Chapter XVI

THE REVOLUTION OF OUR TIME

It remains now to sum up in a few pages the essence of this strange adventure in our history and to describe the elements which now provide the power behind it. First, let us sum up in a few sentences the central facts which explain our present plight since World War II ended in August, 1945. These are the points we must bear in mind:

First, the policy through which, after defeating the German dictator, Hitler, we turned over to the Communist Stalin and his successors almost all the fruits of victory.

Second, the shocking series of distortions to which we subjected our Constitution under which our great Republic was governed, as a result of which we have delivered an almost mortal blow to our own system of political rule.

Third, the conspiracy by which communist and socialist revolutionaries, aided by a packed Supreme Court, have set in motion a fundamental revolution in our economic system.

Fourth, the method by which our federal government has bought off opposition by manufacturing a criminal prosperity built on war, whipped up by fears of war, paid for by confiscatory taxes and equally fantastic federal borrowings exceeding 275 billion dollars—to say nothing of those 16 million young Americans taken from their homes and their jobs to fight all over the world and of those 1,077,828 casualties.

Fifth, the policy by which, whether there is a war raging or not, we are kept in a state of war fears—of continuing crisis—by entwining our security with the disordered empires of Europe that are supposed to be our friends, that are described as “our noble allies” and that are sinking gradually behind the red curtain of socialism or communism or some other form of collectivism.

Unless we understand these facts we will fail to make any headway against the strange force which has entrapped us in difficulties all over the world and in a shocking state of disrepair inside our own borders. Is there anything that can be done about this? Can we reconstruct the great, free society we have so gravely injured? Certainly we can do nothing until we understand clearly what has happened to us and the nature of the road along which we continue to descend.

Let me illustrate what I refer to as our confusion. In the political campaign of 1952 the Democratic Party was denounced as promoting socialist ideas and being soft on communists. It was also denounced as cultivating socialist aims here and leading the nation to bankruptcy by its irresponsible spending orgy. These appeals exerted a powerful influence on the electorate and were the chief motives for turning the Democrats out and putting the Republicans in. But what happened after the election? As I write these sentences, our so-called noble allies are putting endless pressure on our government to soften our policy with reference to Russia and to create an atmosphere in which we and our “allies” can resume trade with Russia, China and the whole communist world. What happened when Mr. Truman left the White House and President Eisenhower took over? In Mr. Truman’s last two years his expenditures were as follows:

 

1951

$44,058,000,000

1952

65,408,000,000

When General Eisenhower came into power, the expenditures in his first two years were:

 

1953

$74,274,000,000

1954

67,772,000,000

In Mr. Truman’s last two years the Korean War was being fought. It ended shortly after General Eisenhower entered the White House. While a part of the expenditures for 1953 were planned under Mr. Truman, the spending continued in the new administration notwithstanding the practical cessation of fighting in Korea. It is a fact that in his first two years President Eisenhower spent 32½ billion dollars more than Mr. Truman in his last two. I do not record these facts as a mere criticism of General Eisenhower. I offer them as an evidence of what I have suggested above, namely that there is no difference whatever at present between our two parties. I do not indict the Democratic Party as a conscious vehicle of socialist philosophy. I do say the controlling wing of the Democratic Party has opened its arms so widely and affectionately to such an immense part of the socialist philosophy that in all justice it should now be known as the Socialist Democratic Party. This transformation is partly the result of the new socialist strategy and partly the result of the immense political advantage there is in these huge budgets of taxed and borrowed funds with which to buy the support of numerous minorities. In the case of the Republican Party, those who now control it have decided that they can be just as good socialists as the Democrats so long as they reject the label, and partly because in their reach for power they feel it is necessary to compete with the Democrats with gifts and a form of socialism in the market place for votes.

