A Hope and a future

By Charlie Johnston

(Though it covers some old territory as a preliminary, this is a foundational piece. If you read nothing else, please read the last paragraph of the first item. It is critical, going forward. Sorry it is so long. I just didn’t have time to write a shorter piece – CJ)

When I was still in grade school (sixth grade, I think) I started thinking very hard about societies on the verge of catastrophic collapse. The thing that started it was thinking about Nazi Germany. There was a window of about two years where Hitler’s intentions towards the Jews were transparent AND in which, with some vigorous action, German Jews could have emigrated out of Germany. (The near absolute boycott of accepting Jewish refugees – the shame of the western world – was the definitive shutting of that window.) Even so, Jews largely did not take advantage of that window, persuading themselves it would all blow over in time. The question baffled and ate at me. Why didn’t so many more leave when they could?

It finally dawned on me. Jews had been the butt of cyclical pogroms for over a millennium. They were (still bafflingly) the world’s favorite scapegoats. They would endure oppression for a time, then it would burn itself out and life would go on. No doubt with a new modus vivendi, but it would go on. It was easy, then, for Jews to rationalize that this was just another of those cyclical pogroms, even if it was a particularly virulent one. The human mind has great difficulty seeing actual evil clearly, its normalcy bias reflexively (if not desperately) trying to fit it to a pattern it can understand – and thinks it can manage.

The human mind is also almost entirely blind to the difference between mere operational problems and systemic crises. An operational problem can be solved with a change to better, more effective policy in a healthy underlying system. A systemic crisis will collapse a society if not vigorously reversed and overhauled. It’s the difference between a flat tire and a blown engine. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of people always act as if every systemic crisis is just an operational problem – so they don’t even recognize the danger they are in, much less respond vigorously to it. They even use their paltry life experience to bolster their case, claiming they have “seen this sort of thing many times before.” There are some men who, if a car were driven off a cliff, would tell their passengers, “Not to worry, I’ve seen and done this sort of thing many a time.”  They cite their own ignorant hubris as some sort of superior wisdom.

As I surveyed those societies that had gone into sudden catastrophic collapse the story was almost always the same. It was perfectly predictable for any genuinely objective, rational observer – but next to no one in the society foresaw it until doom was already upon them. In pre-revolutionary France, only Finance Minister Jacques Necker foresaw it and tried to prevent it. For his troubles, he was dismissed from service. When things quickly went from bad to worse, Necker was recalled (though he kept his socially apocalyptic fears to himself. I would say ‘wisely,’ but for all his quiet efforts in his resurrected career, the storm – and then the terror -still came). Unbelievably, King Louis XVI actually thought he just had a communications problem with his subjects. Bad public relations, don’t you know. It was the same with the Russian Revolution. At the time the February Revolution broke out, Tsar Nicholas II was at a European front in WWI, trying to establish some military street cred while ignoring Russia’s internal problems. Initially, the Duma (the Russian Parliament) took control of the government which abolished the monarchy. They promised new liberties and prosperity, but were utterly feckless, making way for the October Revolution which brought Vladimir Lenin to power and ended liberty almost entirely (prosperity too, for that matter). Russia was subjected to 72 years of ruthless Soviet rule which murdered at least seven million of its own people and perhaps as high as 100 million. Ah, Utopia!

I won’t subject you to examples reaching back to antiquity – because you surely get the idea. Even at this tender age I saw some very troubling trajectories in American life, trajectories that, if not checked, would lead us to catastrophic crisis. So, I tried to find ways in which American society differed from all of these previous cases, seeking to find the mechanism by which America might pull back from the cliff it was breezily heading for, entirely oblivious to its presence on the horizon. What I stuck on then was that all previous societies to which this had transpired effectively only had two classes of people: the rulers and the ruled. (The pedant in me has to note that Germany had a relatively small mercantile class, but not weighty enough to seriously stop the descent into the maelstrom. A case could be made that Germany was a transitional phase in how national, cultural collapses happen.)

