“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Abraham Lincoln
There was a time when the tyrants that America fought to vanquish were easy to identify. They wore crowns, held titles and commanded armies. The threat was real and our goal was clear. If we were to ever win our freedom, we had to rebel. We had to shake off their chains and violate their laws. Then, as we were spilling our blood, we had to carefully fashion laws of our own. These laws would have to be truly radical; because they had to be founded upon the principles of maximum personal liberty; the very liberty that these tyrants had been ruthlessly eradicating for centuries.
Somewhere along the way, however, the face of tyranny has changed. The tyrant that we face today, the tyrant that is quietly undermining the freedom for which we have so valiantly fought; has become far more difficult to recognize. In fact, we don’t even recognize this tyrant when we are looking him right in the eye, and he is looking back at us from the morning mirror.
“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.” Adlai Stevenson
Many Americans, simply cannot tolerate the way other people, other Americans, choose to live their lives. They have decided that it is their God-given right, their duty even, to compel such people to conform.
It rarely occurs to them that their insistence on imposing their own way of life; their own brand of morality upon others; is a clear and deliberate act of tyranny. All they are concerned with is compelling others to behave according to the principles that they have embraced, and they work very hard to make this happen.
As a result of this prevailing dissatisfaction with one another, we have developed large and diverse pockets of very indignant people, groups that I refer to as ‘moral majorities’. These groups have made it their mission to censor and, if necessary, punish anyone who dares to think or act differently.
The weapons that have been forged for this purpose are as numerous as they are deadly.
For example, after World War Two ended, while locked in a deepening ‘cold war’ with the Soviet Union, Americans discovered that the quickest and most efficient method for eliminating a social or political foe was to accuse them of being a communist. This method was referred to as McCarthyism. It was a fairly simple process. Sometimes just insinuating that someone were a “Commie” or a “Red” was all it took to plant the seeds of fear and hatred for that person in the minds of those around you. No proof was necessary, it was guilt by association, even if that association was only in the mind and opinion of the observer. The simple fact that the accused was unable to disprove the accusation was enough to prove their guilt. The long shadow of Soviet aggression and brainwashing was enough to send most people clamoring to the shelter of bigotry and exclusiveness.
Prior to this, early colonial Americans learned that they could easily eliminate the ‘problem’ of strong-minded women simply by declaring them witches, an accusation that turned everybody in the accused person’s world against them; friends, family and the greater community.
If someone is seen as a threat, in whatever sphere of life, there is no more certain a method to eliminate them as a threat, than by discrediting them in this manner. Statesmen, doctors, women’s rights and civil rights leaders have been cut down by this blade; activists and pacifists alike have felt its deadly sting.
But was the specter of Soviet aggression really what provided the knockout punch of the Red Scare? Was the looming threat of secret demonic pacts with Satan the real fear that inspired the Salem witch trials; or was the real culprit here nothing more than the deliberate manipulation of closed and lazy American minds?
Fast forward to late summer, the year is 2016. We are watching the opening ceremonies of an NFL football game.
While the Star Spangled Banner is being sung, someone suddenly notices that a prominent ballplayer has actually refused to rise to his feet for the singing of the National Anthem and zooms in on him with camera rolling. Americans were aghast! What sort of behavior was this? Should this be tolerated on national television; on America’s biggest stage?
Later, when confronted about this disturbing behavior by the media, the player insists that he was simply exercising his freedom of expression to protest the unfair treatment of African Americans. Other players throughout the league quickly follow suit, bringing this divisive situation up close and personal, making it a heated household discussion for millions at home and abroad.
But what was all the fuss about?
Surely most Americans would understand and respect this right to free speech, and the freedom of expression guaranteed to every American by the US Bill of Rights.
Right?
Wrong.
What we saw instead was serious “blow back” by tens of millions of offended and angry Americans.
Everywhere we turned we heard passionate grumblings that began along these lines:
“How dare they…?”
“What gives them the right…”
“These disrespectful and ungrateful…”
“I will never support this type of…”
“If they hate America that much…”
And the rant goes on.
These ball players were later harassed, hounded, threatened, fined, and belittled by NFL fans, players, coaches, the media, and across the spectrum of social media.
