theB2Journal

America's Ruling Class, And The Perils Of Revolution

Part 11 -- Congruent Agendas?

by Angelo M. Codevilla

Each of the country class' diverse parts has its own agenda, which flows from the peculiar ways in which the ruling class impacts its concerns. Independent business people are naturally more sensitive to the growth of privileged relations between government and their competitors. Persons who would like to lead their community rue the advantages that Democrat and Republican party establishments are accruing. Parents of young children, and young women anxious about marriage, worry that cultural directives from on high are dispelling their dreams. The faithful to God sense persecution. All resent higher taxes and loss of freedom. More and more realize that their own agenda's advancement requires concerting resistance to the ruling class across the board.

Not being at the table when government makes the rules about how you must run your business, knowing that you will be required to pay more, work harder, and show deference for the privilege of making less money, is the independent businessman's nightmare. But what to do about it? In our time the interpenetration of government and business -- the network of subsidies, preferences and regulations -- is so thick and deep, the people "at the table" receive and recycle into politics so much money, that independent business people cannot hope to undo any given regulation or grant of privilege.

Just as no manufacturer can hope to reduce the subsidies that raise his fuel costs, no set of doctors can shield themselves from the increased costs and bureaucracy resulting from government mandates. Hence independent business' agenda has been to resist the expansion of government in general, and of course to reduce taxes. Pursuit of this agenda with arguments about economic efficiency and job creation -- and through support of the Republican Party -- usually results in enough relief to discourage more vigorous remonstrance. Sometimes however the economic argument is framed in"In our time, more and more independent business people have come to think of their economic problems in moral terms. But few realize how revolutionary that is." moral terms: "The sum of good government," said Thomas Jefferson, is not taking "from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." For government to advantage some at others' expense, said he, "is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association." In our time, more and more independent business people have come to think of their economic problems in moral terms. But few realize how revolutionary that is.

As bureaucrats and teachers' unions disempowered neighborhood school boards, while the governments of towns, counties and states were becoming conduits for federal mandates, as the ruling class reduced the number and importance of things that American communities could decide for themselves, America's thirst for self governance reawakened. The fact that public employees are almost always paid more and have more generous benefits than the private sector people whose taxes support them only sharpened the sense among many in the country class that they now work for public employees rather than the other way around. But how to reverse the roles? How can voters regain control of government? Restoring localities' traditional powers over schools, including standards, curriculum, and prayer would take repudiating two generations of Supreme Court rulings. So would the restoration of traditional "police" powers over behavior in public places.

Bringing public employee unions to heel is only incidentally a matter of cutting pay and benefits. Since self governance is crimped primarily by the powers of government personified in its employees, restoring it involves primarily deciding that any number of functions now performed and the professional specialties who perform them, e.g. social workers, are superfluous or worse. Explaining to one's self and neighbors why such functions and personnel do more harm than good, while the ruling class brings its powers to bear to discredit you, is a very revolutionary thing to do.

America's pro family movement is a reaction to the ruling class' challenges: emptying marriage of legal sanction, promoting abortion and progressively excluding parents from their children's education. Americans reacted to these challenges primarily by sorting themselves out. Close friendships and above all marriages became rarer between persons who think well of divorce, abortion, and government authority over children, and those who do not. The home school movement, for which the internet became the great facilitator, involves not only each family educating its own children, but also extensive and growing social, intellectual and spiritual contact among like-minded persons. In short, the part of the country class that is most concerned with family matters has taken on something of a biological identity. Few in this part of the country class have any illusion however that simply retreating into"The ruling class' manifold efforts to discredit and drive worship of God out of public life convinced many among the vast majority of Americans who believe and pray that today's regime is hostile to the most important things of all." private associations will long save their families from societal influences made to order to discredit their ways. But stopping the ruling class' intrusions would require discrediting its entire conception of man, of right and wrong, as well as of the role of courts in popular government. That revolutionary task would involve far more than legislation.

The ruling class' manifold efforts to discredit and drive worship of God out of public life -- not even the Soviet Union arrested students for wearing crosses or praying, or reading the Bible on school property, as some U.S. localities have done in response to Supreme Court rulings -- convinced many among the vast majority of Americans who believe and pray that today's regime is hostile to the most important things of all. Every December, they are reminded that the ruling class deems the very word "Christmas" to be offensive. Every time they try to manifest their religious identity in public affairs, they are deluged by accusations of being "American Taliban" trying to set up a "theocracy." Let members of the country class object to anything the ruling class says or does, and likely as not their objection will be characterized as "religious," that is to say irrational, that is to say not to be considered on a par with the "science" of which the ruling class is the sole legitimate interpreter.

Because aggressive, intolerant, secularism is the moral-intellectual basis of the ruling class' claim to rule, resistance to that rule, whether to the immorality of economic subsidies and privileges, to the violation of the principle of equal treatment under equal law, to its seizure of children's education, must deal with secularism's intellectual and moral core. This lies beyond the boundaries of politics as the term is commonly understood.