RUTHFULLY YOURS

The takeover of America’s state, local, and federal governments by Fauci and his team is a dream come true for the progressives. Since at least the time of Woodrow Wilson, the progressives have dreamed of and campaigned for an America ruled by experts.

Rule by experts: this is it. How do you like it?

Fauci and Co. have taken control of the lives of individual Americans to an extent that surpasses anything achieved by fascism’s great original, Benito Mussolini. Of course, there is a difference. Mussolini was a pompous orator who favored a military uniform. Fauci speaks softly and wears the mantle of science. But just as Mussolini’s oratory led Italy to disaster, Fauci’s pronouncements have already done enormous damage to America. The full extent of the damage to America by Fauciism is yet to be determined.

Though it pains me to say so, it is up to you to determine how much damage to America he is going to be allowed to do.

Fauciism has been a long time coming. About a century ago, Woodrow Wilson, the first American president to reject utterly the American founding, set in motion the changes that brought us to our present circumstance. The Founders, I reckon, would not be surprised by the upsurge of Fauciism, human nature being what it is, and the wisdom of the Founders’ generation being hard-won and too easily lost.

Just in case you are puzzled by what I have to say about Wilson, here he is, speaking for himself:

No doubt a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere vague sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put forward as fundamental principle…

Wilson, the very model of the modern progressive, completely rejected the Founders’ self-evident truths and unalienable rights. Wilson and the modern progressives saw the Declaration and the Constitution as anachronisms that America needed to progress beyond.

Wilson based his rejection of the Founders on the philosophy of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. For Wilson, the thinking of the Founders had become, as he says in the above quote, “nonsense.” But leave it to an American in the grips of Wilsonian Fauciism to state it with perfect clarity:

Unfortunately, common sense is just not common. We have to regulate every aspect of people’s lives.

That was Santa Barbara city councilman Jason Dominguez, speaking for American progressives everywhere. His comment was in connection with the Santa Barbara, California city council’s vote to outlaw the distribution of disposable plastic drinking straws, but the principle reaches all the way to you risking leaving home without your mask.

Progressivism is the rejection of Americanism, of the American idea. Progressives reject the American Founders’ core idea—that all people are born free and equal and capable of self-government. Instead, the progressives believe they have to regulate every aspect of people’s lives—that government by experts is better than government “by the people, for the people.” Why? As Dominguez let slip, “unfortunately,” common sense is simply not common enough for the Founders’ design to work.

Notice what Dominguez’s clear statement of progressivism does to the Founders’ idea of “we the people.” In the modern progressive view, the “we” (meaning the ruling elite, to which group Dominguez assumes he belongs) regulate “the people.” There are now two classes: the rulers and the ruled.

America’s Founders put their faith in the people’s common sense. America has been called the “common sense nation,” and Tom Paine’s book Common Sense did much to ignite the American Revolution. Paine’s essential contribution was convincing a sufficient number of Americans that America did not need a royal sovereign, that we could rule ourselves.

According to the Founders, the people are sovereign. In their time, that idea was bolder than bold. In that era, it was actually a contradiction in terms. A sovereign was a king or queen; it was the role of the people to be ruled and the role of the sovereign to rule.

The purpose of the Founders’ design was to enable us, the American people, to rule ourselves. The government was to be, quite simply, the agent of the sovereign people. As Chief Justice John Marshall wrote: “It is the plain dictate of common sense, and the whole [American] political system is founded on the idea, that the departments of government are the agents of the nation . . .”

The Founders’ focus was liberty. Consequently, their design provided a limited role for government. Progressivism, by contrast, is all about restoring the old order of rulers and ruled. Thanks to modern progressives, federal, state, and local governments in America are now populated with people who believe they “have to regulate every aspect of people’s lives.” They may claim to be “liberal” or they may call themselves “progressive.” Whatever label they choose, their target is an America in which more and then still more is either forbidden or compelled.

You have to give them credit; they have made remarkable “progress.” When they are able to regulate plastic straws out of existence, they really have come a long way, haven’t they? From plastic straws to everything else was one simple step.

I must confess that I was surprised by how quickly they made that step and how quickly and how completely we have abandoned the Founders’ vision for America.