I remember the line from George W. Bush on dictatorships, that he was fine with it as long as he got to be the dictator. Obama seems to be maintaining that idea through his occupation of the same office. The more things change...War, said James Madison, is "the true nurse of executive aggrandizement." Randolph Bourne, the radical essayist killed by the influenza unleashed by World War I, warned, "War is the health of the state." Hence Barack Obama's State of the Union hymn: Onward civilian soldiers, marching as to war….
I don't believe there is ever a good reason to give one person the open authority to take a democratic nation to war. It undermines the idea of representation.The armed services' ethos, although noble, is not a template for civilian society, unless the aspiration is to extinguish politics. People marching in serried ranks, fused into a solid mass by the heat of martial ardor, proceeding in lock step, shoulder to shoulder, obedient to orders from a commanding officer — this is a recurring dream of progressives eager to dispense with tiresome persuasion and untidy dissension in a free, tumultuous society.
Progressive presidents use martial language as a way of encouraging Americans to confuse civilian politics with military exertions, thereby circumventing an impediment to progressive aspirations — the Constitution and the patience it demands.
He reminds us that President Franklin D. Roosevelt pioneered such rhetoric, and that FDR supporters demonstrated appalling enthusiasm for actual dictatorship:
In his first inaugural address, FDR demanded "broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." He said Americans must "move as a trained and loyal army" with "a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife." …
What!?Commonweal, a magazine for liberal Catholics, said that Roosevelt should have "the powers of a virtual dictatorship to reorganize the government." Walter Lippmann, then America's preeminent columnist, said: "A mild species of dictatorship will help us over the roughest spots in the road ahead."
Liberty holds no common purpose with blind subservience to a totalitarian State.Ben Friedman deplored this theme in the speech as well:
There is an even bigger problem with this "be like the troops, put aside our differences, stop playing politics, salute and get things done for the common good" mentality. It is authoritarian. Sure, Americans share a government, much culture, and have mutual obligations. But that doesn't make the United States anything like a military unit, which is designed for coordinated killing and destruction. Americans aren't going to overcome their political differences by emulating commandos on a killing raid. And that's a good thing. At least in times of peace, liberal countries should be free of a common purpose, which is anathema to freedom.
As did I, in the first few minutes of this post-speech interview on Stossel. Cato scholars have also quoted that appalling inaugural speech from FDR — asking for "broad executive power" at the head of "a trained and loyal army" — several times. Let's hope that after George Will's skewering, Obama will drop this theme. Hierarchy, centralization, common purpose, command, and control are appropriate for an army, not for a free people.
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