“Dependency – A Form of Subjugation? Sydney Williams
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Slavery is the worst kind of bondage where the individual has no rights and is treated as chattel. It disappeared in the United States with the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863: “…that all persons held as slave are, and henceforward shall be free.” However, enfranchisement came slowly. It was not until the 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920 that women were able to vote. And it was only on August 6, 1965 that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which enforced the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution that had been adopted in 1870. It would be another year before poll taxes – a uniform tax on all individuals regardless of financial means, the payment of which was required in order to register to vote – would be declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections.
Nevertheless, there are other forms of dependency, not as cruel or degrading as slavery but nonetheless demeaning and inhibiting, like addiction to drugs, alcohol or even social media. And there are forms of dependency that chain individuals to a business, a movement or a state. It is dependency on the state, and all that entails, that concerns this essay.
The elected Washington politician who served because he or she wanted to improve the condition of his or her constituents is a species at risk of extinction. Certainly, there are exceptions, but they have become rare, as the benefits of power, fame and money have grown more ubiquitous for those who serve in Congress. Also, among endangered species is the individual who once traveled to Washington, accepting less pay and longer hours, because he was on a noble enterprise to help fellow citizens. But, with an expanded administrative state, he has become a supercilious, egocentric bureaucrat seeking the monetary and retirement benefits now due a public sector worker.
What has allowed this change to take place? Why is Washington populated with those who more closely resemble Kim Philby than Jimmy Stewart? Government’s bureaucracy has mushroomed in size. We are victims of a public education system more concerned with union demands than instructing our youth, teaching civics, getting students to think independently and acquiring an understanding of the morals embedded in our Constitution. We have a media that no longer serves as an impartial watchdog, having foregone dispassionate investigation for blindfolded advocacy. We have an economy that has made life easier for even the poorest among us, but with the downside of a growing dependence on the state and the loss of dignity that goes with dependency. Independence is no longer seen as something worth fighting and dying for. It has become an opportunity to indulge in hedonistic pleasures, like legally smoking pot, enjoying the lifestyle of the morally corrupt, forgoing the responsibility of parenting, all to satisfy personal egos. We have grown soft with comfort and less willing to endure the hardships necessary to maintain true independence.
In September, the spoiled Swedish teen-ager Greta Thunberg took to the podium at the United Nations and excoriated world leaders, telling them they had betrayed youth through inertia over climate change: “You are failing us.” Did anyone remind her of how capitalism allowed her to be where she was, or the cost of the sailboat on which she traveled to the U.S.? Did anyone tell her that fossil fuels allowed her grandparents to live lives more comfortably than their ancestors, or how gasoline fueled the cars her parents, grandparents and great grandparents drove, and of power generated through fossil fuels that lighted, heated and cooled the homes in which they lived and in which she now lives? Was she reminded that innovation, creativity, risk and reward are critical components to capitalism and necessary for economic growth? Would she prefer the state-mandated policies of socialism or communism rather than capitalism? Would she prefer “Big Brother” monitoring all that she does? We must all be concerned with a changing climate and we should all be environmentally responsible. But the young Miss Thunberg’s attack on world leaders was reminiscent of the accusations by teen-age girls of older women and men in the 1692 Salem witch trials, when an ignorant populous accepted the words of even more ignorant youth.
We saw an exhibition of this ignorance regarding capitalism at the Harvard-Yale football game in New Haven last weekend, when protestors took to the field for almost an hour, demanding their colleges’ endowments divest investments in oil, gas and coal, businesses they claim are destroying the planet. Their protest endangered the players on the field of an unlighted Yale bowl and inconvenienced spectators with an hour delay. Like Miss Thunberg, these protestors overlook economic growth, of which they are the privileged beneficiaries – advancements that have been made because of the energy created from the very sources they want to ban – oil, gas and coal, fossil fuels that heat and cool their homes and college buildings, transport them wherever they want to go and allow the manufacture of products like food, clothing and smart phones that sustain them. None of their comforts would have been possible without fossil fuels. Again, as in Miss Thunberg’s case, we must be conscious of climate change and be environmentally sensitive, but we must also be aware of costs, especially for those less fortunate in poorer communities and in developing countries. In a Monday editorial, the Wall Street Journal quoted a 2013 statement from Harvard’s then president Drew Gilpin Faust: “The endowment is a resource, not an instrument to impel social or political change.” The cost of their education is, in part, subsidized by income from their college’s endowment, an endowment they want to reflect their ephemeral social priorities, not the prudent investments its managers seek.
A citizenry not conversant in history and civics is detrimental to democracy and free-market capitalism. The problem has its genesis in our public schools where social promotion has become accepted policy in big cities, especially those in coastal “blue” states. It is a policy that unfairly targets minorities and the poor and is the embodiment of what President George H.W. Bush called “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” a polite term for racism. That many high schools graduate illiterate and innumerate students can be seen in the number of remedial courses in English and math that are needed by high school graduates matriculating at colleges – an education too often given up after one or two years, but with a debt load that binds the student to the “company store” before a career has even begun.
The risk to society of an undereducated electorate is that such people are too easily led by unscrupulous politicians, more concerned with power than the independence and well-being of the people they represent. Ignorance leads to oppression – a subject that has been discussed for over eighty years in dystopian novels, like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 415 and Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange. Huxley provided us the happiness-producing drug soma, used to keep the populace quiet and peaceful; Orwell gave us Winston Smith, The Ministry of Truth and Room 101for the final stages of reeducation, a place where lawlessness coexisted with binding rules; Bradbury showed us a hedonistic, illiterate society, with endless cycles of life, death in flames and rebirth, and Burgess gave us a preview of the violence that dominates today’s movie and video game culture. Without an understanding of how tyranny arises and with censorship on the rise, lessons from these books have gone unheeded.
The common theme is dependence on the state and the concomitant loss of personal freedom, of accountability and responsibility for one’s actions. Enticing promises of fairness and equality are made, like the commandment of “Old Major” in Animal Farm, that “all Animals are Equal.” The commandment was valid until it no longer applied, when pigs stood on two legs. By the end of the book, when animals outside looked in at pigs and men playing cards, the two were indistinguishable. Yesterday’s rebel became today’s tyrant. Dystopian societies rely on “Thought Police” to maintain order, a concept familiar on college campuses where “group think” is used to combat perceived instances of bias.
This is not written because of an imminent collapse of our democratic Republic, but because the threat to classical liberalism does not come only from the extreme Right. It is more likely, in my opinion, to stem from the gradual erosion of individual rights and the denial of free expression. Key to a continued and prosperous nation is education – the free exchange of ideas without censorship, where one listens to and entertains all ideas, not just those from one side. Nor do tyrants always appear as cartoon caricatures; they can be gracious and articulate. As I have written before, I have seen nothing from the pugilistic and coarse Mr. Trump that has been as chilling as the 2012 “Life of Julia” video released by President Obama, a video that shows the birth-to-death caring for Julia, dependent on a government cloaked in a false mantle of compassionate concern. Is dependency a form of subjugation? I believe it is. Julia owes her life to the “company store,” in this case the government. Who Will Watch the Watchers? was the title of a book written in 1970 by Edwin Fadiman. With the press having foregone their historic role as guardian of the public interest, it is a question that needs answering. Remember that while we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we don’t always use them. The devil is most dangerous when he hides in plain sight.
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