Suddenly millions of people were up in arms; exercising their freedom of expression to demolish the freedom of expression of this minority group that had so deeply offended them.
So what happened here?
These players had been deemed morally inferior by the moral majority standing against them; and with this inferiority they had now become violable, worthy of retribution; victims of their own rebellious nature.
Free people everywhere were using their freedom as a tool to destroy the freedom of others.
Excuse me?
What had happened to the storied American love affair with liberty and free speech?
Why weren’t we praising the individualism and moral fortitude of these men; and hailing their courage to stand firm in the face of what they perceived as a serious injustice?
We are the heirs of the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; consummate liberty-loving rebels who fully embraced a grand social experiment. An idea designed to offer all people an abundance of freedom; the freedom to live a full life unimpeded by oppression and censorship by the Church or the State. They loved this idea so deeply that they incited an armed revolution against England, the great Superpower of their day, in order to make their dream a reality.
They argued that freedom is nothing if it isn’t absolute, and they worked to make it absolute by fashioning a constitution that guaranteed the greatest level of personal freedom for every citizen. Additionally, wherever a weakness to those liberties was discovered, they introduced a constitutional amendment to address any problem that threatened to make us less free.
These men and women that gave birth to America absolutely abhorred suppression and censorship. With such great champions of personal liberty as our trailblazers, how do we find ourselves in this nasty state of affairs, where the new goal of American patriotism is to crush the rebels among us and force them to conform?
The answer I have to offer here is twofold:
First, Americans today are easily and often offended.
and
Second, America today is not a democracy, it is a demagogy.
Demagogy simply means: “Ruled by a demagogue or demagogues” where a demagogue is defined as:
“a political agitator who appeals with crude oratory to the prejudice and passions of the mob.”; and America, with its three hundred million strong; media addicted population, comes fully equipped with its own massive, prejudiced and passionate mob.
Hypersensitivity runs in our blood. There is a perennial “Well, I never…!” ringing through the very puritanical American psyche.
We all tend to despise those who don’t think like us, and we clamor towards those who share our thoughts and feelings, who voice and articulate the thoughts that we think, and who often are the very people who put the thoughts in our head in the first place.
This tendency to embrace those who read our thoughts and speak our minds for us is known as demagogy. It is a social phenomenon that goes back to ancient times. It was rampant in the late Roman Republic when the empire devolved into a jumble of conflicting political alliances that had nothing to do with political philosophy and everything to do with popularity and people-pleasing. All that an aspiring demagogue had to do to gain power was to appeal to a particular social group’s biases and prejudices, and then promise to make their dreams a reality.
“You want to eat but not have to work? You got it!”
“You want me to feed all the Christians to the lions? I can make that happen.”
Demagogues give a voice to our deepest and darkest yearnings and can often make them a reality. They are not so much leaders as they are trigger men; promising results with little or no concern for consequences.
This is where the democratic experiment invariably goes awry. Every majority group eventually discovers a spokesperson who is willing to champion their group morality. He or she will do whatever it takes; propagate, legislate, litigate; whatever steps necessary to get results, even if it means trampling on the rights and liberties of others.
The bigger the demagogy, and the more powerful the demagogue, the more damage can be inflicted on the opposing camp.
In this way, liberty becomes the spoils of victory, not the birthright of every citizen.
“A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.” Friedrich Hayek
The majority of Americans subscribe to some sort of ‘-ism’.
- Conservatism
- Liberalism
- Socialism
- Spiritualism
- Feminism
These and countless other forms of relatively dogmatic devotion.
When we become offended by a particular lifestyle or action, it typically occurs because our logical mind becomes lazy or bored with the process of understanding; and then our emotions and preconceived notions rush in to take its place. We are highly reactive in nature, probably due to our penchant for drama and our deeply competitive lifestyles. For this reason, at the first hint of opposition we give in and quickly devolve into our mindless devotion of choice.
This process tends to happen when someone walks in and tips one of our sacred cows. Logic crumbles like a house of cards and we are suddenly, and often irreversibly, offended.
The question is why?
How are we ever really harmed by the conflicting beliefs and observances of others?
