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National Socialism Comes to America
 In
1956, at the height of the Cold War, the historian John Lukacs
smiled skeptically at the notion that it was a contest between the opposing
principles of capitalism and communism. Actually, he said, it was a rivalry
between two broadly similar states, Russian and American, both of which
might be more
accurately  described
as “national socialist.”
Unfortunately, that term had
already been taken, and nobody wanted it after 1945. But Lukacs was far
from the only one who saw that it fit most of the regimes that had survived
World War II. In his influential 1941 book, The Managerial
Revolution, the former Communist James Burnham argued that the
American, German, and Russian systems, despite superficial differences,
were all variants of a new type of bureaucratic state, in which the actual
control exercised by the burgeoning new “managerial” class was
separate from nominal ownership.
John T. Flynn saw Franklin
Roosevelt’s New Deal as an American transposition of Fascism. Garet
Garrett, another critic of Roosevelt, understood that the United States was
undergoing a revolution — of the kind Aristotle had called
“revolution within the form.” America was not so different
from its enemies as most Americans liked to believe. By now it’s a
little late for conservatism; most of the things worth conserving were
destroyed a long time ago.
Still, “superficial”
differences can be important. If all modern states are versions of national
socialism, I’d rather live under one with habeas corpus and freedom of
the press than under one without them. I’d rather be permitted to
speak my mind than forbidden to.
But let’s be clear about
this. Americans are still permitted to do a great many things, though not as
many things as their ancestors could take for granted. Fine. But permission
isn’t freedom. The privilege of a subject isn’t the right of a
free man. If you can own only what the government permits you to own, then
in essence the government owns you. We no longer tell the state what our
rights are; it tells us.
Such is the servitude Americans
are now accustomed to under an increasingly bureaucratic state. Permission,
often in the form of legal licensing, is the residue of the old freedom; but
we’re supposed to think that this is still “the land of the
free,” and that we owe our freedom to the state, its laws, and
especially its wars. The more the state grows — that is, the more it
fulfills the character of national socialism — the freer we’re
told we are.
President Bush, who is not exactly
your philosopher-king type, would probably react with surprise, indignation,
and bafflement if you called him a national socialist, since, after all, he thinks
a fair amount of capitalism should be permitted, even encouraged; and
he’s really not all that different from most of our rulers. But
that’s the point. Few of these men really know what they think; they
came in late in the game, and they play by the rules they see others playing
by. What’s philosophy got to do with it? (That was an elective course,
wasn’t it?)
![[Breaker quote for National Socialism Comes to America: Alias "freedom"]](2005breakers/051124.gif) Let’s
put it this way. If our
rulers were all shipwrecked on a desert island with no means of escape, they
might eventually build monuments and skyscrapers; but can anyone imagine
them creating free institutions? What sort of Republic would this be if it had
been founded by the Bushes, Clintons, Kennedys, Bidens, and McCains? Its
rallying cry would have been something along the lines of “Give me
Medicare benefits or give me death!”
This is not to insult them, merely
to point out their shared premise: they all think from the perspective of
power, of the rulers and not the ruled. They may be benevolent, in their way;
but when they want to do something for their subjects, it goes without
saying that they also reserve the right to do something to those same
subjects. Controlling the nation’s wealth, even under the guise of
“capitalism,” is always the main thing. It’s
“our” wealth, isn’t it? Monarchy is so over, but rulers
still love the first-person plural. As in “We owe it to ourselves.”
And even when the subjects
criticize the rulers — which is permitted — the criticism itself
assumes the same premise and perspective. After all, we’re told that
in a democracy the subjects themselves are the ultimate rulers. Hence the
taxpayers themselves may wish for higher taxes to pay for their privileges,
calculating that these will be chiefly exacted from others.
And freedom? Well, under national
socialism, freedom is where you find it.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2005 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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