Ubicumque Tyrannus: Wherever the Tyrant
Diane Alden
Nov. 29, 2000
(I wrote this before I found out that George Bush and Richard Cheney "might" become our future president and vice president. Its message works anyway, however. It is why we should not and cannot be a 'democracy' and why Republicans and conservatives had better wake up before they blow our republic through ignorance and inaction. In any event, it is with gratitude to the good God on high that we may have one last chance to undo the mess created the last 75 years. There is plenty of blame to go around. I hope and pray for our future, under God, with liberty and justice for ALL.)
As the great journalist and iconoclast H.L. Mencken observed years ago, "Democracy, in fact, is always inventing class distinctions, despite its theoretical abhorrence of them. The baron has departed, but in his place stands the grand goblin. ... Democratic man is quite unable to think of himself as a free individual; he must belong to a group, or shake with fear and loneliness – and the group, of course, must have its leaders."So it is, and how well Al Gore, Bill and Hillary, and unfortunately 99 percent of the Democratic Party and its supporters fit Mencken's description of those who believe in and practice "democracy."
Just as in Mencken's era, the democrats (small 'd' democrats) of our age also depend on class and identity distinctions in order to gain and keep power. In addition, the election of 2000 shows us that they are willing to do anything to win. They must do so because they fear losing their access to power and the public treasury more than they fear the consequences of not following the traditional process for electing presidents.
Throughout history democracies have always evolved into tyrannies. Majority rule has always evolved into tyranny by the majority and then to tyranny of the many by the few. One of the reasons the Founders gave us the Bill of Rights and the Constitution was to prevent this natural progression from happening. The Constitution they created specifies that the president of the United States shall take office after a slate of electors is chosen by the various states.
This system prevents the many states with smaller populations from being continually dominated by fewer states with larger populations. If it were not so, there would be no reason for smaller states to acquiesce and subject themselves to the laws of the federal government. If we had true democracy, the tyranny of the majority would crush representative government. The United States is not a "democracy," although it harbors and supports many democratic values and ideals – including one man, one vote.
The Democratic Party has shown us, the last eight years in particular, that it would like to become the tyranny of the majority. Although couching itself in idealism and a hypocritical concern for the poor and downtrodden, the end game of the new Democrats bespeaks a lack of faith in the citizenry and a far greater concern for their own skins and well-being. From Jesse Jackson to Al Gore, the Democrats continue to depend on stirring the insecurities of the old, the halt, the ignorant, immigrants, women and the poor.
Their livelihood and its attendant power rely on the constant turmoil created by a cynical manipulation of the populace, as true believer in one or another of the accepted 'democratic' causes. Like pirates of old they sail their version of the ship of state and plunder the decadent and dumbed-down culture in order to fill their own treasure chests. If this were not the case, they would not be growing government by creating more laws, regulations and taxes. There would be no desperate undertaking to create a victim-class mentality. The 'democrats' among us offer up more government as the answer.
In addition, democrats, who may or may not reside in the party by that name, really believe that their cause is just and that conservatives, libertarians and constitutionalists are both misguided and evil. These democrats may reside in either party, because they include 'moderate' Republicans like Connie Morella, Chafee, and Jeffords. They see no problem with the transfer of payments from one set of Americans to another. They see no problem with Godzilla-sized unelected government bureaucracies and the national treasure they consume. They see no problem with confiscatory taxes taken from producers and small business.
Meanwhile, they erect a corporate state while the republic languishes in a coma. But what is most galling is that they assume their beliefs and actions are morally superior to what has sustained the republic for over 200 years – beliefs that include limited government, civic freedom for the individual, and a healthy respect for the Divine author of those liberties.
Small 'd' democrats use the tenets in the basic American documents to serve their statist and collectivist purposes. But in reality they have no real use for traditional Western Canon, Christianity, and what used to be understood as the American Way.
The new tyrants of the mind are convinced that their beliefs and unethical behavior are acceptable as they pursue their goals and agenda. Bill Clinton's conduct in office is only one example. Al Gore, Hillary and the trial lawyers in Miami are other examples of doing anything, including breaking the law, in order to win. They will conscience lying, cheating and spinning for the sake of their particular and peculiar "truth." They are the new primitives, the new barbarians, the true believers, and the crowd who really think that the end justifies the means no matter who or what is destroyed along the way.
