Thursday Essay: Beware the Authoritarian Temptation

“If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” —James Madison, Father of the Constitution

“Let’s get ruthless.” —Bill Kristol, former conservative

I opened with the famous James Madison quote because in light of this week’s Supreme Court decisions on redistricting, plus that little assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, Democrats are in a more violent lather than ever. Also because I wanted to remind you that men are not angels, and some appearances aside, neither are women.

I’m looking at you, Margaret Qualley. Over and over.

All kidding aside, when Bill Kristol said, “Let’s get ruthless,” it jumped out at me like the shark from Jaws with a fricken laser beam attached to its head, but maybe not for the reasons you’d suspect.

Despite your best efforts, you might remember Kristol as the “conservative” who ran the once-respectable Weekly Standard into the ground as he took it further and further to the left. Or perhaps you know him now as the “brains” behind The Bulwark, which is maybe best described as “conservatism of, by, and for neurotic Democrat women.”

On the off chance Kristol ever had a principle, he sold it long ago to… I honestly have no idea. Can anyone around here tell me who bankrolls his publications? I’d look into it myself, but I’m on travel today, currently sitting in an overstuffed Boeing, and I figure I’m already at risk of catching something.

But I digress.

I saw that nasty Kristol quote atop a Jonathan Turley column earlier this week, but while Turley singled out Kristol in the headline, his column was really about the modern Left’s growing authoritarian impulse.

And Turley featured too many recent examples for comfort.

There was James Carville demanding, “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F— it. Eat our dust. Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.”

There was even former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder endorsing packing SCOTUS: “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”

Onetime comedienne Margaret Cho said, “we need a feral, bloodthirsty, violent Democrat.”

You know how to Protect Our Democracy™? By lying to the American people about packing the court, and if that fails, bloody violence.

Pardon my language, but today’s Democrats aren’t f***ing around. They’ve gotten all-too-used to their trillion-dollar skims — Somali “Learing Centers” are the least of them — and by their own words, they aren’t going to let niceties like tradition or constitutional order stand in their way.

Here’s where you probably expect me to issue some witty (and airport Bloody Mary-fueled) condemnation of today’s Democrats in particular and historical Leftism in general, but I’d like to do something else today.

Instead of issuing the full-throated, vodka-enhanced condemnation they deserve, let me just say three little words.

I get it.

I really do, I totally get it.

When your opponents threaten everything you hold dear, the completely human temptation is to take whatever action seems surest to end that threat, and for the longest possible time.

Sometimes you can’t help but smile at the thought of, “Backs up against the wall, you filthy Commies — it’s counterrevolution time!”

But no.  

And Another Thing: Here’s that condemnation you were hoping for, and which I was never going to deny you, my dear VIP supporters. What conservatives hold most dear is individual liberty, best represented by our unalienable rights to free speech and bearing arms — and best protected by the Constitution of the United States.  What lefties hold most dear is other people’s money and power over other people. There is a difference.  

It’s with that same totally human understanding that I’ll share a comment from a Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Reader™ regarding the assassination attempt on Trump last weekend:

None of these people, from Jeffries to Pritzker to Mamdani to Pelosi to various podcasters, face any consequences. That needs to happen. They pushed it to destroy us all. This is on them.

It may take an authoritarian regime to do so, else we will be in a civil war, to either destroy the crazies or neutralize them.

The entire Soros family along with the Tech Bros and wives would be a good start.

Again: I get it. I really do. But we as conservatives cannot go down this road — not out of some noble principles, although I believe our principles are indeed noble.

But because we’d lose.

Here’s the part — you’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you? — where we talk a little history.

Imperial Russia was built on a glorious culture, and by the late 19th Century, a rapidly industrializing economy and a deteriorating political structure. 

Long story short (for once), Czar Nicholas II found himself in a world of hurt after losing the 1904-05 war with Imperial Japan. 

Things began, as such things usually do, with high hopes for a rapid victory and expanded Russian power in the Far East. By the time things were over, Nicholas had ordered his mighty fleet to sail halfway around the world, only to have it soundly defeated by the Imperial Japanese Navy; and the Russian Army humiliated on the ground by Japanese troops, too.   

The biggest shocker: Russia was the first Western country to lose a modern war to one of those primitive little “asiatic” peoples. And in such a total manner, too. In the peace that followed — negotiated by President Teddy Roosevelt — Nicholas ceded the southern half of Sakhalin Island, plus Port Arthur and Dalniy in China, and gave Japan control of the South Manchuria Railway.

But it’s what followed that matters to this week’s essay.

Nicholas stopped/coopted the resulting revolution by having hundreds of protestors shot dead in St. Petersburg, and then agreeing to the establishment of a Duma (parliament) to check his previously unlimited powers, at least in theory. In reality, Nicholas effectively neutered the Duma in about a year.

One of the leading leftist “change agents” in late Czarist Russia was the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), which functioned largely in exile. By 1903, the RSDLP began splitting in two, between the Bolsheviks (led by Lenin) and the Mensheviks.

And Another Thing: “Bolshevik” means majority, and Lenin chose the name even though his faction was the minority. Lefties excelled at branding, even back then.

Both sides were united in their desire to overthrow the Czarist ancien régime, lock, stock, and baklava, and install a socialist government. But when that finally did happen in the 1917 Revolution, the Bolsheviks proved far more adept at taking, wielding, and enforcing power. 

Having gotten what he needed out of the Mensheviks, Lenin dispatched them. You can forget socialist solidarity because the “warmth of collectivism” was mostly found in Siberian mass graves.

The analogy isn’t perfect — no analogy is — but there’s one essential similarity between the Bolsheviks of a century ago and the American Left today: Neither cares much who might help them in overthrowing the existing system, just so long as it is overthrown. Because they know that only they are ruthless enough to take full control in the aftermath.

And I do mean “full control.” Leftism infamously has no inherent limiting principles, particularly when it comes to enforcing those principles. “100 million broken eggs,” I’ve said for years, “and not a single omelet.”

For us, “a little authoritarianism” is a dangerous temptation. Dangerous partly because it’s like being a little bit pregnant, but also because conservatives would likely share the same fate as the Mensheviks. Or maybe we’d end up with a Lenin of our own, unwilling to relinquish power once taken.

And don’t protest too much about restoring that constitutional order, if you know what I mean.  

For the Left, “a little authoritarianism” is a starting point.

None of this is to say we have to just sit here and take whatever the Left dishes out, but how to fight is a topic for another week. I also don’t want to go off into the deep end of pure speculation about why and how the battle lines might form if and when peaceful resistance fails.  

But if the Democrats do force a Second Civil War, I like our chances. And besides, I’d rather us fight for the Constitution, rather than “temporarily” suspend it or whatever. Because I can’t say this enough: If we’re the ones upturning the applecart, they’ll be the ones picking up the apples.  

Also, when you find yourself, however inadvertently, taking the same position as Bill Kristol, it’s time to pause and self-reflect. 

Last Thursday: Peace Through Strength — and the Cost of Forgetting It