by Thomas DiLorenzo, Lew Rockwell:

If the corona cold virus calamity teaches us anything it is that, with few exceptions, America’s political class is overwhelmingly dominated by fascists and totalitarians.  I speak of course of all the governors, mayors, and city and county council members who have taken it upon themselves to declare that their words are law, and to use the heavily-armed police forces at their disposal to enforce their “laws.” The Morticia Adams-ish governor of Michigan has become the face of today’s fascist totalitarian political class.

Real laws are passed by Congress and state legislatures and are signed by chief executives.  NONE of the “stay-at-home” orders are laws; they are the mere words of politicians and bureaucrats.  Nor are they based on “science.” In the true spirit of Abraham Lincoln, who arbitrarily redefined “treason” from its Article 3, Section 3 definition of “levying war upon” the free and independent states (which he was guilty of) to criticizing himself and his policies, the political class has not amended but simply redefined the Constitution to mean whatever words come out of either sides of their mouths.  This reminds your author of an old movie, “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” in which Burt Lancaster portrays a mad scientist who experiments on animals that he makes part human.  To control the beasts he tells them that he is their father and  and “The Sayer of the Law.”  Whatever he says is “the law” by virtue of his having said it.  America has become one big island of Dr. Moreaus hiding behind their titles of “governor” or “mayor.”

The Bill of Rights does not say that we have inalienable rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and religion “unless people get sick,” after all.  But, alas, the Constitution has essentially been a dead letter for generations.  Americans have long lived under the “Hamiltonian constitution,” which is whatever the politicians of the day say it is.   Jeffersonian “strict constructionism” was abandoned, essentially, at the end of the “Civil War.”

This fact is why almost all who are attracted to politics as a career today are totalitarian-minded thugs. They get into politics precisely because they want to yield this monopolistic, totalitarian power against their fellow citizens, who they often despise and hate, publicly labeling them with such words as “deplorable” and much worse.  There are a few exceptions, of course, the most magnificent of which is former Congressman Ron Paul, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule.

I also speak of the entire U.S. Congress, the U.S. Department of Justice, and virtually the entire judicial system, every member of whom has remained as silent as a church mouse while the rule of law in America was swept away in a mere six weeks.  Think of this the next time a “conservative Republican” in Washington pretends to be devoted to the Constitution.

The American public lost control of the federal government when the rights of secession and nullification were abolished in 1865.  John C. Calhoun was right when he explained in his Disquisition on Government that a written constitution would never be enough to control and restrain legal plunder.  Some mechanism that could be utilized by the people of the free and independent states, organized in political communities, was necessary if the central government was to be the servant rather than the master of the people, he said.  Naturally, Calhoun is one of the most demonized political figures in American history by the American ruling class.

Then came the deification and glorification of the Lincoln dictatorship, which turned into the deification of the presidency in general and of all its “executive powers” (i.e., mostly unconstitutional, dictatorial powers to wage war, enslave citizens through conscription, and everything else).  Federalism was destroyed by the “Civil War,” after which the states became mere franchises or appendages of the central government in Washington.  The federal government was turned into one giant monopoly of the worst kind:  One from which there can be no escape once it acquired the powers of money printing and income taxation.

The temptation to be one of the chosen few to yield such totalitarian powers is what causes the worst elements of society to pursue careers in politics, as F.A. Hayek explained in The Road to Serfdom.  Long gone are the days when public-spirited citizens would serve in Congress for a few years, their behavior constrained by “the chains of the Constitution,” as Jefferson once said, and then return to their private lives.

Your author used to have a quotation on his office door from Ringo Starr, of all people, that said:  “Everything government touches turns to crap.”  No truer words were ever spoken.  The inevitable failures of government (Did the Centers for Disease Control succeed in controlling the coronavirus disease?) elicits a typical response from politicians:  ramp up their totalitarian dictates, as so many of today’s governors are doing at the moment, after the original dictates proved to be failures.  As Hayek wrote (p. 135):  They “would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure.  It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful in a society tending toward totalitarianism.”  That latter phrase is a perfect description of what America has become just in the last few months.  Hayek wrote this in his famous chapter 10, “Why the Worst Get on Top.”

“The worst” do not do it all alone.  The have help from a large segment of the population that assists them in making them their own de facto slaves.  This takes a large group, wrote Hayek, in order to present the appearance of legitimacy to the state’s totalitarian powers.  The perfect kind of large group, moreover, that is large enough to “impose their views on the values of life on all the rest” will be “those who form the ‘mass’ in the derogatory sense of the term, the least original and independent . . .”  Thus, the totalitarian fascist will be able to acquire the “support of all the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are prepared to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently and loudly and frequently” (i.e., “We’re all in this together.  We’re all in this together.  We’re all in this together.  We’re all in this together . . .”).  It will be “those whose vague and imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed and whose passions and emotions are readily aroused who well swell the ranks of the totalitarian party,” wrote Hayek (p. 139).

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