What I have been trying to make clear is that the movement at the bottom of all our ills—including our infatuation with war as a remedy for something or other—is a Dark Alliance, a drive getting its power from a number of minorities. At the control switches (a favorite term with our literary and social engineers) are the communist and socialist revolutionaries. They provide the blueprints, the pamphlets, the poems and songs and the fiery energy of the movement. But they are few in numbers and they derive their political energy from a number of social, political, economic and regional minorities who clamor endlessly for government aid of all kinds—laws, appropriations, handouts, favors for teachers who want federal grants, farmers who want to sell their crops to Uncle Sam, businessmen who see in our fantastic federal spending programs for war and peace the world over an endless stream of government contracts and government payments. It is an alliance—a Dark Alliance—the end of which is to disrupt the American system of private enterprise. But along with this, onto the scrapheap of history will go the American Republic. It must be scrapped as part of this revolutionary plan because no communist, socialist or collectivist society can be built and managed under the American Constitution.

It requires no more than a few words to restate in simple terms the thesis of this argument. First, it is essential to understand that our wars in Europe and Asia are mere by-products of one great central assault on our country. The truly Great War—the one which, as I have said, we do not seem to be aware of and do not fight—is the war on the American Republic. Strange as it may seem and difficult as it is to believe, we have been building up the vast Russian Communist tyranny in Europe and Asia and have been tearing down our own great constitutional system in the United States.

Early in the game, the leaders in this movement in America realized that the Great Depression presented them with the opportunity to move the United States off into a shrewd plan to erect a socialist society here. The crash of 1929 was taken to be the definitive evidence of the instability of our American economic system—the system of private enterprise—and its inability to provide abundance for all or to escape recurring crises. Certainly that crash was abundant evidence that the American system of private enterprise could not flourish continuously under the evil influence of those shameful adventures in banking and corporate finance which disfigured the system and ultimately brought on the depression. What was called for was evident—reform—a whole series of corrections by government and business of the evils that brought on the crash. But the various revolutionary elements saw in it the opportunity to kill public confidence in our own system and our own form of government. And by a twist of fate, the man who came to leadership at that moment, President Roosevelt, urged on by that strange collection of men who surrounded him—Hopkins and Tugwell and Frankfurter and Wallace and a whole regiment of lesser red and pink luminaries—was able to install these revolutionary elements in power. Little was done, therefore, to correct the evils which produced the depression. On the contrary, every effort was directed toward completing the ruin on our economic system which was begun by the depression.

The goal was the creation of an American Socialist Republic. But this could not possibly be done under the American Constitution. That Constitution, as we have seen in detail, was framed to erect here a government designed to create a free society. Human freedom was at its base. No such society existed anywhere in the world. Great Britain at the time enjoyed a system more nearly approaching a free society than any other, but it was very far indeed from that truly free republic which our Revolutionary statesmen envisioned.

They knew, as we have seen, that fortune had put into their hands a glorious opportunity. They knew that the new nation would have to have a strong government, but they knew also the grave dangers inherent in government when there are no adequate devices to restrain the abuse of that strength. Chance gave them the solution. They created a union of sovereign republics—the 13 states—each possessing in its own right the power to govern its own people within its borders. The Founders built around these states our great central republic. To this the states committed certain powers, clearly defined and thoroughly understood for 148 years. These powers were sharply enumerated in a written constitution. And they were as sharply defined to prevent their extension or enlargement. They proved adequate for 148 years to bring to full growth the freest society that has ever existed in human history.

But now, aside from the mechanical and architectural construction of the federal government—that is, the provisions for a President, a House and Senate and a system of courts, plus certain guarantees—the Constitution has been radically altered and is now accepted in Washington as a charter under which the politicians can erect and administer a powerful central government that can interfere not only with state governmental affairs, but can engage in any kind of political or economic activity inside any state.

In short, the first stage of the socialist revolution is completethe stage which consisted in the dismantling of the Constitution and the erection of a powerful central State capable of organizing a socialist society.

