|
I’d like to start with a recommendation. It’s been years since
I’ve watched the classic movie, Ben Hur, with Charlton Heston. Although it comes to us from the late 1950’s, they produced a
technological marvel that is still quite a masterpiece. The film swept 11 of
the 12 Academy Award categories in which it was nominated, setting an Oscar
record. So, if you didn’t get enough Easter Sunday goodies then I recommend getting
a copy of Ben Hur.
I also have another recommendation, in the way of a book. The book
is Witness an autobiographical account of Whittaker
Chambers’ political and spiritual odyssey into, and out of, communism. If you are
not familiar, Chambers was the lead witness in the Alger Hiss case investigated
by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The HUAC was created in
1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of
private citizens, public employees, and organizations suspected of having direct
ties to communist operators.
Chambers was an Editor at Time Magazine for nearly nine years
following 10 years as a member of the communist underground working in Baltimore
and Washington, D.C. He narrates an insightful story of great personal
intrigue, mystery and espionage that is unforgettable
and is an immensely readable story of hope in our age of cultural unrest.
Chambers suggests that misplaced faith in government, science,
education or materialism eventually leads many people to communism. In their lives, people experience hardship,
trouble, tragedy and sometimes bad-luck. They inherently understand something
is not right with the world. People need a purpose in life. They need a purpose
which goes beyond themselves where they can find meaning and identify with
like-minded individuals. They have a natural desire to pitch-in and solve
society’s problems.
Religion occupies this station for most people but when someone doesn’t
feel any need for help from a higher power then they put their full faith into
human institutions or ideologies. These ideological allegiances form the “isms”
of our modern world, like progressivism, utopianism, pragmatism, collectivism, environmentalism, scientism
with overtones of the class struggle, in elitism, egalitarianism, Marxism,
socialism, and communism.
We have a tendency to forget that, groups follow leaders and
concentrated power overtime degrades to become arbitrary, despotic and
mindless. Even our own Constitution must be rigorously followed, or it will
lose its guiding character because any power exercised by a majority can be
just as tyrannical as that exercised by a minority. Ultimately, the weight of
our human institutions must rest on their relationship to the individual.
Chambers takes time (800+ pages) to intimately identify the real
problems of our modern world. He notes,
“religious rejection has taken a specifically political
form, so that the characteristic experience of the mind in this age is a
political experience. At every point, religion and politics interlace, and must
do so more acutely as the conflict between the two great camps of men. … The
most conspicuously menacing form of that rejection is Communism.”
The movement is particularly menacing because,
 |
|
“The Communist Party, despite occasional pious statements
to the contrary, is a terrorist organization. Its disclaimers are for the
record. But its record of kidnappings, assassinations, and murders makes the
actions of the old Terror Brigade of the Socialist Revolutionary party look
merely romantic.”
Chambers goes on to tell us that, “The Communist Party respects
only force,” while, “Only terror terrifies it.” His keen insight on this issue helps us
understand the full faith and fervor of the progressive-left, the Antifa
movement, new identity politics and the daily assaults on our constitutional
form of limited government.
|
Chambers was astonished when he realized that the men he knew never
took the New Deal seriously as an end in itself. Instead, “they regarded it as
an instrument for gaining their own revolutionary ends.” Chambers draws the
conclusion that the surface manifestations of the New Deal, “concealed the
inner drift of this great movement.” The drift toward socialism was carried
along by sincere people who supposed themselves to be simple liberal-minded
individuals striving for justice, equality, the working-man and revolution.
He labeled the New Deal as,
“a genuine revolution, whose deepest purpose was not
simply reform within existing traditions, but a basic change in the social,
and, above all, the power relationships within the nation. It was not a
revolution by violence. It was a revolution by bookkeeping and lawmaking.”
This is why our national and state governments appear mired in
inconsistencies. For 80 years we, too, have been gently guided along this path
toward government control. We continually mistake self-governance as requiring more
laws, more rules and a larger bureaucratic apparatus as the means to a better organized
and more prosperous life. Yet the result is simply unwashed socialism.
Chambers concludes that the revolution of the New Deal was,
“made not by tanks and machine guns, but by acts of
Congress and decisions of the Supreme Court … But revolution is always an
affair of force, whatever forms the force disguises itself in. Whether the
revolutionists prefer to call themselves Fabians, who seek power by the
inevitability of gradualism, or Bolsheviks, who seek power by the dictatorship
of the proletariat, the struggle is for power.”
In the first "Hundred Days" following his inauguration
in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass many laws that
brought new centralized planning and economic authority to the national
government. However, the courts, following the dictates of the Constitution,
realized that those initiatives were contrary to the founder’s intentions. Over
the next 16 months, beginning in January 1935, the Supreme Court nullified eight
of 10 major cases brought before them because of unconstitutional overreach.
After several years of political pressure some justices succumbed
and changed sides while others retired, were removed from office, or died. All
of their replacements were New Dealers. FDR’s policies brought an onslaught of collectivist
activity into the halls of government. The public now takes for granted the unwieldy
regulations, subsidies and habitual deficits which have plagued us ever since.
However, my letter today is about our future. We can learn from
history. We can learn from our mistakes and our successes. We have the ability to
change the critical spin of history, garner the support of our allies and lift
the shield of faith in support of our Constitutional government.
Although our nation wants peace above all things, today we find
ourselves in a struggle for our American heritage of Life, Liberty and our own
just pursuits. As you consider ways for preserving our constitutionally
federated Republic, remember – Freedom is always and everywhere preferable to
slavery.
Best Regards,
 Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1728
Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE, S-305, Salem, Oregon 97301
Email: sen.DennisLinthicum@oregonlegislature.gov
Website: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/linthicum
| 
