I apologize in advance for
writing a column on the state’s surveillance powers and immediately resorting
to a reference from 1984. It’s become cliché at this point. Any and all
articles dealing with the rising national security state seem to always include
a reference to George Orwell’s masterful work. It must be a clause in their
contract. Bonus points if they challenge themselves to squeeze in a reference
to the slightly less referenced dystopian book, Huxley’s Brave New World.
When the revelations came out
about the NSA’s PRISM program and the government’s seizing of Verizon’s
metadata for phone records, I was angry. Since I’ve had time to process the
news, my anger has not gone away, but a flurry of other realizations have emolliated
this anger. Chief among them is the public apathy, particularly among
Generation Y, over these revelations. I saw five, maybe a few more, posts on
facebook about the NSA’s creation of a total surveillance network, but that was
it. Compare that to the major outpouring of red equal sign profile pictures,
and I think you come away with a picture of a public that is aphetic, at best,
about these revelations. Sure, they broadly disapprove, but if their willingness
to condemn can’t even rise to the pathetic effort of a status or profile
picture change, then little is going to be done.
I wanted to write about this, but I’ve been trying to come up with some angle. Various other writers could summarize, in a far more cogent and acute analysis, the problems with yielding ever more of our privacy to a group of nameless, faceless, bureaucrats in the bowels of some federal office. You can read these arguments as to why this is all wrong (or conversely why this is right), so I have to offer something different. I can’t just repackage op-ed pages. My five readers demand, and deserve, more.
And here it is where I will introduce my argument. The left, as an ideology, holds a contradictory view towards government specifically and power generally. Let’s start with the obligatory Orwell quote. Doublethink, a concept introduced in his 1984, is defined as:
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.
Modern American liberalism, long since divorced from its classical European heritage, has seen its primary form of implementation in the aggregating of power within the centralized federal bureaucracy. Having correctly identified the ailments of American society, including powerful corporations, systemic racism, and economic inequality, American liberalism’s solution to all of these problems has taken the form of adding to the federal government’s programs, power, and scope. Both the New Deal and the Great Society, the twin planks of progressivism, have at their core the accumulation of power and responsibility to the federal power structure. While the ideology ostensibly claims to be in favor of individual liberty, it seeks to improve that liberty through an activist and powerful central government. For leftism, power must be concentrated, preferably (though not always) in democratic hands.
I wanted to write about this, but I’ve been trying to come up with some angle. Various other writers could summarize, in a far more cogent and acute analysis, the problems with yielding ever more of our privacy to a group of nameless, faceless, bureaucrats in the bowels of some federal office. You can read these arguments as to why this is all wrong (or conversely why this is right), so I have to offer something different. I can’t just repackage op-ed pages. My five readers demand, and deserve, more.
And here it is where I will introduce my argument. The left, as an ideology, holds a contradictory view towards government specifically and power generally. Let’s start with the obligatory Orwell quote. Doublethink, a concept introduced in his 1984, is defined as:
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.
Modern American liberalism, long since divorced from its classical European heritage, has seen its primary form of implementation in the aggregating of power within the centralized federal bureaucracy. Having correctly identified the ailments of American society, including powerful corporations, systemic racism, and economic inequality, American liberalism’s solution to all of these problems has taken the form of adding to the federal government’s programs, power, and scope. Both the New Deal and the Great Society, the twin planks of progressivism, have at their core the accumulation of power and responsibility to the federal power structure. While the ideology ostensibly claims to be in favor of individual liberty, it seeks to improve that liberty through an activist and powerful central government. For leftism, power must be concentrated, preferably (though not always) in democratic hands.
That is not to insinuate an evil
or authoritarian motive to leftism, at least the contemporary American strain.
Many of the programs they have fought for and seen enacted bring quantifiable,
real gains to the individual. If you look back over history, the motivations
behind the left’s most ardent advocates are both noble and humanitarian. Accordingly,
liberalism as enacted takes the form of programs that are beneficial and
helpful, particularly to the poorest among us. Nonetheless, they involve a
transfer and concentration of power.