The next stage, of course, is to continue the policy of confiscatory federal taxation and federal borrowing of vast billions to carry on federal activities to increase employment and give handouts to various powerful minorities of all sorts. Along with this goes the evil institution of militarism and its handmaiden, globalism, as a means of creating jobs—millions of jobs at the cost of endless billions in taxation and borrowing. The well-schooled socialist revolutionary knows that the capitalist society cannot stand up under this load of taxation and debt, that it continues to function at present under the impact of war threats and war engines all over the world. This is all to the good for the intelligent socialist revolutionary because he knows that sooner or later the free enterprise system will crash utterly under this load. There are some shallow and giddy leftists who are infatuated by the theory of endless government borrowing. But no intelligent socialist revolutionary who understands the economic structure of our system is fooled by this. He favors it, but he favors it because he knows that it is the most powerful force for an assault on our system that will crush it in the end.

However, there is one feature of this evil development that is overlooked by many honest reformers in our colleges and many of our intellectualist leaders. I have pointed out that while our socialist revolutionaries were promoting the creation of an all-powerful government at the center—powerful enough to operate a socialist society—they were overlooking the ultimate disaster into which they would stumble.

The dream of those who were foremost in promoting the coming of the all-powerful central State and the rise of a noble, free socialist heaven must inevitably run afoul of a law—a law which controls the nature of men. In another section of this discussion I have attempted to describe one of the most pathetic and disturbing aspects of this strange illusion. I have referred to that element in any society which thinks of itself as an intellectual élite. The breed has flourished in every age, and in none more profusely than our own. The reader will recall the earlier pages in which I attempted to describe the weird adventures of the “philosopher rulers” or “philosopher kings” in Bacon’s “Salomon’s House"; the Communist heaven in Andreae’s Christian-apolis; Cabet’s dictatorship of the technicians and that zaniest of all the walled heavens right here on our own shores—the Fourierist paradise at Brook Farm in Massachusetts. This experiment excited the imagination of a large collection of teachers, scientists, novelists, poets, essayists and editors, including one famous newspaper editor who became the candidate of a great party for President of the United States.

The era of the little enclosed Communist heavens passed, of course, with the coming of the era of railroads, machines and electric power. The ruthless enterprise of Marx has succeeded the bland visions of Plato and Fourier. But the old illusion hangs on—that these planned socialist societies will be ruled by a breed sometimes called the Technicians and sometimes referred to in various terms that are intended to define the Thinkers, the Philosophers. The intention is differently phrased to suit the fancy of various audiences. Stuart Chase, a kindly and gentle soul, suggests that in this radiant dawn “at the control switches of the nation will stand 100,000 technicians.” It is a fair assumption that by this he was not speaking of only one batch of scientific experts. He envisioned the material economic system of a great nation as a number of separate engines of mechanical or economic or social power, all working under the touch of social engineers who would keep the whole economic and political system under their power—the men of science, the political philosophers, the economic doctors who would make the plans and direct the movements of the production and governing machinery of a vast nation.

There are others who would not agree wholly with this description. They would, perhaps, object to the term “technicians.” They would think of America as a vast orderly land of abundance, operating everywhere according to plans laid down by the engineers, the philosophers, the teachers, the thinkers. In other words, we would have in America a great society—a kind of social brotherhood—living in peace, abundance and progress under the guidance, not of a small group in “Salomon’s House” but of a class exercising by some political magic a preponderant authority in the management of this broad continent. These are the general outlines of the dream. The details, I assume, will be filled in later, but I suggest we can conclude that the details will be filled in by some pretty harsh, pragmatic gentlemen who will also arrange that the ruthless machine in which the people will be only so many moving parts will be controlled by switches pulled by some American editions of Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin and Bulganin. All those kindly, radiant poets and essayists and philosophers in Russia who dreamed so many rosy dreams in the days of the Czars have long since been exterminated out of the machine.

