Abraham Lincoln, Benito Mussolini, and Salvific Politics

The final horrific result is the insane push for generating or sustaining a salvific politics that, it is assumed, terrifically transcends the merely pedestrian, ordinary, affairs of human life in so thrillingly promising a worldly salvation, for the true believers and the vile sycophants of the (presumed) fearless leader.  Thus, Caesarism (a Napoleon, Hitler, Peron, etc.) occurs in every age.  No nation, however, appears to be fully exempt from this historical phenomenon inherent to power politics, including America, past or present.  How may this happen?  

A serious crisis arises by which the national political figure comes forth to take charge, even in the name of democracy and by legal elections, and ends by promoting the subversion of that nation’s political order and/or its constitution, in the ever grand name of securing a higher or purer understanding of democracy, for the sake of the people. 

One can easily cite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as a war propaganda document calling forth the announced refounding of the nation, the new birth of freedom.  An elective legislature can, moreover, even further aid the ruler by successfully paving the ideological and political road toward the ends desired, through providing the needed means toward those very horrid ends. 

Significant thinkers, for well over a century, have properly recognized the evil phenomenon of democratic despotism, as was first specifically denominated as such by Alexis de Tocqueville, in the 19th century, and, later, vigorously elaborated upon, even much more so, by J. L. Talmon (his calling it “totalitarian democracy”) and others. 

Today, the future of the United States of America is being put into very serious question, into a hazardous, perilous jeopardy, it is felt and thought, by many serious and profound observers of the national scene; this is as to whether or not domestic freedom and liberty can truly survive the intensive ideological and political assaults of an aggressive regime so dedicated to the furtherance of collectivism, to the creation of a European-style, social-market economy, a Big Mother (the Therapeutic State), not Big Brother, State; it, a colossus of statism magnified exceedingly, will become something much tremendously larger than what used to be just called simply Big Government, as has been so noted, e. g., by Patrick Buchanan and others. 

As the ever-promised recovery fades further and further from view, which will then predictably increase the extent and degree of the (so convenient) crisis, more power will be so willingly sought by which to achieve the hyper-centralization of not just the mere economy; the society and culture would then, logically, have to be put under more quite severe governmental control and supra-regulation as with, e. g., a national-socialist healthcare system, as another important means of helping the people to achieve their salvation. 

The ends will, thus, help to suitably justify any of the ever-expanding means for securing the growth of the welfare-warfare State; this will be, as noted, far beyond all present and archaic limits, beyond the boundaries of the (merely paper) Constitution itself.  Perhaps, then, Abraham Lincoln, Benito Mussolini, and salvific politics are not such an odd compilation of subjects for the title of an article. 

The implications can be revealingly perceived by reading such intriguing books as: James Kalb’s The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command as to the logically necessary implications and consequences of when politics get greatly reified into becoming an ideological struggle for totalist, statist, power on earth; there is, moreover, no conceivable end or limits to salvific politics when, as with Rousseau, men are to be forced to be free in service [servitude] to the General Will.  It may begin, for example, with instituting a social-market economy for this country but cannot end with just that feature of massive interventionism; thus, a national-socialist healthcare system is, also, surely being planned.

Unless, however, there is true and sustained resistance to the ugly thrust toward the notion of trying to institute a form of political salvation through the welfare-warfare State, the future will, therefore, remain dark and frightening to all those who support economic freedom and civil social liberty against tyranny.  As it was once held true in the past concerning tyranny, so it is exactly the same case today, one must fight for the right to be free.  For within that right,… for within that might, … for within that power that this people, under God, shall forever endure.