These new barbarians and true believers have taken the rule of law and liberty and the Bill of Rights and Constitution and turned them upside down. They are gradually replacing them with their new religious code of political correctness, multiculturalism and environmentalism. They have fooled many with idealistic notions of heaven on Earth and they will create this "heaven," which in reality is destructive of liberty and the individual. To them the state is all. They twist language to make the various groups to whom they pander think they care about them.
This 'new order' they propose will destroy the very freedoms that have allowed their beliefs to gain so much ground over the years. Just as with some missionaries of old, they devise a torturous iron maiden of conformity, a constraining prison of the soul and the intellect that will oppress all humankind. They call it unity. But it is not a unity freely chosen. It is not a unity that grows out of liberty and brotherhood. It certainly has nothing to do with the best of Western civilization. It is a unity created out of the devil – better known as "the will of the people."
Their version of unity depends on coercion along the lines of Marxism and their new leading light, Antonio Gramasci. It is dialectic materialism fitted with new skins. Shape shifters and chameleon-like, they propose tyranny and communism and they call it freedom.
Tyrants in training now control the educational establishment, the media and the government institutions including the courts, various bureaucracies, and the pop culture. Political correctness and using the Western tradition to accomplish their Marxist ends is the way they win.
To a man and woman they call Marxism 'democracy', but by any name it is still tyranny. It is no more the "will of the people" than Karl Marx's dogma created the "rise of the working class." The working class became prosperous because technology thrived on free markets. Following the vision of Marx and Gramasci condemns one and all to mediocrity and deterioration in a statist hellhole like the Soviet Union or Red China or Cuba.
It is extremely questionable whether this tyrannical majority so content with the pork from the public trough and its entitlement culture has the will to resist tyranny. They will choose security over freedom every time. In voting for Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Hillary, that is exactly what they did. In all probability they won't quit until the American free market and our liberties are destroyed. To a child playing with matches, the flame is pretty, but when it gets out of control, the fire destroys and consumes everything it touches.
It is unfortunate that this last election and the two before it showed that the old America and the people who believe in the Bill of Rights, Constitution and Judeo-Christian tradition did not possess the will to identify and mass forces in order to do what it takes to defeat the new barbarians. They were too scared by the names they were called and the leftist "democratic" fingers pointed at them in condemnation.
Where Are Madison, Jefferson and Washington?
Our leaders should have a solid understanding of what makes a representative republic. Unfortunately, most are no longer concerned about keeping up the pretense of a republican form of government. No one seems willing to take the lead in returning to that form. Republicans do not see the real problem as one of conflicting and incompatible ideologies. They still believe that compromise is possible even in the face of evidence that it is a deal with the devil. Ever since the '60s, conservatives have had no real will to resist or lead except in certain marginalized quarters like the Christian right, libertarians and constitutionalists.
Thus far, we have no leaders of great stature who have been able and willing to define the problem and plan a course of action. Instead, Republican leaders run and hide or pander and compromise to tyranny lest they be called mean-spirited, racist, homophobic, sexist, or whatever.
No one wants to be vilified in order to reclaim the values that have been the lifeblood of American society. There are no Jeffersons, Franklins, Madisons, Adams or Washingtons among them. If there are, they are mighty silent and mighty ineffective. It is unfortunate that the leaders of republican values are silenced in the face of the firestorm from the left. The teachings of Marx, Hegel and Gramasci seem to have trumped those of the Founders.
Nonetheless, the people in flyover country wait for someone of stature to say the words and to define the enemy and to plan the battle. The people wait and wait and wait. They thought the Republicans had the plan but they didn't realize that for some years Republicans were just as in love with power as were the Democrats.
It is unfortunate that the Republicans always operate under the notion that if they get the right watered-down message out to the press or to various interest groups, those on the left, women, minorities, and the uncaring will somehow pay attention. Republicans keep expecting a payoff at the ballot box. When they neuter their message, however, they lose. They honestly believe that somehow, someday they will compromise their way to acceptance. It isn't going to happen. If the Republicans want respect and acceptance, they should call their mothers.