In the United States our cities and states are controlled by professional politicians, often by some who are little seen or heard. Of course an occasional businessman may have an extra added talent for political action, as may also be true of a stray professor—the faculty politician is by no means a rarity. But I suggest we may assume that if a socialist or communist party should ever come to power, it will be run, not by professors, poets, novelists and other scribblers, but by practical politicians who know how to wield and hold power when they get possession of its machinery. The operation of this law is nowhere more pragmatically illustrated than in Soviet Russia. Of the 32 men who sparked and ran the revolution, only two—Stalin and Lenin—continued in power. The other 30 were liquidated. This startling fact has been stated many times, but nowhere more dramatically than in the Encyclopedia of World Politics in 1950:

“Apart from Stalin, few of the old leaders are still in office or indeed alive. Various observers are inclined to describe the Soviet Union as a new class state, in which the bureaucracy has become the ruler class and behaves essentially as the former ruling classes did, even if the political formulas have changed. They believe this new governing class is bent on the consolidation and extension of its power rather than on the old ideals of communism. Nationalism and imperialism in Soviet external policy are added to the symptoms mentioned before to illustrate the critics’ thesis that something fundamentally different from the idealistic, internationalist, and egalitarian society of Lenin’s dreams has grown in Russia. This school of thought holds that Russia’s policy is, generally speaking, determined by national rather than ideological considerations and is using Communists in other countries merely as auxiliaries.”33

Russian Communists deny this, but it is a fact. Trotsky, the top partner of Lenin, broke with Stalin on his theory of revolution: that it led to bureaucracy with a primarily nationalist outlook in place of Lenin’s dream of an internationalist world. Stalin had become merely the head of a new ruling class and all who questioned this theory were liquidated.

The old socialists in America saw in the launching of the Russian revolution the first radiant chapter in the realization of the socialist dream. But it has brought nothing but frustration and disillusionment. I have a long acquaintance with old socialists in America and it would be very easy to run off a sizable list of able and eminent men who had been caught in the bright dream of a socialist world of peace, freedom and abundance who, in the presence of the bloody reality, have abandoned it. I have given so much space to the role of the intellectual and the so-called intellectual in our own country because it is a fairly new phenomenon here, though it is old in history.

The greatest damage these people effect is to give a glow of intellectual respectability to this dangerous philosophy. And in our own country, where the college has drawn under its influence so large a field of young minds to work on, the campus intellectual enjoys a peculiarly favorable opportunity for sowing in the minds of our youth these baleful doctrines. It is not new. It flourished extensively in the universities of every country in Europe before World War I. And it flourishes on a far more disturbing scale in America now, when college classrooms are so numerous, and when student bodies grow by leaps and bounds and are asked to look at the grave problems of a civilization badly damaged by warmakers and revolutionists of the world. I lay stress on this influence now because the great army of frustrated teachers, writers, lecturers and artists forms one of those minority forces which play an important and effective role not merely in poisoning the minds of our growing generations, but in giving a high degree of respectability to these dangerous ideas. The impact of the socialist philosophy on the mind of a student in Harvard, Columbia, Princeton or Vassar will be very much greater than when it is delivered from a soapbox in Union Square.

The role of the intellectual is as old as history. Robert Hunter, in his brilliant volume Revolution, draws a dramatic picture of these intellectual germ carriers in other times:

“I am at a loss to know how to classify some of the groups of social revolutionists which were to be met with in Paris and other centers of Europe in pre-war days. They were random wantons out of tune with their time but there is something symptomatic of disorders to come in the gathering of the elegants ‘of fragrant ringlets, of fashionable mustachios and ruffles … of no mean descent and unusual abilities, who only waited the signal to fall like a gang of robbers upon civil society …’ Thus Mommsen describes a variety of revolutionists in Rome on the eve of Cataline’s insurrection. The Comte de Ségur has left us a picture of the same class in Paris before the French revolution: ‘… without regret for the past, without misgiving for the future, we trod gaily on a carpet of flowers which hid the abyss beneath us. … All that was antique seemed to us tiresome and ridiculous.… There is a pleasure in descending so long as one is certain of being able to rise again whenever one wants to do so … we enjoyed at one and the same time the advantages of a patrician status and the amenities of a plebeian philosophy.’” (Italics added.)34

The picture Hunter draws of Rome before Cataline, and of France before Robespierre and before World War I is nothing less than frightening. He describes how on occasion when he went to the salons of these “advocates of ferocious physical vigor,” he was surprised to find around Lagardelle and Sorel “a gentle and cultured group of ladies and gentlemen, fashionably dressed and luxury loving.” He suggests that the hidden maladies afflicting these people could be diagnosed only by a Freud.

