I remain an unapologetic Anglophile. The library in my home has a section where we begin with the “merging of “Athens and Jerusalem” the Bible and St.’s Aquinas and Augustine and the works of Aristotle and Plato, a copy of The Magna Carta, works of the Enlightenment including Adam Smith, Burke, Wilberforce, Locke, Jefferson, and for some French Balance Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau. The Enlightenment influence extended beyond the Great Revolutions of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries and beyond Colonialism and Imperialism. All periods should inform us, but the apologetics of the early twentieth century during the end The Age of Imperialism in England, seem to be speaking to America and the state of political debate in our country today. Rudyard Kipling, C.S Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton wrote for over forty years anticipating the cultural and political clashes of their day and that are coming to fruition in our country today. They defined these “cultural clashes” in religious and Biblical terms, and in my opinion rightly so. See if you see the similarities and see if you agree with me that history as always very much informs the issues of our day—even when we think that our problems are unique to us.
As materialistic philosophies like Marxist Socialism, Communism, and totalitarian centralized solutions to the problems of an increasing industrialized society became ever more popular in Academic centers in Europe, England and the United States, the push back from those “religious” —both Protestant and Catholic was at first almost non-existent. In later years C. S. Lewis and many other academicians opined that there was a fear in the intellectual communities that pushing back against the FABIANS could be dangerous. Sound familiar? Mass conformation bias. Who were the “Fabians”?
The Fabian Society is a British socialist organization whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. The Fabian Society was also historically related to radicalism, a left-wing liberal tradition.
Others like G. K. Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling, and Hilaire Belloc railed and warned incessantly for 40 years. History was to prove their positions to be prescient and correct. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were all predicted. Their position against totalitarian Fascism and Marxism was labeled “distributism”, and it was very “Jeffersonian” in its ideas. They believed in the ownership of private property and that individuals should own the “means of production”. Corporate ownership in their day was held by the elite establishment in the landed aristocratic classes. Stock ownership by everyday people was almost unheard of. They imagined a more agrarian society, where neighbor would know and help neighbor. Political power in the “distributist state” was to be decentralized and, ” a kind of New England Town Hall offering maximum opportunity for each citizen at the local level” was the model. Sounds like Jefferson, Goldwater, or Reagan to me. At the core of distributists values was the love of ordinary working people. Here was the ultimate creative source of civilization and at its center the sanctity and strength of the family. Distributism stood in opposition to the Marxist—Communist—Socialist statists.
At this same time in history Ferdinand Toennies, often times credited as the founder of modern sociology in Germany, defined to types of “social” communities” Gemeinschafts” where intimate relations are primary—family (child, husband wife parent). Gesellschafts is the opposite where social relations are determined by the coercive action of the state. The individual belongs to the state. Taken to an extreme this releases the individual from social ties, responsibilities, and the loss of norms. Coercive conformity exerted by the State or an agent of the State, acting in the best communal interests of the State was the ideal. Chesterton said of the Fabians who saw themselves as Kings and philosophers “that they seemed more aggrieved by the worlds mess than they did by the worlds’ wrongs—including their own”. They always approached social problems from the prospective of the State and not from the position of the individual. Only within the context of the family based on principles of ownership and private property should the State be allowed to act. Collectivism in any of its’ forms showed no understanding or appreciation of the private (family) or public (government) aspects of The Natural Law as understood by many of our Anglo-Enlightenment fathers.
What evolved over forty years in Western Europe and to some extent in our country was a government of “corporate bias”. A government not by the legislature or parliament, but a government between corporations (elitists with special connections—a managerial elite) and those in the executive branches with the same bibliographies.
According to the conservatives of the early twentieth century, “the electoral cycle had little effect on economic or political decisions.” The legislature was used by the corporate leaders to win popular mandates for decisions they had already arrived at or would soon be making. As early as 1930 Chesterton warned that it didn’t make any difference which party or candidate won an election, so long as a loyalist to the ruling class won—irrespective of party, because the loyalists (substitute RINOs) were all under the thumb of the government, bureaucratic, corporatists. He called this “triangulation. I contend that this shift in power away from the legislators—the people, toward the special interests is precisely what has happened in Washington DC and Idaho.
The corporatists Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI), Idaho Medical Association, (IMA), Idaho Hospital Association (IHA), and the Idaho Education Association (IEA) have more sway over our government than We the People. Modern day triangulation between for example hospitals and the insurance companies, government agencies, and our politicians has sucked the representative sole out of Idaho governance and government. The very people charged with being watchdogs for the people over large corporations receive their campaign money from those same corporations. In fact, many times people move in and out of the private sector to the public sector thus facilitating the process of triangulation and making the will of the people less relevant.
We have in Idaho and Washington DC a Gesellschafts. WE the People Know it. So do the politicians including our Governor. They will do everything to protect their purchase on such a power including not debating the very people whose vote you are asking for. Only we the people can change this,
Get out and vote! A Great Awakening could truly change all this.
