Townhall.com Dennis Prager May 2, 2006
In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it’s the past that is always changing.
— old Soviet dissident joke
As a graduate student in international affairs at Columbia University, I specialized in the study of totalitarianism, especially, though not only, the communist variety. I found the subject fascinating, but I never for a moment imagined that any expertise gained in this field would prove relevant to American life.
Sad to say, it has turned out to be the most valuable subject I could have studied. The totalitarian temptation is not confined to Nazis and communists; it can rear its head in any society and gradually destroy it. And as the Soviet dissident joke notes, one quick way to identify totalitarian threats to liberty is to identify those who falsify the historical record on behalf of their cause.
In America today, two groups are most actively engaged in falsifying history: the ACLU and the anti-smoking movement.
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I live in Christchurch New Zealand. We have a very strong anti-smoking lobby and if it too transmogrifies into a lobby for eradicating Christian History, this city, named after the Oxford College of Christchurch, may have to get another name, too, in the same way that Cuidad de Nuestra Senora Reina de Los Angeles will need to! 🙂
It is not just legitimate history that tyrants are opposed to; it is all forms of knowledge that they do not control. Genuine history exposes the fallacy of their ideas, but so does real thought in any discipline, that is why tyrants are also demagogues. The tyrants have to constantly stir up the emotions of the populace to a state of fear so that the tyrant’s draconian “solutions” appear not only feasible, but desirable.
The Judeo-Christian faith is a special target because it is from that revealed faith tradition that both the idea and the reality of freedom springs. God told the Hebrews that an earthly king was not necessary as long as He ruled them. Jesus said, “Know the Truth and the Truth will make you free”, and Peter, “love casts out fear”.
Since politics is the art of seeking and using worldly power, politics, left to its own devices, will ultimately lead to tyranny. Such is the danger of making every issue of human moral and ethical interaction into a political debate. We tend to loose the real heart of the matter and defer to power to solve the problem.
According to what Glen says, the essence of genuine Libertarian thought is akin to mine. Unfortunately, the popular message of the Libertarian Party is “anything goes and the government has no right to tell you any differently” which becomes and excuse for hedonism and anarchy.
Removing ethical and moral questions from the political sphere does not mean privatizing them. For us to really reach satisfactory solutions requires social consensus. Such consensus is best reached in relatively small groups. Such was one of the intents of the original federalism and the Articles of Confederation prior to that. Unfortunately, many of the proponents of federalism seem to use it to defend bad things, like slavery and discrimination that weakens the idea itself.
How willing are we as a society to allow evil to live in our midst in order to preserve freedom? Jesus told us that he allows the wheat and the tares to grow together until the harvest. The Christian message is clearly that we should never allow evil to go unchallenged, neither should we be quick to punish evil with force. We should not expect that evil will ever go away until our Lord returns. Even then, it is merely segregated in the outer darkness not really destroyed.
One of the reasons for Christ’s mercy is that as many have realized, the dividing line between good and evil runs through each of our hearts. Jesus has always taught us that we must purify our own hearts before we can condemn others. In the meantime, we have to tend to each other’s wounds. We still have the responsibility to discern sin and evil and call each other’s attention to it in love. Tyrant’s don’t like that either as they arrogate to themselves the authority to determine right from wrong, good from evil with only their own whims as the template for making the decision. So we too, must be careful not to mistake our own predilections for the standard of the Gospel and the Church. Each time we do, we advance the cause of tyranny rather than freedom.
Prager rightly condemns those people who fear or disdain elements of the past so much that they feel a need to “scrub” any trace of them from history.
This same concern appears in the introduction to Norman Davies monumental work, “Europe: A History”. In the introduction Davies explains why he thought a new history of Europe was needed. Previous histories, he said had been distorted by the nationalism and political correctness of their time and place, and he wanted to try and be more objective and inclusive.
A history written in England in 1895 might have focused almost exclusively on the accomplishments of white males of western European ancestry, while a history written there in 1995 might have white males of western European ancestry as history’s principal villains. Likewise we have movies from the 1930’s depicting native-Americans as mindless, bloodthisty savages, and movies from the 1980’s depicting them as noble victims of the genocidal US Cavalry. On my bookshelf are “History of the American People” by Paul Douglas, a historian so conservative he can’t think of a single nice thing to say about Frankin Roosevelt, and “A People’s History of the United States”, by Howard Zinn, for whom the last 230 years have been a non-stop orgy of racist, sexist, and economic abuse directed against women, native-Americans, African-Americans and blue-collar union workers.
These are depictions of history that reflect the prejudices of the time and their authors. I agree with Prager that they are totalitarian because they seek to bend and filter facts to serve a political agenda. Prager wants us to be mindful of the pressures to conform to political correctness with unconscious sheeplike obedience. Putting on the blinkers is the first step towards enslavement.
If we are to truly understand and benefit from our history we have to accept the parts we don’t like along with the one parts that we do. We have to follow the facts wherever they may take us. Sometimes those parts of our history will make conservatives look good and liberals look bad, and somethimes it will be the other way around. Analyze, learn and adjust accordingly.
Another aspect of tyranny that makes it anti-historical is that tyranny always wants to de-personalize and de-sacralize everything. History is profoundly personal as it is a way for us to commune in time and space with others. It is a way to gain insight into our own pain and suffering and at the same time to seek a better way with the knowledge of the struggles, the failures and the successes of others in the past. As Christians, we are called upon to be part of the redeeming of time, not just the present. We are in communion with not only the saints of the past but all who have reposed in Christ. The living salvation history is part of the unique identity of the Chruch.
Tyrants also demand uniformity. God-given personhood is denied and the attempt to crush the unique is part and parcel to all tyrannical movements. We must also realize that freedom also means the freedom to fail, to make wrong choices. Since most of us want to be protected from the consequences of our choices, at least the negative consequences, we are always tempted to allow tyranny to some extent.
We live in a fallen world and so we will never be completely free. Someone or something will always be needed to protect and defend, to punish transgression and to segregate the wrong doers from others. Governments are the usual instrument of order. The extent to which governments and other institutions go to allow freedom or suppress it is determined by those who are governed.
Tyranny can be unwillingly imposed by force. Those tyrannies are usually not long lasting. The tyranny that is much more difficult to dislodge is the one accepted by the populace, for most do not even think that they are being tyrannized.
In the United States we seem to be willing to put up with so many petty tyrannies in the name of not offending anyone that our freedom as a whole is in jeopardy. We are being picked to death by a horde of ants.