The Democratic Socialists of America, an insurgency within the Democratic Party, is having a moment, and it is showing us something worth noticing: This is the democracy John Adams warned us about.
Given the record of socialism in power, critics of the DSA and what it stands for are justified in suspecting that these radicals are not actually all that serious about the democratic part of democratic socialism, that the word “Democratic” in the faction’s name is no more meaningful than in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
But the thing to be feared here is the opposite: They are extremely serious about the democratic part and will strip Americans of their rights, liberty, and property in the name of—and with the aid of—democracy.
Democracy is the oxygen of the American political atmosphere, and as in the physical atmosphere, you only want a little bit of that oxygen—too much oxygen in the mix and the political metaphors start to write themselves: People develop tunnel vision, the central nervous system breaks down, tiny sparks turn into explosions and conflagrations, and the thing we cannot do without becomes the thing that kills us. Sola dosis facit venenum, advises the old physician Paracelsus: It is the dose that makes the poison.
What distinguishes the American constitutional order is not its democratic components—which it has in common with any number of daft utopian schemes and failed revolutionary projects—but its antidemocratic components: the Bill of Rights, which places Americans’ civil rights and civil liberties beyond the reach of mere majorities, the division of national powers among the branches and subdivision within the legislative branch, the further division of political power between the national government and the states, etc. On top of these is the broader American order that counterbalances political power per se with private power, including civic institutions explicitly protected by the Constitution (the press, religious bodies, private associations) as well as that greatest of all guarantors of liberty: property.
The DSA, in the name of democracy, proposes to remove all buffers between the individual and centralized national political power wielded on a purely majoritarian basis. The DSA would, according to its own platform, abolish the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court, and replace the latter two with House committees controlled by the majority party. The DSA would eliminate Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed right to criticize elected officials (by, among other things, nullifying the Citizens United decision) or to petition them for redress of grievances (by abolishing lobbying), and put elections under the control of the majority party in Congress by mandating state to control of the financing of political campaigns. It would override property rights by imposing state ownership on U.S. businesses.
This is a formula for mob rule, of course, and the DSA would expand the size of the mob by extending voting rights to noncitizens and incarcerated felons. It is strange—and ahistorical—for the DSA to assume that it and its allies will always have the biggest mob, as though Donald Trump had not received millions more votes than Kamala Harris in 2024. Nationalists, socialists, and national socialists are always confident that they have the People on their side, and all of them are right—at times.
It is not only the radical left that wishes to eliminate our constitutional safeguards and competing centers of power. The so-called new right (the fourth or fifth “new right” in our political history) sneers at “procedural liberalism” and insists that the “common good” provides the caudillos of their dreams with a moral mandate to restrict economic liberties and ordinary daily liberties (see, e.g., Sohrab Ahmari’s entirely insipid odes to the so-called blue laws), to wield the force of the state to put American businesses (especially technology companies) under political discipline, etc. The most contemptible of them reject such foundational American commitments as religious liberty and advocate, as in the case of Curtis Yarvin, a return to monarchy. They speak more often in terms of old-fashioned European étatisme and that slippery “common good,” but the closer they approach to electoral politics the quicker they are to invoke “the People” on whose behalf they, like their leftist variants, purport to be acting. The division of power and structural limitations on political ambition are no less inconvenient to the utopians of the right than to the utopians of the left.
“Absolute power intoxicates alike despots, monarchs, aristocrats, and democrats,” as John Adams observed. Adams was at times terrifyingly prescient:
Obsta principiis, nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society.
(The war against foppery is, alas, evidently lost.)
Adams was famously acerbic on the subject of democracy—which, being an intelligent and educated man, he understood to be something distinct from what the United States has long enjoyed, i.e., a republican form of government with its motions controlled by certain limited democratic processes:
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.
What the DSA has in mind is the democracy that Adams warned us about: one in which power, once blessed by a temporary majority, is arbitrary, undivided, and irresistible. The DSA promises that it will use this only to do good for the People, which is, of course, the same promise various peoples heard from the Jacobins before their Reign of Terror, from Lenin and Stalin before their terror, from Mao before his terror, from Hitler before his terror—and from Donald Trump, who murders and oppresses and steals and terrorizes while promising that his only ambition is to “Make America Great Again.” I do not mind if the ladies and gentlemen of the DSA wish to call that “democracy,” which is what John Adams called it.
