Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host
The American puzzle is a difficult one to solve. The pieces do not seem to fit together properly. The problem is so complicated that our younger generation, fresh out of various programming centers we call "public education", and heavily influenced by the opinions of various artists in the entertainment industry and talking heads in social media and mainstream media, have decided to check out of the whole "capitalism" thing and embrace what they believe to be a fairer system. "Power to the workers," we can hear them say. "Down with the one percent."
Echoing political theorist Isaiah Berlin, who wrote about our current dilemma in 1967, the twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings of American Society have determined that we have been "damaged by an elite, whether economic, political, or racial" and that the oppressors in this case are an "open enemy" that has put America in a position of needing a populist movement among the authentic "true people" who have been hurt by the oppressive enemy in America's damaged system.
Accusations have been flying around against the police, supporters of particular candidates or office holders, the wealthy, the politically powerful, or simply those who dare to stand behind the principles upon which this country was founded. It's all a part of the oppressive faction that led us to this crossroads in history, I am told, and it must all be replaced by something different.
Resentment has taken hold, and it is driving a collectivist impulse around the world that seems to mirror a number of communist revolutions we have seen erupt around our globe over the last one hundred plus years. Except, this is a little different. The Communist Revolution going on in America is not a violent one, but an internal one that is driving its way up through our society inside the minds of the youth.
There is an "enemy of the people", said a young man to me, recently. He arrived at Siggys Restaurant in Murrieta, California after the conclusion of a Constitution Class I was leading on a Wednesday Evening. A friend, greeting the young man as he walked up, told me, "that's my nephew, and he's a hard left communist."
The young man, Demitri, agreed, "that is true, I am a communist."
"This is the guy," my friend said, motioning to me, "you need to talk to. He's a constitutionalist, and he'll set you straight."
Typically, there is no "setting straight" of anybody that far gone down the socialist road of hive mind thinking, or at least not until they experience a revelation that shakes them awake enough that they are willing to listen, but I decided to take the bait.
As expected, the "debate" was not a debate, but a series of attempts by either side to explain themselves without any sentences having the luxury of being completed. But, from what I gathered, Demitri's form of communism (according to the young man before me) has never been tried before, it's not authoritarian, capitalism and the one percent are the primary sources of our woes, and control of the means of production by the people through true democracy is the way to solve America's deadly brush with authoritarian capitalism. When I brought up historical examples of the failure of communism, socialism, or any other animal that has claimed to reside in the "power to the people" spectrum, the response from my young debate-mate stated that none of them were "true communism". The Soviet Union was a right wing authoritarian version that was never true to Marx's vision, and China is a "capitalism hybrid."
Any rebuttal I attempted to formulate and articulate was interrupted, and discounted as a typical response by a person like me who is a "slave to capitalism."
The part about his version of communism not being authoritarian intrigued me, so I tried to learn more about his ideas regarding that. "Let's say you get your system," I began, "but someone disagrees. Are they then jailed or disallowed from participating."
"No," he responded. He complained about "what if-isms" that were basically to him nothing more than straw-man arguments, and then explained, "The people will vote, and if his ideas are voted down, they will not be followed."
"Yeah, okay," I said, "but what becomes of him, the guy who refuses to participate in your socialistic scheme of things?"
"He'll work, he'll take care of himself, and he'll be left alone."
That was not the response I got from a Los Angeles history professor a few years ago. The educator's response was that the person would be "convinced to comply."
Then the conversation turned to the "inherent racism of America" and how the Constitution is a "racist document." I responded pointing out the anti-slavery language of the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, and the assertion by Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became a famous orator, that the Constitution was not a pro-slavery document.
Demitri disagreed.
I went on to explain how the 3/5s clause actually limited the power of the pro-slavery States in Congress, and Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 set up the opportunity for Congress to outlaw the importation of slaves via the Atlantic Slave Trade as of January 1, 1808; and while he had never heard anyone explain those clauses in such a way, he continued to reject the "Constitution is not a pro-slavery document" argument.
