No, but maybe

 

I thank the readers who responded to the previous posting, and hope even those who didn't choose to comment found it a useful mental exercise.

My answer to the question, "Would you support a 'temporary' dictatorship?" is no.

... Unless the only alternative becomes so extreme and pathological that there is nothing to lose -- for instance, a totalitarian leftist dictatorship. If it comes to that, then there are no good choices, and we must do what we have to and are risk what we are willing.

But while I don't think I underestimate the Left's domination of the centers of power and influence, we are not at that point.

As long as we still have the liberty to legally denounce and resist cultural Marxism, overthrowing the traditions of a free society is not the way to go, no matter how much a coup might promise to restore limited government within strong borders.

Our present liberal and neocon elites are wrong-headed and oppressive, but we are not without recourse. Much of our resistance will need to take new and imaginative forms; standard politics -- electoral campaigns, manifestos, petitions, "issues" -- isn't going to cut it. We must be revolutionaries, a tradition not unknown in these United States.

If it takes imagination and unorthodox strategies to restore the people's sovereignty against the statists and globalists, then so be it: we have to earn our liberty. When has it been any different? For some years after World War II, we thought we could take liberty for granted, and that's one reason we're in peril of losing it. There is no default option except becoming serfs who live by government regulation of every corner of our lives, with only the freedom to choose among brand names. If we have greater aspirations, then we must live them, not hire a dictator to set us right.

Besides, a dictator -- however much we might want to see him as benevolent or promoting our values -- is a politician. Like any politician, he will tell us what we want to hear and do the right thing so long as it serves him. As bad as things are today, when the powerful are malevolent, there are checks and balances, constitutional counter-moves. Once the established order of society is abolished, those are gone. Only power remains, with its inevitable accompaniments: intrigues, plots, factions, rebellions, ultimately degenerating into tyranny for the dictator's self-protection.

No to cultural Marxism. No to population replacement. No to politicians herding minorities into a welfare plantation. No to demented military actions with impossible self-imposed rules. No to buying the world's friendship. We are better than all those. And despite our disorganization, our confusion, our disagreements, our mistakes, and our fears, we are better than Caesar.