But, if you ask me, terror is terror.
Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch and is based in Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review, worked as the theater critic at the New Criterion, and had a long career in local newspapers. He is also a writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. When Kevin is not reporting on the world outside Washington for his Wanderland newsletter, you can find him at the rifle range or reading a book about literally almost anything other than politics.
For some strange reason, perhaps as punishment for my sins, I have been following the trials and troubles of the UK government. That fifth paragraph outlining the DSA platform sounds an awful lot like England. I'm not sure it's working out well for them.
I feel mixed about hearing so much about the DSA. The gain in popularity is concerning, but these things do wax and wane. And even if they do take over the entire Democratic party - which will not happen - they will not absolish the preisdency and the senate. I think even if we had an equivalent frenzy populist movement on the right, negative polarization would prevent them from working together.
On the other hand, it is helpful to surface these are not new ideas. And they are not unique to one "side". A lot of writers (not Kevin) are hyping the scare factor of this when we should be using it as a civics lesson.
I read the DSA program and listened to Sara Almosawi on a podcast. As a generally progressive person, I find their platform amusingly naive. But the problems they are trying to tackle are serious and Kevin, in this article, glosses over the issues that are driving the DSA proposals.
We were a low trust society at our founding .. but now!?
These are problems that must be tackled … and the DSA growth is but a reaction to the fact that no-one is solving the problems and people need better education than is available on social media.
So I’d continue to focus on not hating each other and actually talking/solving problems rather than bash the DSA (too much) as some sort of existential threat to our way of life.
You missed the point Steve. Justifying the appearance of dangerous power designs by the self-anointed few as the only solution to pressing problems is a short sighted and historically deficient perspective. Remember that there is always a wide gulf between pointing out problems and fixing them...the devil is in the details. Utopians always assume a moral high ground to which they have no right. This is not because the rhetoric is not appealing but because there are no demonstrable evidences of actions that prove it out in practice.
Yes. A shorter way of saying this is: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Another Excellent Kevinism! :)
This article alone makes my subscription worth it.
Thanks!
DITTO
I am a lifelong Democrat that can't stand the DSA. But I get why people are gravitating towards it. For two decades I have been saying that if the rich keep getting richer at the expense of the rest of us, there will be a push back. At some point, enough people will vote for massive change. And maybe that's how we got trump. But since trump clearly isn't fixing the perceived problem, the next step may be socialists.
My guess is the tipping point will be when they "fix" social security. That's going to look great: billionaires on yachts and the retirement age raised to 70+. The rich sheltering their income from taxes and increases for everyone else.
I am absolutely against taxing unrealized wealth. But we need to figure out a way for the masses to be able to afford (modest) housing, healthcare, and retirement while taxing unearned income at a rate that makes sense.
"For two decades I have been saying that if the rich keep getting richer at the expense of the rest of us, there will be a push back."
But that is not what is happening. Jeff Bezos isn't rich because somebody else is less rich. You don't have to like him or his company, but that is not how the economics at play actually works.
True... but perceptions matter. I'd never call him a "noble" but the old concept of noblesse oblige could really come in handy right now. Though I'm thinking less about Jeff on that front and more about another... well... trillionaire... or maybe the moron in the White House.
Noblesse oblige does not mean giving more money to the state to distribute. Jeff Bezos' lifetime charitable giving is estimated at $4.7 billion. That is an almost unfathomable amount of money for an individual to give others.
Never really thought it did... though I guess it could... but that's not really the point. Emotion... style... that's all I'm really talking about. And Bezos isn't really my target.
Hah, that's why I put the word "modest" in my response, because a lot of the issue is people believing everything they see on social media.
I actually don't have an issue with Bezos, Musk, or any other billionaire being wealthy. I do have an issue with them paying a lower tax rate than a police officer, welder, teacher, or doctor.
People need to get their expectations in check. But we should also demand that people who become wealthy pay no lower a tax rate than the middle and working class. Again, I'm not talking about a wealth tax, I'm talking about the same rate I pay on my taxes (and on all their income).