Something like this, though by no means so ferocious, can be found in the successors of the Paris salons right here in our large American cities—particularly New York and Washington. Intellectualism has become a kind of fad. It is smart to be at least a little pink. One is sure of entrée to the best society if one is reasonably red—that is, can discourse on revolutionary philosophy but with a Boston accent or even a cultivated North Carolina drawl. This, I say, is the fashion. Educated or fashionable people who oppose it gather in small numbers in quiet cocktail parties and try to jest with tolerance of their own futility. What I am trying to say is that revolution—or socialism, even communism, collectivisms of various types providing the dye is pink or red, are now the prevailing mode in the intellectual or fashionable circles. I lay great stress on this because this peculiar province of the revolutionary world plays a powerful role in giving respectability and even money aids to the authentic revolutionary councils, societies, leagues and committees who do the dirty work in the field.

What is written in these pages is wasted unless I have made clear a few simple truths. One is that this country has passed through a series of great and revolutionary changes in its political and economic structure. The American government today and its economic system is radically different from the Republic and the economic system which existed in this country for almost a century and a half. This means nothing less than that we have gone through a political and economic revolution. The changes are not such as are visible to a person strolling along our streets or even to one reading our newspapers. These changes are in the internal organism of our political and economic systems. The object of these changes has been to torture and even ignore the constitutional charter on which our society rests. This was done for the purpose of creating an atmosphere hospitable to the organization and management of a socialist America—but avoiding cautiously the use of the socialist label. It was made possible by a kind of political thuggery by which the sitting justices were driven from the Supreme Court to make room for a benchful of revolutionary judges, or at least compliant political judges, who, in a series of decisions, tortured and twisted the words of the American Constitution to provide a spurious legal atmosphere in which this movement could be carried out.

When our government succeeded in taking us into World War II by a base stratagem it was then quickly equipped with the funds to end the depression by creating a vast war industry—millions of men in the camps and twice or three times as many in the war plants—all financed by confiscatory taxes and huge loans.

But the war is at an end. There is, at least as I write, no fighting anywhere. But the cost of government is still near the war top and the appalling debt hangs over us. Unhappily for all of us, the chickens begin to come home to roost. The President and the New Deal politicians of both parties are confronted with the difficult task of finding an enemy which will serve them instead of war. Russia, of course, serves in a way, but there cannot be any doubt that the gang in the Kremlin enjoys many a grisly jest as it looks over the seas at America in the desperate struggle to find a substitute for war. There is none. And even so, what would it bring? What did we get out of the last one? Russia, with our aid and consent, got two-thirds of Europe and Asia. We got nothing but an empty thing called “Victory,” plus a debt of 275 billion dollars, 407,000 boys dead, 670,000 wounded, and our economic system twisted and deformed and sinking under the weight of our sacrifices and blunders into the arms of the collectivist world.

All this has been made possible by the operation performed by bold politicians and lawless judges on our great federal Republic. The socialist economic system cannot possibly be constructed and operated under our Constitution and within the framework of our federal Republic. To make the collectivist revolution in America possible it was necessary to change the nature of our government. I repeat once more that the first stage in bringing socialism to America was carried through by the socialist revolutionaries and their allies on the packed Supreme Court. Once that was accomplished no legal barrier existed to the formation of a collectivist society in the United States. There is not in either party any energy or sufficient vigor to make any resistance to this evil drift. At the moment, the war hangover, the policy of spending billions in America to produce and supply free all sorts of goods to so-called allies all over the world and to boondoggling minorities all over America keeps the economic system unsteadily afloat. But each new million dollars added to the debt and each new million dug out of the people by taxes brings the nation along with ever-quickening steps toward the precipice. When will it reach the outer limit of this mad policy?

No man can say where the fatal boundary is. But it is somewhere down the road on which we travel—and we move toward it with giant strides. Whether the crisis will come next month or next year it is not possible for any man with only human foresight to predict. But of this we may be sure—that crisis lies somewhere down the road.