One of my students, a young Mexican girl named Mercedes, picked up on my earlier attempts to bait Demitri into admitting his version of socialism was authoritarian, no matter how much he argued it wasn't, and decided to play a little game with the young man.
As Demitri continued to call America racist, and as he argued that the United States was founded on racism, rather than Christian principles as I was arguing, Mercedes said, "what about me? I think some blacks need to go back into slavery and chains."
Of course she doesn't really believe such a thing, and I know that, but Demitri took the bait and believed she truly was a raging racist who condoned enslaving a particular group of people due to their skin color.
"That's the problem with free speech," he proclaimed. "That kind of thing needs to be illegal."
The gate suddenly opened, and my racehorse ran out of its box.
"But," I said, "I thought your socialism is not authoritarian."
He didn't understand my assertion.
"Freedom of speech is an important constitutional principle," I explained. "Liberty means that political and religious thought may be verbalized, even if most folks thinks it may be wrong. Those same principles allow you to verbalize anti-American, pro-communist utterances. Should not the racist be allowed to say what they believe?"
"No," came the reply. I expected a speech on "hate speech" and how "propaganda is not freedom of speech", but before he could launch into the predictable diatribe, I continued with my logical assault on his hard left programming.
"That's what freedom is. Sure, with freedom comes responsibility, and one's rights must not interfere with another's rights, but freedom means that even if you are wrong in the eyes of others, you have the freedom to verbalize such. It is not government's place to, through authoritarianism, silence those who are viewed as being wrong. That's up to the culture. If the person really is too far outside the accepted way of thinking, he will likely not do well in society. Once word gets out he's a racist, for example, his business will probably not attract a lot of customers, or he may only attract a certain type of customer, or if he is simply a laborer in the work force finding employment may become difficult. Or, maybe he'll do okay. It's up to the culture. When someone has an idea outside what government approves of in socialism, that person is put down with an authoritarian strike against him. But, in a free market land of liberty, that person can be different, and have different ideas, and in that free system they will either reap the benefits, or suffer the consequences, of what they have put out there. And that's okay. No government interference. It's up to the culture to sort that kind of thing out. That's what liberty is all about."
The "deer in the headlights" look on Demitri's face told me that he was still unreachable.
In the end, I tried to explain to him that the way to fix our troubles as a country is not to toss what made this country great. The fact is, what we have isn't even following the original principles, so I admit we have a problem. "Often, in history and today," I told Demitri, "America has indeed been the bad guy, or done things that was not good. As with an individual who grows wiser over the years by learning from our mistakes, a country can improve by learning from its own history. Racism, for example, is actually something that is in the rearview mirror of history. Sure, there are some people who are off-kilter. That's the reality of human nature. But, overall, our country is not what the new communists are making it out to be. We likely agree on the one percent. Like you, I am not fond of a powerful and wealthy elite pulling on the puppet strings of our political system. But, the problem is not that those people are wealthy, or that private individuals own the means of production. The problem is in their souls. There is no sacred honor among them. They collude with each other and that has contributed to our problems as a country."
We don't need to become a bunch of socialists, we need to return to being a godly country.
To solve the problem we don't need to get rid of a bunch of authoritarians who think they are capitalists and replace them with authoritarians who think they are socialists. That's like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Rather than debating over who's a communist, who's a capitalist, and which one of them are the most corrupt or the most authoritarian, we need to simply do one thing; return to the original principles of the United States Constitution. Liberty, and a truly "free" market (without the collusion we see between big money and big politics), is the key to restoring our American Exceptionalism. We don't need "new communism," we need good old fashioned liberty that resides firmly on a foundation of a virtuous people who understands that our true freedoms come to us through natural law, which includes natural rights given to us by our Creator. Anything else is simply just another version of American Authoritarianism.
I then offered to him that rather than us lock horns in debate, how about he simply start attending my Constitution Classes so that he can hear the other side of the story that he has not been hearing. All I offer is the truth about what the Framers of the Constitution really meant. Then, from there, armed with more than the programming delivered by the progressive left, you can make your own decisions, like Americans normally do in a System of True Liberty.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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