The only way those who vote along identity politics lines will ever change is when they come tounderstand the tyrannical selfishness of the philosophy of the Gramascian and Marxist ideology. The "democrats" and the new barbarians in the left are its messengers.
The republican philosophy of representative government and self-reliance will only succeed when the minorities and women learn that the left doesn't have the answers that will give them security and freedom. These identity groups will have to come to that conclusion on their own. They are more likely to do so the more it is repeated and the more the proponents passionately state their case.
The 2000 Election and the Rule of Law
We are also a people who no longer understand the "rule of law." In his book "The Road to Serfdom," Professor of Economics and Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek says of the Rule of Law: "... this means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand – rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan one's individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge."
That seems straightforward enough. The "rule of law" means that laws are to be written and enforced in such a way that people can plan their lives around them. As part of that thought, the U.S. Constitution and most state constitutions make ex post facto (retroactive) laws illegal.
As journalist Don Fiedor notes in his recent column, "Is this [the current election mess] the beginning of the end for the "rule of law" and the nation we now know? It very well could be. Only two things can stop the complete decline of our nation at the hands if this egotistical socialist: First, dumb luck in the ongoing Florida vote-recounting scheme would be needed. Or, the United States Supreme Court could overturn that outrage perpetrated on the American public by the Florida Supreme Court."
When the U.S. Supreme Court granted the petition for a writ of certiorari, it said it will consider whether the Florida Supreme Court's decision complies with a federal law (3 USC 5) requiring states to resolve controversies regarding the appointment of electors under laws enacted before Election Day, not after.
We shall soon see how far we have come from the rule of law as the Supremes decide what the Florida Supremes call the rule of law.
Al Gore refers to that quaint notion often. He tortures a version out of a fabric he deems the "the will of the people" and its cousin, the "rule of law." While he and the budding tyrants manufacture vote by chad in Florida, they ignore military ballots by the thousands. They do so because they know snowbirds from New York who live in Florida vote for Democrats – because Democrats promise more and bigger pork for old folks.
Members of the military vote for Republicans because they know Republicans more or less stand for the same values they hold. They know Republicans will not send them in harm's way unless they are ready or at the very least have some sort of decent life. The military is the only government dependency that has any real claim to that status. Old folks just got lucky when FDR invented a very inefficient "social security" system.
The Democratic Party machinery under Bill Clinton and Al Gore has always screwed the U.S. military. According to the United States Code (USC), better known as "the rules," mail coming from the military may or may not have a postmark, depending on whether such a postmark stamp is available. Election absentee ballots are a type of mail that does not require postage.
According to 39 USC 3406, "balloting materials under the Uniformed and Overseas Absentee Voting Act, individually or in bulk, shall be carried expeditiously and free of postage." There are severe penalties for violations, but obviously the Democratic lawyers running things in Florida do not care about that. They wrote a memo to the vote counters and distributed it throughout Florida. Fiedor states in his article that one of the specific errors in that memo is that it incorrectly instructs ballot counters to reject all military absentee ballots that do not have a postmark.
On or about November 7, 2000, democratic attorneys in Miami wrote a legal opinion memo titled "Overseas Absentee Ballot Review and Protest" and distributed the memo to people responsible for counting votes throughout the state of Florida. Because of that memo, hundreds of military votes were not counted in Florida.
Other information shows that this fraud on the American military may have been part of a well-thought-out plan. For instance, last year the Clinton-Gore administration reversed the Decades-old practice of setting up polling places on military bases. They even tried to stop National Guard facilities from being used as polling places. Congress responded with a bill overruling that action, but Clinton and Gore had Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, block its passage in the Senate.
For the military the cut that went deepest was when outgoing Democratic senator and former military hero Bob Kerrey of Nebraska berated his fellows in uniform for not paying attention to details such as postmarks. Not surprisingly, he is either not aware of one of the laws he helped create or he knows about it and just doesn't care. One wonders where Senators Kerrey and Max Cleland were when the military voting facilities were being dismantled. Perhaps they had more important things to do, such as voting themselves a pay increase or desperately trying to avoid a trial in the Senate for the impeached draft dodger in the White House, their fellow Democrat, William Jefferson Clinton.