This trend, of concentrating
power to achieve material and societal improvement, necessitates a trusting
view of the federal government. There has to be a level of trust and
belief in the institutions of Washington, or else it would make little sense to
give them more power. Though modern American liberalism can criticize the
excesses of federal power, its core ideology must and does hold that the
exercise of that power is ultimately benevolent.
Yet, as the NSA revelations have
highlighted, there are some contradictions, some doublethink, inherent deep in the core of the current formulation of American
liberalism. The trust with which they give to the state in economic and societal
matters, they withhold in security and foreign policy matters. Though the
outrage has been bipartisan, it is the left who feels personally betrayed about
the explosion in the size, scope, and power of the NSA. If we rewind the tapes
a few years to the Bush administration, it was the left that critiqued the vast
grab in powers after the 9/11 attacks. Warrantless wiretapping, wars, torture,
soldier abuses, the Patriot Act, etc were all the subject of blistering op-eds
in Mother Jones, the Nation, and the New York Times. It was the left, and
primary leftist intellectuals, that shrieked the loudest when all of these
events were occurring. Having found an antidote to Bush in Obama, they thought
that they had a champion that would turn back the clock and begin to reign in a
national security state that had grown outside the bounds of democratic
control.
And now, they are shocked to
find out, that their champion, far from ending the worst excesses of the Bush administration,
has continued them. All of the policies they, and he, once condemned have
continued and in many respects are being expanded and institutionalized at an unprecedented
rate.
But the betrayal by Obama should
come as no surprise. You cannot hold that the federal government is a benign
friend and partner when it comes to the economic sphere, and then shout fascism
when it accumulates police powers, spies on the world, and goes around blowing
up villages at the touch of a button. This is the doublethink that I speak of.
Either the federal government is an amoral power hungry entity, or it isn’t.
You cannot condemn the federal government for accumulating police powers,
spying powers, and the like, while celebrating its takeover the
healthcare industry etc.
People are now complaining that
the national security state has grown beyond the boundaries of democratic rule
making, but hasn’t the welfare state as
well? Do think the entitlements are within the bounds of a democratic body?
If so, try to cut back, let alone eliminate, Social Security or Medicare and
get back to me. We have already crossed the boundaries of a limited government
constrained by laws. We are on the other side of the Rubicon, and now we have
the left wanting to go back. You can’t.
The NSA debate is a debate over
security, but so too is the creation of the welfare state. The welfare state is
about sacrificing liberty for security: food security, health security,
education security. It may be the case it’s a good trade off to make, but don’t
pretend there hasn’t been a trade off in the first place. We cease to be free citizens and instead yield our responsibilities to the
state, we turn it into a parental figure, mother and father. And now we complain that it assumes that paternal
protective instincts of a power mad father, always watching, always vigilant,
always seeing.
So, my argument is simple. The left is confused at best or lying to themselves at worst about the nature of the state. You cannot have the state as both a demon and an angel.
There is, perhaps, another possibility. The left at its core doesn't care about liberty nor the creation of the Big Brother spy state. Perhaps the shrieking during the Bush years was mere partisanship, because Bush had an R after his name. Perhaps the left isn't really against intervention in foreign lands, as long as the president supports gay marriage. Perhaps, as evidenced by history, the left has no objection to power as long as its power within their hands, the hands of an enlightened vanguard class.
But that's just cynical.
There is, perhaps, another possibility. The left at its core doesn't care about liberty nor the creation of the Big Brother spy state. Perhaps the shrieking during the Bush years was mere partisanship, because Bush had an R after his name. Perhaps the left isn't really against intervention in foreign lands, as long as the president supports gay marriage. Perhaps, as evidenced by history, the left has no objection to power as long as its power within their hands, the hands of an enlightened vanguard class.
But that's just cynical.
