“Change is hard, and difficulty makes people impatient.” — Arthur Herzog
“It’s dangerous to challenge a system unless you’re completely at peace with the thought that you’re not going to miss it when it collapses.” — Jules Feiffer
There are days that I wonder.
“The system” – i.e., the current, reigning power structure, controlled by the current, half-vicious, half-inept political-bureaucratic Establishment, with its media clerisy and brain-scrubbing stations in our “public institutions” – has been in place for some decades. Arguably, it could be traced back to the New Deal, which is about when the original American ethic started to crumble to a degree that was plainly perceptible by ordinary citizens.
All Establishments have a critical feature: they want to remain Established. That is, they seek political stability. As George Orwell put it, “The aim of the High is to remain where they are.” But to remain Established, the Establishment must create conditions conducive to stability among those it rules. It must seek economic and social stability as well. Otherwise, unsatisfied desires and ambitions among the ruled will give rise to currents of dissent and demands for change that might topple the Establishment’s towers.
It was with the examination of that premise that I first began to understand the Twentieth Century.
***
Garet Garrett, the preeminent chronicler of the New Deal and the erection of the post-World War II national / international order, gave us a summary of what the Establishment born in the Thirties had to achieve to cement itself into power:
The first, naturally, would be to capture the seat of government.
The second would be to seize economic power.
The third would be to mobilize by propaganda the forces of hatred.
The fourth would be to reconcile and then attach to the revolution the two great classes whose adherence is indispensable but whose interests are economically antagonistic, namely, the industrial wage earners and the farmers, called in Europe workers and peasants.
The fifth would be what to do with business—whether to liquidate or shackle it.
The sixth, in Burckhardt’s devastating phrase, would be “the domestication of individuality”—by any means that would make the individual more dependent upon government.
The seventh would be the systematic reduction of all forms of rival authority.
The eighth would be to sustain popular faith in an unlimited public debt, for if that faith should break the government would be unable to borrow, if it could not borrow it could not spend, and the revolution must be able to borrow and spend the wealth of the rich or else it will be bankrupt.
The ninth would be to make the government itself the great capitalist and enterpriser, so that the ultimate power in initiative would pass from the hands of private enterprise to the all-powerful state.
(Gentle Reader, if you’re unfamiliar with Garrett’s book, I solemnly assure you that no other treatise on the New Deal has ever penetrated as deeply to its core… or to what it was truly intended to achieve. Make time to read it, I beseech you.)
While I’m sure many will cringe at what I’m about to say, I must say it: The political brilliance of the men who imposed the New Deal on the American nation has never been exceeded. I say it not because I approve of their scheme or how they implemented it – I most certainly don’t — but because, as Garrett says in his book, they knew exactly what they had to do and they made not one mistake. And in implementing their program, they set in place the foundation of a unique political-economic-social stability that won the allegiance of millions. This despite its departure from the nation’s founding principles and its incursions on individuals’ freedom.
Change is hard, as Arthur Herzog says. People dislike change, especially if it requires strenuous adjustments. They love stability, if it includes a measure of comfort and security. And for about half a century (minus a few years for the Second World War) the New Deal’s program Established that very thing.
This is not the place for a detailed examination of the mechanisms involved. Let it suffice to say that they embraced all the most prominent features of the Republic – the things that we of today call “institutions,” whether protectively or derisively – and bent them to the will of the Establishment. Think about the growth of the “defense industry,” the “educational system,” the “charitable foundations,” the media conglomerates, and the Fortune 3000 corporations, and you’ll have the essentials in hand. All these things were yoked to the Establishment’s harness to serve the desired political, economic, and social stability.
***
It’s time to return to the question posed in the title of this piece.
The stability of the post-World War II years has largely eroded. Certainly fewer Americans feel secure in their jobs, or in their ability to meet their needs and cope with their surroundings, than previously. Yet millions remain strongly attached to the “institutions” that, to a great extent, are the principal achievements of the post-War period. In some ways it seems impossible, despite the many indications of widespread institutional failure, that we might ever be without them… or do without them.
Stability is like that. It’s addicting. The thought of losing that stability, of having to cope with economic or social instability, is enough to keep us awake at night. Only the man supremely confident in his powers calmly confronts chaos. I speak with some authority in this, having been intimately involved in several of the most prominent “institutions” throughout my adult life.
Yet one and all, they’re crumbling. Their failures have become impossible to conceal. Many would say – I among them – that they deserve to crumble. With their rubble out of the way, we could make a fresh start. But the matter is not nearly that simple.
Sweeping political, economic, and social change is massively painful. Millions of Americans are already suffering from the decay of our major institutions. They’re scrambling to keep their jobs and meet their bills. They’re straining to cope with the social changes among us as well. Millions of eyes look suspiciously on anyone who declaims against the institutions or proclaims that the wrong turnings of the century past must be corrected at once. The cry is Haven’t we already got enough to deal with?
So just for a moment, we in the Right should ponder how we’ll feel if and when we manage to attain our political goals. There will be chaos during the transition. There will be carnage. No matter how fervently we maintain our convictions, no decent man can look upon widespread fear and suffering – even justly earned suffering – and fliply say “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”
Remember with whose name that statement is most closely associated.