When that line is reached, then will come the moment of fate for America. Will we sink down helplessly and hopelessly into the arms of the collectivist world? Or will our people rebuild the great Republic of Washington and Jefferson and Madison and Lincoln which for a century and a half was a shining light to enslaved people all over the world?

We must never blind ourselves to this one great idea—that our aim must be not a negative one, not a mere drive against the evils that plague us. These evils are the fruit of an alliance of revolutionary sappers and wreckers, ambitious or shortsighted politicians, and various groups seeking purely minority aims. Whatever the aim of any group, the end is the destruction of the American ideal of social organization and of the great Republic built on that ideal. We must be not merely against the destructive programs that beset us. We must be FOR AN IDEAL. We must be dedicated to the rebuilding of the great Republic of our fathers, so shockingly damaged by a dark alliance of communists, socialists, boondogglers, globalists, and certain shortsighted business leaders who for a brief moment float on the surface of the war boom.

But we must be clear as to the nature and shape of that great Republic, which here, as I began, I restate. The goals of civilized society are freedom and security. These ends call for a State capable of ensuring both. The State can ensure freedom. As to security—that is, economic security—it can provide the climate in which men can seek their own security. To do this, the State must erect a government which is the authority by which the society is controlled. Government is an apparatus of power. As such it can become an instrument for the oppression of the citizens in the hands of that body which operates it—the Administration. But the Administration itself, which is actually a collection of individuals generally described as politicians, will be in possession of this apparatus, this government. Once an Administration gets possession of such immense authority, it can be employed to keep the Administration in office and to exploit and even enslave the people. Therefore, the citizens having established government, it is essential that they make some provision for curbing the encroachments of the Administration. They cannot do this merely by the ceremony of election, because at the moment of election the men who hold and wield all the reins of government will be able to buy one group with favors, another with money, while intimidating still others through the vast powers they possess.

This problem was solved in America. The immense energies of government were divided among 48 small republics and one great overall republic. The authority of each was clearly defined and the means of enforcement provided. In short, the State and its terrifying engine of power—government—was brought under control by a written constitution and the division of that power into many different hands, so that no single group of ambitious men could get possession of it all. To ensure the preservation of this system, a judicial system was set up with the ability to restrain any administrative agency from the assumption of powers not entrusted to it.

If I have succeeded in making this clear, the reader will be able to see the revolutionary operation that has been performed on this system by a conspiracy between corrupt and ambitious politicians and a Supreme Court especially packed by a bold stratagem to legalize the assault.

However, the bold aim of the men who have organized and promoted this program is not yet complete, though it has advanced far enough in its aims to make retreat difficult. It must be remembered always that whatever power exists in government, the men who stand at the control switches are not the philosophers and technicians, or intellectuals of any type. They are and always will be politicians, by which I mean men who are ambitious to hold office, who understand the means by which it is acquired and how it can be used to perpetuate their rule. When the political leaders who seek control have in their hands, in addition to those highly limited powers allotted by the Constitution, a whole collection of powers hitherto reserved to the states, their capacity for misrule is greatly increased. But when in addition to this great federal and state political authority, they have also possession of the vast economic agencies and instrumentalities of the nation, they will have a power that the citizens cannot resist.

Let it never be forgotten that this power, however great or small, will always be in the hands of men who are eager for it and who know how to use it to retain their rule. And the greater the collection of powers in their hands, the greater will be their ability to resist ambitious rivals and to silence critical enemies. To all of which let me add one other warning. The men who operate the socialist State—the State that possesses the combined powers of government and industrial and commercial authority with unlimited power to tax—will not be the intellectuals. Neither the philosophers nor the scientists nor the technicians will stand “at the control switches of the nation.” It will be the Hitlers, the Mussolinis, the Stalins, the Bulganins, the Perons and their breed.

33 Walter Theimer, An Encyclopedia of World Politics, New York, Rinehart & Co., 1950, p. 604.

34 Robert Hunter, Revolution-Why, How, When? New York, Harper, 1940, p. 8.