The Government We Deserve, Part I (of 4)

It’s that time again:  Election USA.  As we enter the new election cycle, we can look forward to the customary effusions of democratic rhetoric.  The socialists known as Democrats, while deploring the American past, will tell us, in language hallowed by the Clintons and Obamas, that we have moved beyond patriarchy, superstition, and the irrational preference for personal liberty—the prejudices of the poor savages who cling to their guns and religion.   The fulfillment of democracy, they assure us, lies just over the horizon where no distinction between normal and abnormal, good and evil, will be tolerated. All we need, practically speaking, is to round up the small number of recalcitrant intolerables, who sometimes cloud the minds of ordinary Americans, and, for their own good, put them in reeducation camps.

 The Liberal Capitalists known as Conservative Republicans will be equally loud in praise of the virtues of the American people who, although they have been temporarily seduced by 60’s radicals, are still the good-hearted slobs who created just about the best little old country that ever existed.  Once in power, the Grand Old Party, carrying out the will of the wise Americans who voted for them, will redefine marriage and gender, control (but not limit much less halt) the invasion across our Southern border, and unleash a global crusade to establish democracy in the four corners of the world.  I can already hear the honeyed voice of Senator John McCain, singing:  Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.

Both sides will assure us that existence of American democracy is threatened by the very existence of Joe Biden or Donald Trump or even, if we are RFK Jr, by both.  To elect either would plunge us either into the Gulag or the Paleolithic Dark Age of 1950.

To anyone who either makes or agrees with such arguments, I have only one thing to say: Pfui!

What is wrong with America today is not the leaders but the people who elect them.  The folly of voters is not some recent aberration:  It is a reflection both of our system and of the people who support—and are supported by—that system.  “The government you elect is the government we deserve,” suggested the Machiavellian Thomas Jefferson, though there are pundits on the internet who describe his unassailable logic as a “fallacy,” thus proving by their imbecility the truth of his assertion.  Jefferson is often accused of naively trusting the people, while Hamilton is praised for his skeptical evaluation of the masses.  In fact it is Hamilton—a man of considerable ability and prudence—who was naive in his belief that the infant republic could buy the loyalty of the rich.  The people is, indeed (as Hamilton declared), a great beast, but the people (as Hamilton failed to understand) includes the wealthy who see no farther than their bulging portfolios.  Jefferson, by contrast, trusted neither the masses nor the elite to rule the nation.  For him, a republic was a regime in which responsible people were left to govern themselves within the small communities of family and neighborhood.  Like Stalin, whom he resembled in other respects not at all, he understood that only terror could keep tyrannical politicians in order.  “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  It was one of George Garret’s favorite quotations, and George, beyond most political thinkers I have met, understood what Jefferson meant.

American conservatives have no trouble applying Jefferson’s insight to other countries.  I remember my friend Joe Sobran, in a National Review article, declaring that the Russians are a naturally servile race who have always embraced despotism, and every Zionist I have met has told me how inferior Arabs are to other peoples of the earth.  (Turks I have met say something similar and praise the Ottoman that knew how to keep the Arabs in line, even though in fact they did not.)  Among conservatives who oppose unchecked immigration from Mexico, it is sometimes said (by the more candid) that the only trouble with Mexico is Mexican Indians, and if we let them come here in a mass invasion, we shall soon be run by drug cartels in collusion with corrupt officials in the police and military.

It has been many generations since the American people displayed any political sense or elected political leaders who were anything but ridiculous.  Mark Twain’s famous characterization of American politics, that we have the best Congress money can buy, did not take inflation into account, and I am sure for a couple of billion dollars we could do better than Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and Mike Johnson.  A generation later H.L. Mencken observed correctly that “No one ever went broke underestimating the American people,” about the same time as the archetypical American hero, P.T. Barnum, declared “There’s a sucker born every minute,” a motto I long ago proposed as a substitute for In God We Trust.  

We are a nation of TV watchers, sports fans, fast-food consumers, and pornography addicts.  Our national character is on display in Walmarts across the country, but a snapshot image of our national character are the members of the Biden cabinet and the Maga-maniacs in congress—Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Lauren Boebert.  During every election we are asked the same question bartenders used to pose:  What’s your poison?