It's unproductive to fret over the tax rates of the super-rich. They can arrange their finances....and pay people specifically to do it.....to pay whatever rate they want. Personally, I would rather leave them alone to invest their money as profitably as possible....instead of affecting their behavior to reduce tac liability. The word "rate" hides the fact that if they make 1000 times more than you, then they are paying 1000 time more in taxes at the same rate. Do they get 1000x the benefits and services? No. Now you can argue that they have more influence and more to lose, but we drift a bit more esoteric.
The pressure valves aren't working. We have a crisis of perceived legitimacy. Whether something is legitimate or not is irrelevant if a large enough portion of the population perceives it to be illegitimate and believes they can't change things.
The pressure builds.
The engine breaks.
Its all a trust thing. The question is what can we do to build trust without totally scrapping the engine.
We have been arguing for years about the Electoral College. How much would really change if we scrapped it? Really... not much. Getting rid of it would be mostly symbolic, but its the kind of thing that might serve to increase trust in the system itself. How much would really change if we reformed the filibuster? Again, probably not much. How much would change if we implemented gerrymandering reform and banned partisan gerrymandering, or increased the size of the House...? None of these things would radically rewire the system. We treat them as huge, but really they are pretty small in relation to the overall design of our government, but because they are perceived as bigger than they really are changing them would significantly improve the perception of trust.
Because that's the valve that has to release.
Otherwise, sooner or later..., Boom!
We have to give a little to avoid the crazy.
Even better yuks than Jonah has gotten in lately. DSA is comedy gold and also gave Kevin a golden opportunity for some perennial observations about democracy. Good stuff.
A lot to agree on here, and as always Kevin has a great hand to a turn of phrase.
On this point "the DSA would eliminate Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed right to criticize elected officials (by, among other things, nullifying the Citizens United decision) or to petition them for redress of grievances (by abolishing lobbying), and put elections under the control of the majority party in Congress by mandating state to control of the financing of political campaigns." I agree with caveats.
I tend towards the opinion that abuses of lobbying and political campaign financing create distortions of their own which are harmful to the country. I find Abbott's connection to certain wealthy donors who have interests they wish him to advance harmful to Texas in certain ways. That said, abusus non tollit usum. The basic principles of Citizens United and lobbying are valid-even if they can be misused. The right answer to those abuses lies in actions other than eliminating Citizens United and lobbying altogether.
I do wish, and this is not aimed at you in any way, Kevin, that certain portions of the right would agree that support of capitalism and free market does not mean support of crony capitalism and coddling of special corporate interests (or worse, corporatism which we have to date avoided). But that's a rabbit hole and not germane to the discussion at hand.
Some good points, but I blame TD pundits for the use and misuse of “corporatism” here of late. This “is not aimed at you in any way,” but, most of the time, it seems state capture by corporations is the intended meaning, whereas some forms of actual corporatism have appealing aspects, which I’ve long argued could go a long way to bringing lobbying into the daylight.
Lobbying is a symptom, not a cause.
I am not triggered as much as--it seems--the writers at The Dispatch are by the word, "socialism". It has the same dull sound to me as "communism". I think we could probably calculate the sum of damage done to this country from the MAGA movement in just the last few years as far greater than any posed by the DSA in our entire history. A few outlier candidates claiming to be DSers does not get me to clutch my pearls in the same way as pardoning people who literally attacked our government does.
I think the scaremongering of this piece is wrongheaded. But I love that Williamson quoted Adams' about democracy murdering itself. I think that is what's happening now. We have far greater problems today than to worry about the extremes in a DS philosophy posted on a website. We live in a declining democracy now. Extreme DSA is a symptom of that, not the cause.
Did you read the article? KDW explicitly discussed the threats to liberty from both the left and the right (he actually dedicated more words (187) to criticizing the right than he did the left (123). Indeed, the whole point of the commentary is that threats to liberty are nonpartisan because they're rooted in fundamental human nature. And that DSA hasn't yet degraded our liberty is immaterial. They are explicit in their desire for a totalitarian vision.
Any reference to Donald Trump is a non-sequitur. The critical choice isn't between majority-backed authoritarianism from the left or from the right; the choice is majority-backed authoritarianism or individual liberty. That your arsonist neighbor has actually burned down buildings doesn't make your other neighbor making bombs in his basement to blow up buildings first chance he gets less of a threat.