It is a shame that those senators are so cavalier with the rights of the men and women in uniform. But it is par for the corrupt course we have been on in this country for a number of years.
All this portends ill if Al Gore takes office. He will be commander in chief of a military that he and his mentor in the White House have nearly destroyed.
If Al Gore wins, he will not be able to govern. In all likelihood he will also be faced with a military that would purposely turn their backs on his presidency as they retired or quit in droves. But they won't be merely turning their backs on Al Gore and the Democrats; they will be disdaining the corrupt process and the institutions that have failed them.
Al Gore and the DNC may eventually enjoy a hollow victory, but they will have lost the war. Meanwhile, GWB heads toward the Supreme Court in order to overturn an agenda-driven Florida Supreme Court and bring some semblance of decency and dignity back to the process.
As politicians resort to the last court, the U.S. government and the current occupant of the White House scurry to erode that venerable document, our Constitution.
Political analyst Dr. Sidney Blumenthal observed, "I hope that George W. Bush is finally certified as the winner in Florida. Certainly, the incredible effort by the Democrats to steal the election is simply part of the Gramscian strategy of doing whatever it takes to win power in order to be able to use power. Already in the past few weeks, Clinton has nationalized more millions of acres of forestland to be made into the kind of tinderboxes that went up in smoke in Montana. On return from Hanoi, he has promised to keep working for the commie cause until his last hour in office."
This will continue in quantum leaps if Al Gore wins, and he will succeed in finishing off the Constitution. If it takes "winning" Florida's electoral votes by hook, crook, dimple or chad, he and the DNC will do it.
We will have four years to come a double bill of "Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue." In 2001 we will be inflicted with more Clintonia, as the Dragon Lady, Ms. Hillary Rodham, does what it takes to get rid of the Electoral College, kill off the Second Amendment, and bring us socialized medicine and any other misbegotten mischief she feels she can get away with. As long as the mainstream media are allies, constitutional governance will have a difficult time standing up against the winds of Hillary, the Democrats in Congress, and the power brokers such as the trial lawyers and multinational corporations controlled by the left.
Unfortunately, the record indicates that Republicans cave when the media name-calling and accusations start to fly. The quivering and shivering that go on because of these accusations of "mean-spiritedness" have frightened the political establishment to inaction. Yet when Republicans do get on their high horse, as in the protests in Miami, the mainstream talking heads such as Tim Russert choose to refer to them as "intimidating."
I suggest that if Gore steals enough ballots in Florida, they haven't seen anything yet. As one Republican in flyover country stated over the weekend, "They want us to pay taxes and shut up. We aren't going to do that anymore. It is over. They can call us any names they want. If we got the name, might as well have the game."
If this election did one thing for conservatives, it may have helped them find their voice.
The Stink from the U.S. Senate
Arguably, our current constitutional predicament could have been avoided if a majority in the Republican Senate had done its job during impeachment. Instead it chose to overlook the Writ of Impeachment against Bill Clinton. By choosing not to have a trial, the Senate leadership denied the rule of law and left us with a hollow form without substance. Merely having a legal system and courts operating in every jurisdiction is not the same thing as the rule of law.
It is a matter of fact that there was absolutely no price to pay for presidential lying, or for obstruction of justice, suborning perjury, and intimidating witnesses. During impeachment the Senate ran from its duty. It ignored the flogging of the rule of law by the lawbreaker-in-chief and thus must take much of the blame for what is shaping up as a constitutional crisis over the election, as the destruction of the rule of law proceeds apace.
But it didn't stop there. The Senate of the United States also turned a blind eye when it permitted Janet Reno to get away with the murder of 80 civilians in Texas. They aided and abetted this by covering it up with a Republican whitewash by the Danforth committee.
