The word Leviathan has a history rich in legend, myth, theology and philosophy. Its origins date back to Greek mythology, with its sea serpent demons. One can easily find references to it in several books of the Bible. When I try to imagine it, I see Moby Dick, the great white whale of Herman Melville. I think the best application of a Leviathan comes from Thomas Hobbs, the 17th century thinker. His book of the same name sees the sea monster as a metaphor for the omnipotence of the state, which maintains its power and dominance by educating all children in its favor, generation after generation.
Hobbs’ Leviathan dominated the French Revolution and contributed to the rise of Karl Marx and his communistic thinking. However, it reached its zenith in the 20th century with the founding of the New Republic, the first progressive magazine in journalistic history. The founder and editor was Herbert Croly, a political philosopher who made an outstanding contribution to the intellectual discourse of the times.
Croly was also one of the founders of modern liberalism, which had replaced the 19th century brand, which focused primarily on laisse-faire economics, loosely translated as government hands off. Prior to the debut of his magazine, the political issues were divided into opposing factions. The first was introduced by the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, who favored a strong Executive Department, with a good deal of power. He wanted to use this power to foster the development of business and industry in America.
His views were countered by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson had been exposed to the savage tyranny of the French Revolution. As a result, he feared Big Government and industrial economics. He felt the mixture of the two would signal the downfall of America. In his voluminous writings he heralded the independent yeoman and the agrarian life, as the ideals of republican values. Jefferson also distrusted cities and bankers and favored the decentralization of governmental power. All his views constituted the heart and soul of states’ rights and the 10th Amendment.
These opposing philosophies caused the first bitter disagreements in our political history, and in effect laid the founding blocks that led to the advent of political factions, later called parties. The civil war, a sectional conflict between the industrial North and the rural South, with its peculiar institution of slavery, can also trace its roots to the Hamilton/Jefferson conflict.
In his 1909 book, the Promise of American Life, Croly outlined his political thinking, replete with a new political dynamic. He conceived what he believed to be the perfect synthesis. His philosophy urged governments to work for Jeffersonian goals of social welfare and political reforms for the poor, using Hamiltonian means, which is the power of the Federal Government to insure their social and political goals. Brilliant as it sounds, I believe Croly established the first progressive beachhead in American History.
Croly’s progressive views, many of which can be found in the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, found its way into the United States Constitution with the passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913, which established the progressive income tax. This occurred during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, the first most important progressive president. This amendment established the first rate on millionaires at just 3%. Once the nose of the camel gets in the tent front flap, the rest of the camel cannot be far behind.
While the World War had created a great deal of personal and public instability, the Republicans owned the Roaring Twenties because of their promise to return the country to normalcy. Speculation and bad monetary policy led to the Great Depression and 13 years of the most progressive president to date, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As a good Democrat he never let a crisis go to waste. Roosevelt took great advantage of not only the rampant poverty of the Depression but also the instability around the globe prior to and during the second World War.
FDR called his vision for America, The New Deal, he borrowed from one of his speech writers, Stuart Chase. Chase’s economic thinking was influenced by British Fabian socialism and the Soviet’s communist social and educational thinking. His principles included a strong centralized government, with an executive arm growing at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches.
FDR adopted virtually all of Chase’s social ideas, including welfare, social security and a wave of other leftist ideas. Many of them saw legislative light under the blanket of this New Deal. As a result, with Chase’s ideas leading his pen, FDR pushed the idea of liberty clear off the nation’s table.
The progressive tax had peaked at 94% in 1944, as the government ran huge deficits thanks to the war. The bad news was that Big Government was here to stay because the American people were quickly adjusting, accepting and finally applauding big government and as their savior. Thanks to the depression and the world war, Roosevelt fell upon the formula for continual political success. As his key advisor, Harry Hopkins put it, Spend and spend, elect and elect! This maxim has served the Democrats well up until the present.
There were just brief interludes with Eisenhower and Reagan. The rates have been much lower since the Reagan presidency, though they have started to ascend in the 21st century. There is also something called bracket creep. Higher inflation has for the most part walked hand-in-hand with higher wages, resulting in a situation where higher wages mean higher rates and higher taxes.
During the Reagan administration, the idea of the Flat Tax was widely debated among the economists. The idea felt that the progressive tax was not even close to the hackneyed fair share of a person’s income. Before this term ever circulated in political discourse, my father had always believed that all should be taxed at the same percentage. He used to say that if he made ten times the income of one fellow, he should have to pay ten times the tax that the other man paid. This is a fair share.
John Kennedy did not live long enough to establish any kind of legacy though his assassination and those of his brother and Martin Luther King, Jr. led to a dark period of violence, racial discord, civil disorder, an unpopular war and the decline of our moral stability. The Pill, legalized abortion and a women’s movement that seemed like it hated men and used women also contributed to the social and moral disruptions that plagued our society, during the second half of the 20th century.
