the “No Longer a Republic!” conservative does more to demoralize than it does to inspire and lead. It talks dramatic, but it actually leads to the stance of the “Just Give Up!” conservative.
Who is the “Just Give Up!” conservative? Well, I get the term from an epic Jack Black rant in School of Rock, but here’s what he sounds like at his most intelligent—this is an actual comment from some time in the past year that I saved, from one “Ramone Love,” probably made to a post of mine about Obama’s executive legislating. I should thank Ramone Love, because he(?) likely inspired my Late Republic series more than I know:
Nothing is going to happen to stop Obama because a majority of Americans simply do not care about any of this and will blithely stand by while what is left of the Constitution is shredded, their civil rights eroded even further than they have been already. A republic whose citizens are that apathetic doesn’t deserve to survive. And it will not survive. It’s already over. The GOP, for all their bluster, are simpering impotent wusses who will do nothing and are in fact part of the same corrupt game. This is late-stage Roman Republic stuff, when the rotting, hollow husk of that system existed in name only, a charade performed to satisfy egos, line pockets and paper over the truth. What America will become is anybody’s guess (my guess is a despotic, tyrannical police state much like Napoleon’s First Empire, since that is the trend). But what it once was, what it was intended to be, died a long time ago and it’s not coming back.
So there you go. It’s either talk as if you’re getting ready the shooting revolution with the “No Longer a Republic!” conservative, or, it’s sulk into surrender with the “Just Give Up!” conservative. I suspect these stances are often two sides of the same coin.
As I pointed out in my first Late Republic post, the difference between a constitutional order that has become partially non-republican, and one that has become essentially anti-republican, is one that matters. A lot. It is the difference between a wound or disease that one can live with or heal, and one that is fatal. It is the difference between a union of states in which a few states have had certain authorities commandeered by unethical partisans who then utilize them for several police-state actions, and, an actual police-state, the kind of state that regularly utilizes such. And as I pointed out in the Unhelpful Roman Lessons post, our present disorders, and most of the near-future ones we can imagine, are incomparably lesser than those experienced by Rome in its late republican times. Things would have to become much, much worse for us to even approach what Romans like Cato and Cicero were up against.
Shifting to the history that matters to us more, think about how men like Washington, Madison, and Lincoln handled their own “times that try men’s souls,” and about how a key part of their being real revolutionaries and republic-savers was the way they were really careful with their words, and especially as these touched upon constitutional matters. “Police-state” and “revolution,” are not the sort of words they would let fall lightly from their lips, and “it’s already over” is a phrase foreign to their entire mindset.
But still, Walking Horse and Ramone Love see things more clearly than our typical conservatives do, far too many of whom are either blinded by the way things have generally been or are corrupted by their stake in present game. Blinded by normalcy bias. True, a certain portion of our more typical conservatives are with reason skeptical about all predictions of dramatic dangers, and some also hold the rational conviction that a bias towards optimistic thinking is a better approach to life generally. I think that these understandable patterns of thought are tending to mislead them this time around.
I sense that many conservatives, Kevin Williamson among them, are with me in wanting to shake our fellow citizens certain about the abiding hold of American normalcy out of their slumber, and into a more alarmed judgment of the situation. But I am convinced that the rhetoric most conservatives still turn to for doing so needs to change.
That is, the challenge for conservative rhetoric in the coming decades will be to sound a more serious sort of alarm, but without indulging or strengthening the unfortunately widespread conservative tendency to vacillate between “No Longer a Republic!” and “Just Give Up!” It may seem a paradox that as we get closer to the possibility of the republic ending that we have to more strictly qualify and specify our alarms, but it is nonetheless true.
I’m no systematic student of rhetoric, but the sense I’ve gleaned from a broader study of political history is that the rhetoric we need to emulate is Abraham Lincoln’s sort. It was consistently precise. It was willing to lay out the worst possibilities that were real possibilities, of a House that Divides, or of a partisan conspiracy that spreads slavery to the entire union, but it carefully spelled out just how resistance to these dangers could be undertaken under the rules of Constitution, and what avenues for compromise could remain legitimately open.
I hope this is enough to prod others more capable than I to work out what this means for the actual here-and-now rhetoric used by conservative politicians and pundits. For readers new to my Late Republic Studies series, I’ll leave you with a link to my short-to-medium-term predictions at their most pessimistic, and, with the final “Roman lesson” I elaborated in my most recent post:
Vague Doom-Pronouncement Is Defeatist Moral Failure, Because the Political Responsibility of Statesmen and Citizens Actually Increases During Late Republican Times.