How can pacifists really bring harm to the hawkish?
How does the libertine cause damage to the lifestyle of the puritan?
This harm only happens in the mind of the offended, who would rather suppress what they see than simply look away. We become angry, then when we discover that we can’t really justify the reasons behind our anger, we turn and elicit the support of all those around us that are at least as offended as we are and…voila…instant majority.
Next we, the majority, sit around comparing notes and talking trash until we’ve elevated the offensive behavior of others in our minds to a level approaching criminality.
Then, having established the ‘crime’, we bring in our friendly neighborhood demagogue, arm him with the full support and resources of our fledgling moral majority, and send him out to mutilate the freedom of those who commit the offensive behaviors.
This type of majority has slowly resurrected an ancient form of dictatorship here in America. Some may still call it democracy, but it is clearly a demagogy, democracy’s twisted evil twin.
America is ruled by a star-struck majority that worships the élite, and possesses little time or patience for the minority.
Through this process America has grown glib, complacent and crabby as a culture; hating any change to things as they are, and offended by any who attempt to bring it. Any majority will crush its opposing minority without batting an eye, for no better reason than that they simply can’t see themselves doing what that minority is doing.
We ask ourselves:
“If we wouldn’t do it, how could it be worth doing?”
So imagine what we, the majority would be willing to do to those who do things of which we would be ashamed?
Any majority will trample the minority underfoot as a matter of principle; and this makes that particular majority a natural despot.
By comparison; an old, well-established and highly offended majority, set on a national stage, would prove to be nothing short of diabolical.
Should this sort of democratic behemoth be allowed to exist? Does this dominant majority really hold the right to dictate its ethos to an unwilling minority?
So what can we do to keep our personal liberties from swirling down the proverbial drain?
There is no easy answer to such a deeply ingrained social tendency; but there are small, fundamental steps that each one of us can take to restore a measure of liberty to ourselves and to each other.
Here are a few that come to mind:
• Lose the idea that the individual must sacrifice liberty for the sake of the group.
Liberty is individualistic by nature. In fact, it is so personal in nature that it can only be experienced by a person. It only empowers groups to the level that it empowers the individual. The group that begins dis-empowering it’s members inevitably dis-empowers itself.
• Accept that, in any free society, people have the right to say and do things that might offend you.
Individuals, in the act of expressing their individuality, will inevitably offend the sensibilities of those around them.
This is a necessary evil in any free society. My thoughts about your actions should never be allowed to impinge on those actions, because that would result in a loss of liberty for you with no increase in liberty for me. My only benefit would be the satisfaction with seeing you lose your liberty to offend me.
Why would I want to see you lose your liberty? This question lies at the root of intolerance.
How others choose to live their lives is their own business, not ours. When we become uncomfortable with the behavior of others, we often choose to blame them and not to blame our own lack of self-assurance. Although no real harm can come from their actions, we feel threatened by them and we retaliate, preferring our own comfort to their liberty. This, my friends, is the real source of the hatred and intolerance that is sweeping the nation.
• We must become strong enough to exercise social tolerance.
Tolerance is the great virtue of a free society. It is the mindset and social viewpoint of the truly free person.
Being tolerant allows us to be well-rounded and reasonable people. Tolerant people can engage in intelligent social discourse, including debate, and are able to observe the actions that we don’t understand without fear or hostility.
Democracy is built upon informed social discourse and interaction. It can only function as such when all of its members follow the basic rules of this type of interaction. When portions of this society withdraw from this process and abandon these rules, democracy suffers, and every person suffers a loss of freedom, including the intolerant ones.
Intolerance is the signature weapon of the demagogue, and the intolerant are his minions, and make no mistake, America has already begun it’s steep slide into Demagogy, and only the heroic actions of reasonable and tolerant free citizens can avert disaster.
We must evolve as citizens and as human beings. We must become more involved, more informed, and more tolerant of one another.
If this doesn’t happen soon, I fear that the last bit of true American liberty will have bled away, leaving America victim to a new and far more insidious tyrant…its own privileged class.
Nathan Logan
I am a freelance writer and author with a background in hypnosis and NLP. My fields of interest are energy work, personal performance, and mind development.