A combination of anti-authoritarian Democrats and Randian Republicans brought down the renewal of the Patriot Act today. That oddball coalition may foreshadow a revolution in American politics that will bring a heretofore despised political philosophy into the spotlight.
What could split DailyKos asunder faster than the assertion that Barack Obama is Corporatist pig? The question whether the State is ultimately our friend or our enemy is an issue that might very well separate the Progressives, those who follow in the footsteps of the New Deal, from the Anti-Capitalists, those who point to the failure of the New Deal compromise to survive and advocate more thorough solutions to the problems posed by Capitalism.
What is most intriguing about both the coalition between portions of the Left and Right in the Patriot Act vote and the split in the egalitarian Left is that anti-authoritarianism has turned out to be the more important political consideration in the early part of the 21st century. On the Right, Randianism has triumphed, for now, over pro-business Statism, sometimes recognized as fascism. On the Left, anarchism and libertarian communism have triumphed over State socialism.
The Left has learned from hard experience that State Socialism is miserable. It's fine if you qualify for State benefits by virtue of turning 65 years of age and demonstrating some minimal earnings history, but if more and more conditions are attached, as they are for unemployment, welfare, food stamps and Medicaid, the State becomes not your friend but the enemy, determined to eliminate your benefits if it can find any excuse. The compromises between egalitarianism and Capitalism, even in the most progressive societies, have always managed to employ bureaucratic qualification systems to disadvantage immigrants, racial minorities, women and political dissidents. Red tape has always triumphed over altruism.
Consider, for example, the government guaranteed student loan system. The entire system was created, purportedly, to make higher education more affordable. In reality, it has helped increase the cost of higher education more rapidly than inflation in general. Originally, student loans were treated like any others. In 1979, the bankruptcy laws were changed so that student loans were no longer dischargable. Now, the creditors can go after parents and the estates of former students to collect student loans. At the same time, little has been done to crack down on the blatantly fraudulent for-profit schools that have fattened their bottom line off student loans, even when those schools' curricula offered little or not practical benefit to their students. Often times, the federal student loan program has financed a hustle-the-job-hungry-sucker industry while making sure that the only victims were the students gullible enough to buy the cable TV advertising hype.
Those who take a step back and look at modern America can see that the New Deal has long been dead. Government now no longer even pretends to stand on the side of the worker, the student, the home worker or the unemployed. Government serves as the wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate Behemoths that dominate not just our country but the entire world. The truth stated by the Anarchists of a century ago has proven to be undeniable in the 21st century. The State is nothing more than the servant of Capitalism.
The Paulists see the threat of the State but persist in their naive view of Capitalism. They might share our anti-authoritarian views of the State and even Big Capital, but they hang onto the fantasy of a Capitalism that consists of small enterprise, devoid of monopoly and government influence. More fundamentally, they deny the basic communitarian nature of human beings.
But for now, they are our allies. Whether George Bush or Barack Obama is in charge, the vast, authoritarian, militaristic State that prevails in the United States is the enemy of people around the world, including those living within the confines of U. S. borders. There is no real rule of law, no respect for human rights, no due process as long as abominations like the Patriot Act continue as law.
A victory like what took place today in the House of Representatives should be celebrated, and our coalition partners should be warmly praised for their courage in standing up to their own party. We can only hope that they will come to understand that the authority that they hate and despise along with us is ultimately a product of the Capitalist system that they still defend, and that GE, Exxon and Goldman Sachs are as much a threat to liberty as the Department of Homeland Security.