But who's counting ... Wow. Anyway, I'm partly responding to The Dispatch posting 4, or is it 5, posts this week with an underlying theme of 'beware of socialism'. I'll let you give me the exact number.
In this one, of course, Williamson throws in Trump as foil to his DSA argument, but his thesis is explicitly stated (as in the title), "What the DSA has in mind is the democracy that Adams warned us about". It is not 'what the DSA has in mind and what MAGA is doing now ...' .
Anyway, I'm glad you're a Williamson apologist; I love his writing, too. But my criticism stands; our country is being terrorized now, by obvious culprits, so to warn us of an equal, potential future terrorist attack seems like scaremongering to me.
If I'm reading your comments correctly, are you suggesting that The Dispatch is giving insufficient consideration to the dangers of and harm caused by Trump/MAGA?
If so, then are you new here?
Well said. The article gives a little lip service to the current administration destroying decades of governance and instead obsesses about a fringe element of a political party that doesn't currently hold a position of majority in any of our branches of government. Another favorite saw here is the big concern about packing the Supreme Court; yes, it has been tried before (and failed in a far more friendly democrat environment) and could be tried again, but shouldn't we be more concerned about our legislature actively blocking a nomination for more than a year to prevent a democrat nomination that leads directly to a conservatively packed court? It's like being worried about a wolf hurting our chickens that we may have heard howl once miles and miles away when there is a fox actively murdering chickens in our chicken coop right now.
Anytime you see someone implying that the founding fathers had a single unified mind, consider that strike one. Because the truth is that they didn't intend political parties, yet they came about because there was no other way to reconcile how much the founders disagreed.
And the ability to spend unlimited money on campaigns is necessary for free speech? Pure demagoguery.
So who gets to set the limit on how much money can be spent on campaigns, and what should that limit be?
Haven't thought that far ahead. I do know that we weren't a dictatorship from the 2002 campaign finance reform bill and 2010's Citizens United.
Imagine telling the New York Times that they could not run candidate endorsements within 90 days of an election, or that they could spend no more than $x in the service of a particular political issue they care about. That's a real restriction on free speech. I don't think that media companies should enjoy special rights that other kinds of corporations, be they for-profit or (as in the case of Citizens United) nonprofit, do not.
If it's okay to limit corporate political speech, why is it not okay to limit individual political speech? Or the speech of trade unions?
It's a good thing we have a Constitution to prevent the DSA and the far right from stripping us of all these freedoms and rights.
I am starting to get flashbacks to the craziness and panic of the George Floyd riots and the establishment of the "sovereign independent country of CHAZ," which was going to show us all how well socialism works.
Anyone remember how that turned out?
We should be opposed to democracy because after all democracy can be described as two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner
How am I to take this seriously when limits on political funding are described as assaults on free speech and when representative structures like Congress are described as anti-democratic?
The right has a habit of defining democracy only as majority rule so that they can argue from “majority“ to “mob” for theatrical effect. but let’s set the record clear for those in the back of class. Majority rule is a form of democracy but not all democracy is majority rule. Indeed, we use a mix of majority-rule and elected representation throughout state and local governments in America. All of it is democratic.
This article strikes me as a long and carefully crafted equivalent to MAGA‘s idiotic shouts of “the Democrats are communists who hate America!” and no amount of intellectualizing and academic referencing can cover the fact that such fear mongering is not productive to the national discourse.
Straw man argument. I don't know of any serious people on the right who define democracy as simple majority rule. Indeed, that is sort of the point of KDW's column.
This is the reason I wish Americans would study less about the history of Marxism and more about the French Revolution. Bolshevik or Maoist revolutionaries were pretty far removed from us culturally, but the revolution in France was very much tied to our own founding principles, with many of the same people being involved. And their revolution spun out into a dystopian nightmare pretty quick without the republican safeguards established by our founders.
This is what I think the DSA pictures in their minds, perhaps without the guillotines (although those have been featured prominently in many leftist demonstrations). A unicameral National Assembly, led by educated leftists, wielding absolute power on behalf of the people, all in front of a hooting mob of the formerly oppressed. No excuses, delays, or limits in pursuing justice and the common good. It all sounds very exciting because it is. We also all know what that leads to.