In addition, the U.S. Senate, under Republican leadership, did not want to deal with the home invasion in Miami by Janet's Jackboots. They were frightened by that "democratic" tool known as opinion polls, which indicated a "majority" went along with crushing the Bill of Rights and the rule of law. The Elian Gonzalez affair in Little Havana was another exhibition of the mindlessness of "democracy" as an antithesis to the rule of law. It was another example of Republican cowardice in action.
The impeachment process showed the Senate of the United States and its Republican majority for the cowards they are. They left their House colleagues to swing in the wind. The Senate had no stomach to call the bluff of the most corrupt Justice Department of the last 75 years. At least the bugaboo of the left, the Nixon Justice Department, paid a price for lawlessness.
The Clinton-Gore-Reno cabal has paid no such price. Whether campaign finance chicanery with Hillary and Al Gore, selling national secrets to our enemies, or keeping FBI files on Catholic Cardinals and pro-life advocates, the Justice Department is corrupt and the Republicans have allowed it. Even the old Democratic warrior Griffin Bell, Jimmy Carter's attorney general, said that a new Republican administration would have to dismantle the entire department due to the pervasiveness of the corruption.
The Senate was also derelict in its duty when it signed every Clinton budget bill, no matter how wildly outrageous, as it allowed federal land grabs and gave a pass as leftist judges were appointed to the court system. The Republicans did next to nothing as out-of-control federal bureaucracies intimidated citizens through the use of forfeiture laws and the IRS. Government agencies were allowed to be used as part and parcel of the Clinton administration's revenge machine. Thus, the Senate helped move us ever closer to a corporate police state. It created a tyranny of indifference and ineptitude as it disregarded the "rule of law."
Till the Last Dog Is Hung
As Clinton leaves office he picks up the pace of land grabs in the intermountain West. Does anyone in their right mind think it will be different under "Earth in the Balance" Gore?
In the first place, these land grabs were not supposed to happen. Yet Clinton's stratagem has been to use executive orders to take that which Congress would not allow to be taken.
In 1964 when the Wilderness Act was under consideration, Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey made a promise that no more than 30 million acres would ever be declared "wilderness." Since that time over 100 million acres have been confiscated by the federal government.
The American Indians have often warned Americans that the government in D.C., including the Senate, is full of liars and cowards – nothing much has changed over the years. Considering the fact that the Senate is the upper body and is supposed to have the best interests of the entire nation at heart, it has done a pathetic job. If our constitutional government collapses somewhere down the road, Senators can look to their own house to share the blame.
Does the Senate now exist solely for making the lives of the citizenry devoid of hope as we are left with no redress for our grievances? Should it not have been working over time to devolve power back to the states? If they were truly representative and held accountable, they would have seen the warning signs of tyranny approaching.
Our tyrants, which include some senators, may wear $1,000 suits and have $200 haircuts, but they are tyrants nonetheless. As Roman historian Catellus stated regarding the Roman Senate over 2,000 years ago: "We pile up riches for ourselves while the state is bankrupt. We sing the praises of prosperity – and idle away our lives. Good men or bad – it is all one. All the prizes that merit ought to win are carried off by ambitious intriguers. And no wonder, when each one of you schemes only for himself, when in your private lives you are slaves to pleasure, and here in the Senate House the tools of money, or influence. The result is that when an assault is made upon the Republic, there is no one there to defend it." (Words attributed to Marcus Portius Cato by Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust) in "The Conspiracy of Catiline," ca. 44-40 BC)
Advice From the Heartland
Should by the grace of God the prayers and good wishes of millions of Americans be fulfilled and George W. Bush become the president of the United States, something has got to give in this country.
If he does nothing else, he must begin the devolution of power back to the states. He must curtail the powers of any future would-be tyrant in the executive branch by working toward limiting executive orders and executive powers to their proscribed duties and necessities. He and Congress must find a way to end judicial legislating from the bench.
If Bush becomes president, he MUST begin to limit the scope and size and despotic rule of the federal leviathan. Unless he does that, at some future date another Clinton, Gore, or 'democrat' or socialist will steer us ever closer to tyranny and a police state.
