No longer a free people?

Lawrence Auster, who has in the past generally been upbeat about the possibilities for reversing America's slide into a Euro-style, velvet-glove tyranny, is uncharacteristically gloomy:

For the first time in my life, I feel that I am not a free person, and that we are not a free people. When I say that we are not free, I obviously do not mean that we cannot (at least for the moment) say what we want and do what we want and go where we want. I mean that we are no longer living under a constitutional representative government, flawed and overreaching and swollen to gargantuan size though it may be; we are living under a lawless regime of power holders who are hostile to us and ruthlessly seek greater and greater control over us.

I understand. If there is such a thing as mental nausea, I often experience it these days reading news stories -- no, make that "news" stories, since the long-established journalistic sources have willingly debased themselves to become propaganda outlets for the radical Left. The levers of power are now operated by people who want to remake the country in their image through redistribution, open borders, social engineering to favor their cherished victim groups, using educational institutions as indoctrination centers, subverting American military capability, and bending the knee to foreign governments.

Beginning with mostly reasonable reforms in the Franklin Roosevelt administration, the Left has gradually extended its reach institutionally and ideologically. It's had a few setbacks, mainly in the Cold War years when its Communist ties and sympathies tainted its domestic ambitions. Since the Soviet Union self-destructed, however, its "long march through the institutions" has been rapid and successful.

Newton's Third Law of Motion says that "every action has a reaction equal in magnitude and opposite in direction." What is true in physics, however, is not necessarily true in politics. Aggrandizement of the state, forced race replacement, and restrictions on free speech and individual liberty have not produced an equal reaction in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union.

How can that be? It could be argued that most of Europe has never really had much love for the individual, that hierarchy is in its DNA, and that the EU is just the latest avatar of feudalism and royalty. Not so Britain and Canada. They have had their traditional freedoms bred out of them in a couple of generations.

A Marxist or quasi-Marxist takeover has certain realities always going for it.

1. Most middle-class and professional people are so wrapped up in their work lives that they have only a thimble-full of time and energy to study the political overview. And once the Left occupies the ideological heights, speaking or -- especially -- acting against it is perilous for a career.

2. Modern societies are steeped in entertainment of countless types, easy and usually inexpensive to access. For most, entertainment fills up such leisure hours as are available outside work, to the impoverishment of serious political thought.

3. About 90 percent of people take their opinions as received from the culture. Thinking is too much work, and why do mental work when so much fun is available? Besides, getting ahead financially or just making ends meet is a job in itself.

It is true that the United States is unique in some ways that offer a serious barrier to Marxist penetration: geographic dispersion, relative prosperity in most of its history, and a streak of individualism in its indigenous population. The Tea Party movement is one manifestation of stubbornness in defense of liberty -- although it remains to be seen whether the movement will be co-opted, the Tea Party population becoming no more than a Republican adjunct, foot soldiers for Fox News.

I can see two possibilities that could shake up the New World Order thoroughly and encourage a turnaround against creeping Statism.

The first is economic. The United States was bankrupt even before the Bad Medicine bill was passed. Federal government now functions like a massive home equity loan: borrowing money against our assets, mainly the longstanding asset of being a "safe haven" for money because of the once-so-solid dollar. The rest of the world has built up for many years a habit of thought, believing that their money is protected when loaned to the U.S. Our two largest creditors are China, followed by Japan. For the moment it suits the government of China to keep the Treasury bonds it owns, but that can't be counted on.

When and if the Chinese and others decide that it's no longer in their interests to keep lending money to a bankrupt, the Treasury will have no choice except to raise interest rates drastically to attract buyers, if it can attract any on a large scale. High interest rates will weigh heavily on the U.S. economy; a default will send it into the tar pit like an unwary dinosaur.

A Greater Depression will either cause Americans to acquiesce in an authoritarianism that promises to save them through rationing and central planning, or it will cause a revulsion against the financial irresponsibility in both parties and whatever Left powers are in place at the time.

The second real, if incalculable, possibility is another domestic terrorist act, on a far larger scale than any so far. If it can be traced to Al Qaeda or any Muslim organization, it's game over for open borders and a Mus-symp president.

I hope it is needless to say that neither of those factors is to be wished for. Realism tells me, however, that one or both are most likely to create the ideological shift that will drive our domestic masters from the temple. Will that involve a new birth of freedom, or an even greater submission to authoritarianism? The answer is not in the stars, but in ourselves.