Conservatives would also profit from a study of the French Revolution, not just the gory bits over which they love to linger, but the causes which often seem to slip by unheeded, as though Frenchmen simply love to revolt for no reason whatsoever. The profligacy of Louis XIV, the heedlessness of Louis X, the many failures of the crowned heads of Europe to defuse tensions before they spilled into war and the simple fact that the French people were desperate and the Americans weren't. Had Revolutionary France attempted the republican safeguards of the American revolution, not a soul would have stood in its defence as the combined armies of Austria, Prussia, Britain and Spain danced the lambada on their pretensions.
The other lesson that follows from what you cite - the profligacy and heedlessness of the Bourbons - is that the match was only struck when they ran out of money. If they had kept their fiscal house in order and/or demonstrated the guts to get it back in order after the Seven Years War, the Estates General never gets called, the National Assembly never gets formed, and history follows a different path, for better or worse. The profligacy and mismanagement open the door and hand control to the radicals.
A very salient lesson for a nation $39 trillion in debt and counting!
I was thinking the same thing. if that ever loses containment it will get very ugly indeed.
The other important lesson from the French Revolution is that those educated leftists in the National Assembly turned on each other. The Left (Hebert) and The Right (Danton) of the revolutionary movement got purged by a ruthless opportunist (Robespierre), who was in turn purged by the Thermidorians who were afraid that their necks were next. The Revolution then fell into venality and corruption, before being entirely extinguished by an even bigger and more ruthless opportunist, who restored Monarchy in the name of "the Revolution" and "the People."
Your faction might be ruling today, but that's never a guarantee it will be ruling tomorrow.
It's always hilarious to me that the French Revolution, which was designed to get rid of the monarchy and be something much closer to a democracy, ultimately resulted in Napoleon becoming an Emperor.
It continues to confound me how this offshoot of the golden rule is overlooked time and time again
True....whenever "the mob" takes over (whether right wing, left wing, or chicken wing), disaster shortly ensues.
And then read Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" :)
I think what's fascinating to me is that the French Revolution set the seeds of the problems it had in the future AND that the end state of the revolution was not inevitable.
If Louis XVI had been more open to the counsel of Necker and others on Necker's side of things rather than the counsel of his wife and Artois. If Louis had not tried to flee the country. If the King and his court had dealt more in good faith with revolutionary government. If the revolutionary government had kept their radicals under better control. If the monarchien had been more successful in their arguments. If Mirabeau hadn't died. So many "ifs" that could have potentially led to a different course.
It's a fascinating period in history.
I highly recommend "Citizens" by Simon Schama.
I find Jefferson more prescient than Adams on this subject. Adams had a tendency to harp on virtue while Jefferson looked to incentives, of which the economic are the strongest. Not since the first humans emerged from whatever starting point is in vogue right now did humans ever look out onto such a scarcely populated and abundant vista as when the Europeans discovered the de-peopled expanse of North America. Not for them the confines of Europe that demanded constant defence and thus a substantial state helmed by strongmen. Every man could grab his own plot and rule himself for the most part. Now that that expanse is owned and more and more crowd the cities every year, it is inevitable that the demand for the state will grow at a commensurate rate. The solution doesn't lie in moralising but in practical acceptance of the problems and a coherent vision for their solution. I like most economists favour the Geoist vision rather than the Socialist or traditional Capitalist.
Your post touches on the unique circumstances that allowed our country to develop as it has -warts and all. You rightly observe that a country which develops with no existential threats can tolerate an exceptional level of individual liberty. However, preserving that liberty requires a constant struggle against those of all political stripes who simply cannot abide that other may be just as happy, or happier in most cases, living in a way they find distasteful.
Hey, my neighbor wants to wear feathers and sacrifice goats to Bal - have at it. Just turn off the music by 9:30, obey the law, pay your taxes and help maintain property values. I understand I am strange, because weirdos, don't make me uncomfortable, unless they are dangerous. Most weirdos are slightly interesting, but wearing.
It is a strange accusation to consider the desire to end lobbying and to control campaign spending as the same as ending free speech.
And yes, SCOTUS put this extreme spin into the law. But many decent folks (John McCain is one) have worried about the corruption of our politics by swaths of money.