By necessity and according to his oath to the Constitution, he needs to pull us out of, or away from, our involvement in the United Nations. We are dangerously close to handing over our sovereignty to a foreign entity that does not have our best interests at heart. We will do this by "treaty" or executive orders because Congress wouldn't dare.
If Bush becomes president, it is my fondest hope that he toss certain Republican butt out on its spineless backside. Not to do so will put this country in further jeopardy. Republicans must begin to learn how to lead or get out of the way for those who will. They must find the courage and the will to give us our country back.
Furthermore, we are NOT a democracy, and those who continue to act as though we are need to be set straight. Otherwise we will continue to be faced and crushed by the tyranny of the majority.
Additionally, I will bet the farm that the Republicans did themselves no good by not pursuing the trial of Bill Clinton in the Senate. I doubt that one single vote was cast for a Republican because they chickened out during impeachment. What did take place, however, was a harvest of disrespect for Republican leadership.
The shortage of Republican guts during impeachment never got one story spiked in the mainstream media that was detrimental to Republicans. Nor did it help George W. Bush that Trent Lott and the leadership blew impeachment.
Even now, Republicans continue in their moronic way to care what the leftist media think about anything. What they should be doing is giving the press a symbolic poke in the nose by not cooperating further with mainstream propaganda "news" stories or, more to the point, media spin for leftists and their causes.
If Republicans are wise, their attitude toward the media should always be that of Rhett Butlertoward his beloved Scarlett, as they tell the mainstream, "Frankly, my dears, we don't give a damn."
Tyrants and tyrannies do not exist in a vacuum. They endure because good men and women donothing. They persist and grow because citizens are lazy, blind and self-involved. Far too many Americans now think government exists to "give" them something.
Writer, historian and film producer of the landmark "Gettysburg" Civil War drama recently stated, "What used to be a nation of citizens in the model of the ancient Athenians has been eroded by war powers, emergencies, propaganda and usurpations into a mass population of consumers, largely misinformed, easily manipulated and reduced to being brainwashed into believing that democracy and freedom is about voting every four years between two guys in a decision about who you dislike least."
Furthermore he states, "Either way, with each election and subsequent ratification of legitimacy the presidency gathers an almost omniscient power. From the modest and humble servant, the citizen-soldier George Washington, we have arrived at the Great Father of the People, or if Hillary gets her way, the Great Mother. Just behind the facade of geniality and overt empathy sit the agents of coercion and enforcement: a personal army (FBI, ATF, Secret Service, IRS, NSA) which dwarfs the Praetorian Guard of any tyrant in the history of the world."
As historian Thomas Cahill observes regarding the "rule of law" in Roman times, which may be applied to our own: "Roman [law] promulgated by the emperor and circumvented, first by the powerful, then increasingly by anyone who could get away with it ... as the emperor's laws become weaker, the ceremony surrounding them becomes more baroque. In the last days ... a gold and purple document was held aloft for adoration by the assembled throng, who prostrate themselves before the law – and then ignore it.
The American notion of democracy, in addition to defiling the "rule of law," prepares us for tyranny and barbarism. Americans MUST begin to be educated about what Americanism is. They must begin to learn that we are a republic, NOT a democracy. Unless they learn the underpinnings of our constitutional republic, we will continue our slide to tyranny.
Americans MUST be convinced that the purpose of government is to offer them not security but freedom to be whatever they choose. Unless they face the fact that the public purse does not exist to give them a living but to allow them to make their own, the federal system will eventually collapse from its own weight.
We suffer the curse of every great civilization. It is a progressive slide from tyranny of the majority to tyranny of a few and it comes to us by the way of government giving us "gifts" at the cost of our freedom. America stands at the crossroads and chooses its own fate.
(Please visit www.aldenchronicles.com and learn how Canada may have had enough of Gramascian socialism and which of their political parties is offering a "better deal," and visit the fun election central, more than just politics.)
Diane Alden is a research analyst with a background in political science and economics. Her work has appeared in the Washington Times as well as NewsMax.com, Etherzone, Enterstageright, American Partisan and many other online publications. She also does occasional radio commentaries for Georgia Radio Inc. Her e-mail address is wulfric8@bellsouth.net