These were all the poison fruits of Antonio Gramsci, who I have mentioned in many previous essays. His Long March through Western Culture focused on the pure hand that had rocked the American Cradle for centuries. Women have always been the custodians of our culture, especially our sexual morality. Somehow Gramsci’s ideas had prevailed and women defined equality as being as promiscuous as their men. Without women to tame their men, families broke down, children were often fatherless and the absence of normal cultural protections to growing up left millions of children floundering on the shores of despair.
For many years there was no viable opposition party, as Republicans tried to imitate the spend and elect formula of their rivals. They were the Me-too Republicans or what we call Rinos today. This includes 12 years of the Bush family. The only negative aspect of the Reagan years was his announcing George H.W. Bush as his vice-president. This was the price Reagan had to pay to win the nomination. Some might date this the beginnings of the Swamp but I think it goes back to Nixon, who announced he was a Keynesian in the early seventies.
I think it was about this time when a policy of corporate welfare emerged. Many Americans have criticized the extent that many corporations have received billions of dollars of federal aid over the last half century. I think that Democratic administrations have been successful in buying the support of Big Business with our tax dollars. Many of these funds have been funneled into the coffers of the Democratic Party to help them maintain their power. How else can one explain how Woke ideas now dominate the board rooms of Fortune 500 companies?
While Bill Clinton seemed to follow the Hippocratic Oath on the economy, first do no harm, most of his presidency lowered the moral tone in the United States, with the notorious stained dress. Clinton eventually led to eight years of Barack Obama, whose ideas seemed to be adopted more from a Marxist handbook than any American history document. His lofty words that he wanted to not only change America but transform it inspired millions of voters, lacked any concrete details. Was the future president promising an American nirvana, paradise or maybe another Cuba, Soviet State, Peoples Republic or a Muslim caliphate?
In retrospect, the Biden Presidency seems to have served nothing more than as a caretaker, serving as an Obama III. The Biden presidency fell into disgrace when the fact that his mental acuity had been declining for years and his party hid him and his condition from public view. This was only possible because of a lack of journalistic integrity and the mainstream press’ partisan favoritism.
Kamala Harris, Biden’s quick replacement has no record or solid platform to stand on. More noticeable is the fact that she seems incapable of engaging in any kind of rational discussion on national policies or current events, without turning it into a word salad that is virtually unintelligible. I think a Harris presidency would merely be Obama IV, equating him figuratively with FDR. Though she has been coy about her values, the informed electorate are aware how dangerous her policies will be to the American way of life. If she is elected, I can see Dr. Kamala feeding us a spoon full of joy to make her medicine of inflation and social disorder go down more easily.
Thanks to our modern presidents, the Executive branch has made Congress a vassal of government with their flood of Executive Orders, which amount to legislative acts. This violates the Constitution’s separation of powers, yet Congress has turned a deafened ear to their own loss of power. I believe the Progressive Leviathan is here to stay. It sees the 2024 election as its final push and dive to sweep the judiciary branch off it ice floes and devour it. I am not alone in this view.
The last independent branch standing is the Judiciary. Former governmental officials, David Rivkin and Andrew Grossman drafted an essay for the WSJ, of August 26th of this year, which they entitled Harris and Schumer Target the Supreme Court. Not unlike FDR and Barack Obama, the Biden administration has been frustrated by the Court’s strict reading of the original meaning of the United States Constitution. Chief Justice John Roberts has been a particular thorn in the side of the last few Democratic administrations.
Instead of ruling from within the lines, they have chosen to destroy its power as an independent judicial body forever. This would remove the SCOTUS as an obstacle to their twisted vision of America. This would open the door for would-be tyrants who see themselves as the gnostic teachers and guidance counselors for all Americans because of their superior knowledge and high intellects.
The authors cited Alexander Hamilton, who observed 200 years ago, the independence of the judges is requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individual from the actions of designing men set on dangerous innovations of government. The authors believe that the political branches have forgotten their own obligation to follow the Constitution, which makes the check of review by an independent judiciary all the more essential. Both Rivkin and Grossman believe that Harris and Schumer would put it under threat.
All of this is riding on November 5th. Like the British before the outbreak of World War II, their enemies were visibly apparent. In the case of the United States, while we do have some identifiable external enemies, who have been stalking us for over 50 years, I do not think the American people truly realize who are our true enemies are. Like the cartoon from 1970 with Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us. *
Author’s Clarification: Cartoonist Walt Kelly used this quote to satirize those who were opposing the government during its nascent years of saving the planet from global warming. Since the planet is still here, I think it has a more appropriate application for the growing tyranny, festering in the presidency.