I don't care for DSA but if the writer does not see Congress as corrupted by money. Or see it terrible the legislators spend much of their time fund raising then he has been blinded by his ideology.
Maybe we have to accept that we cannot control either lobbying or campaign spending but surely our founders would be horrified if the saw today's political realities.
I’ve never thought that free speech guaranteed large corporations or exceptionally wealthy people the right to unlimited political contributions. It gives groups like DSA ammunition and that should never happen. It makes the little people feel unheard. That is a recipe for turmoil. We need to return to Constitutional values. I want my representatives working on problems, not raising money.
I never accepted it. But it seems to be the writer's position and Scotus' as well.
Perhaps, but there are many pols of recent note who have spent lavishly on their political campaigns and lost. Mike Bloomberg spent a billion or so in the 2020 Presidential race. I think he won America Samoa, but that was about it. More recently, Tom Steyer spent more than 200 million on his race for California governor. He finished third. There are lots of others who also spent vast sums--and lost. So perhaps money is of far less consequence than we sometimes tend to believe.
I think it's super obvious - if I can control the amount of money you spend on your speech, then he can lower that amount, and then it get's lowered more, until only the state controls speech. There is no limiting principle. In America, the power centers fight it out (in this case, rich Ds and rich Rs). Ideally, they're aligned against each other and cancel each other out to some extent.
Not ideal, but better than the alternative.
Funny - that statement is now more true if you replace ‘democracy’ with ‘communism’.
Pedantically, I would observe there is no more or less true than true. Metric or imperial, the amount of water we use on our guests’ feet is the same.
There's a gradient, largely found in the ambiguity of language. It's slightly untrue to call a tomato a vegetable, and very untrue to call it a member of the US Supreme Court.
Any ideology eventually commits evil. The genius of the Constitution is that it is not based on an ideology, but on an understanding of human nature and a recognition that a good system of government proceeds from the assumption that the people governing are no better than the rest of us. Thus: separation of powers, bicameral legislation, Federalism and the Bill of Rights. None of it comes from utopian theorizing but from a careful study of how to preserve liberty. Liberty was the goal, not democracy.
Thank you, Baritone! Glad someone finally said it!
And despite the genius, its erosion started almost right away.
The Derangement They Have Been Warning Us About:
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, (Kevin missed Pol Pot)...Trump.
I wouldn't put Trump in the same group, simply because he is way too lazy and stupid to actually accomplish any of the destruction that the others did. Hitler and Stalin actually meant it when they talked about eradicating the Jews and/or Kulaks, and worked towards it.
Trump says things, but doesn't really mean them. Its all showbiz for him. The only thing he works at and really cares about is making a buck for himself and his family. I don't think he is a tyrant; he's just a common grifter.
Until David McCullough's excellent biography of John Adams, I would have said that he was the most underrated among the founders. His profile has been boosted over the last couple of decades [in part thanks to McCullough]. But I still think he is underrated. Perhaps it is his pessimism about human nature [which, as time has shown, was well founded].
Adams is the cranky uncle that annoys the hell out of everyone at the dinner table but also knows how to help you land the job you want and has the money to lend you for a down payment- of course, you will sign a Note and Mortgage. Jefferson is the uncle everyone adores for his charm and wit, but he is drinking your scotch and eying your girlfriend.
Fantastic description!
McCullough makes a persuasive case that Adams was a more formidable thinker than Jefferson. Adams was a rigorous, systemic political theorist and lawyer, whereas Jefferson was a philosophical idealist who basically plagiarized the Declaration of Independence. Adams, ever the realist, used his exhaustive study of ancient and modern history to develop a skeptical view of human nature and political power, whereas Jefferson was more idealistic and optimistic concerning human progress and liberty. Moreover, one might conclude that Adams was the more virtuous of the two men inasmuch as he and his wife never owned a single slave while Jefferson was awash in them. Adams thought the practice of slavery morally repugnant and abhorrent.
"and put elections under the control of the majority party in Congress by mandating state to control of the financing of political campaigns"
Can someone edit this for clarification, please?
I think the “to” between “state” and “control” is the error.
yeah, I'm not sure what it means, either. Or, I'm not sure that it is a bad thing. For example, in the UK and other modern democracies, there are strict laws governing political campaign financing. And I suppose, by extension, the majority party would have some say over amendments to those laws.
Like, a lot of the corporate and "dark money" is prohibited in campaigns in other countries. Or, at least it is strictly monitored. So, you wouldn't have an Elon Musk largely financing a whole campaign over and beyond what everyone else is spending; and there would certainly be a lot of exposure and public scrutiny if there were. People should care that Trump won and is concerned with many of the policies he is "concerned about" largely because he was handed 100's of millions by Musk. Yet, we are continually told that it doesn't matter, and critics of this administration are being prosecuted for their criticisms. Like, hello.
Other countries, therefore, attempt to have something of a "level playing field" when it comes to political campaign budgets. Again, I don't think that is a bad thing.
In the UK, there has been controversy over the Conservative or right wing parties circumventing some of that scrutiny by doing a lot of campaigning via social media, which obfuscates, shields, or hides the campaign budgets. The laws haven't caught up to modern technology. And social media companies (notably Facebook, around the world) are consciously benefiting from that.
This particularly exacerbates the problems around the basic political campaign laws prohibiting foreign contributions to political campaigns. Indeed, Facebook and others have refused to be transparent in this way, knowing full well that a lot of ads were financed by foreign entities (in both the US and the UK). And many Americans wonder why the EU is trying to hold US social media companies to particular standards? In part, to ensure that standards governing political campaign financing are indeed followed -- standards that are intended to be followed by all political parties, including the majority party that might currently be influencing those standards.
I am continually astounded that much of the US populace seems to have a largely "all-or-nothing" mentality. Either we have Trump, or the US goes full-on Communist and gets "destroyed". Either, we content ourselves with little if any standards and regulations whatsoever, or we end up with "dangerous democracy" and "mob rule"! etc.
But, just perhaps, "bereaucracies" or "technocracies" like the EU are simply muddling along as they incrementally make improvements and build in safe-guards that gradually clean things up... on behalf of the average citizen? Most people want gradually improvements that begin to clean things up, and are agreed on that. Just like most US citizens, including Democrats, want the US to be "great".
Certainly, the actual policies proposed to achieve that end need to be evaluated and critiqued. And perhaps a policy or two put forth by the Democratic Socialists is ill-advised or just plain bad. Just as Trump's tariff policies are not Making America Great Again.
The "conservative" assumption, even among anti-trumpets, seems to be that anything proposed or desired by anyone "left of center" (a center which is already skewed to the right of much of the modern democratic world), is by definition bad, "Anti-American", or both. Yet, we are supposed to believe that half of America is sincerely concerned with America's Greatness, even as they watch Trump and his cronies diminish America while serving themselves.
If one party is tearing down oversight, scrutiny and standards; and the other party (including, or particularly, its "radical elements") is advocating for more oversight, scrutiny and standards ...then who represents the danger they warned us about?
The DSA are advocating for more oversight, scrutiny and standards with the assumption that they, of course, will be the ones overseeing, scrutinizing and making the standards. And once they are in power watch how quickly the standards change.
It'll be the same old song and dance, with the same tyrannical results.
Also,
"The "conservative" assumption, even among anti-trumpets, seems to be that anything proposed or desired by anyone "left of center" (a center which is already skewed to the right of much of the modern democratic world), is by definition bad, "Anti-American", or both. "
That is a false straw man argument. I am an anti-trump conservative (a real one) and I don't think any such thing. Nor so any of the serious conservatives I associate with and read.
Terror is terror and tyranny is tyranny, whether imposed by a man or a mob.
The problem the DSA types make, to be generous, is that they conflate mechanism with principle. They equate authoritarianism with tyranny and democracy with liberty. But, democracy is a mechanism for government and can be used to squash the principle of individual liberty.
For sure. For me (per my long comment above), I just find it extremely weird that campaign finance reform is being used as the poster child for a warning against how "democracy is a mechanism for government and can be used to squash the principle of individual liberty."
I mean, we might as well throw the "individual liberty" of pedophiles in there.
If the government tells you that you cannot publish a book or show a film critical of a political candidate because of "campaign finance" rules, then you do not have free speech.
well said Dusty