It dawned on me that America’s great advantage – perhaps even its secret weapon – was the existence of a huge, industrious middle class – by far the biggest class of all in society. This great middle class could be hornswoggled for a time, easily cowed by pseudo-intellectuals into swallowing patent nonsense. But it was thrifty, industrious, and practical. Best of all, it was guided by a transcendent faith: for all its petty flaws, it sought the good of family and neighbor. It was not the most powerful class in peaceful times, as it didn’t much care for such things. But roused, it became unstoppable – the true temporal sovereign power in American culture. It became aroused by widespread fraud, widespread incompetence playing at intellectual superiority, and continued empty cant. It could be deceived for a time, cowed for a time, and bullied for a time. But when it roused itself to resistance, it could not be stopped. I thought, for a long time, that this is what made America, in particular, and western civilization, in general, ultimately immune to such depredation. Oh, it could have pitched battles, but it would endure.

I underestimated how vulnerable to the siren song of socialism’s “free stuff” normal people are. I thought with the record of massive poverty, misery, oppression, and raw murder of their own populations during the 20^th Century to try to force the man-made Utopia, people would develop real immunity to all iterations of socialism. But first Argentina, then Venezuela, showed how quickly a people can go from prosperity and freedom to poverty and misery by chasing after “free stuff” they don’t have to work for – free stuff that never was and never will be. Argentina, thank God, is in recovery after renewing its knowledge of the reality of socialism. Venezuela looks to be ready to do the same. So maybe my initial assessment was right, allowing for much more dysfunction to prevail for a longer time than I imagined. Still, instead of being deadly, a great middle class serves as powerful antibodies that, given time, can conquer the cancer of sustained destructive policy.

The Covid fiasco opened my eyes to a lot of things. It clearly was an intense assault on the means and mores of the great middle class. Strip clubs and liquor stores could remain open while Churches and family-owned businesses were forced into shutdowns. More than 400,000 small businesses were shut down by the Covid hoax, with almost 100,000 of them never to re-open. The big box stores along with social elites were exempted from many – or even most – of the depredations they forced on normal people. I realized that this was supposed to be the equivalent of the Battle of the Bulge in which the communists in this country would make dependents (the ruled) of the middle class, thus wiping it out and taking authoritarian control of the whole country. Fortunately, though it was a hard battle, the communists did not succeed in wiping out the middle class or freedom, even if both were badly wounded.

I saw that this was the culmination of a very long war against the middle class. After WWII, the US did NOT demand free trade: it allowed foreign countries to put up all manner of restrictions against our products while getting their stuff into America easily. At first that was intentional – to help in the rebuilding of decimated Europe. That was, in my estimation, noble on America’s part. But we redefined “free trade” to mean affixing a “kick-me” sticker on our economic back. If you were a foreign country, you could treat us just as shabbily as you wanted, and we would take it, claiming that was the price of free trade. Many conservatives bought entirely into that. (I exempt myself because, though I have always been a free trader, it has always been with the codicil of what I called “mirroring;” that we would impose the same manner of restrictions on any country’s goods that it imposed on ours. Donald Trump is persuading me that I should take a look at the use of tariffs as an instrument of national leverage and a way to keep peace without resorting to arms. I know that when tariffs have been used as a means of protection, they have failed miserably every time – but that could mean only that they have been used for the wrong purposes rather than that they are a mistake in themselves). Playing Uncle Sucker for a good 60 or 70 years longer than was necessary to rebuild Europe started gutting our manufacturing capacity and a huge chunk of the middle class jobs that sustained and nurtured that class – in addition to making us vulnerable to hostile foreign entities.

Couple this with Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” systemic welfare programs on steroids, and we further trapped generations of people who could have worked up the ladder to the middle class into a debilitating permanent dependency. It was better for young women with children not to report a man working in the house, for it would cut her assistance benefits, often by more than the man made. Perversely, we set up incentives for irresponsibility and lassitude rather than initiative and thrift. It is an iron rule of economics and human behavior that what you reward you get more of and what you punish you get less of. We punished initiative while rewarding lassitude – and now we have 42 million SNAP recipients who scream if they are required to do any work or if they can’t get luxuries as well as the basics. Under Joe Biden, the country tried to make carpenters and plumbers pay for the student loans of our seriously degraded university system.

In 2003 I saw this system for what it was. I was completely disabled for several months and had to undergo life-threatening surgery to have a chance to recover. I had a child in the home who was solely dependent on me. For the only time in my life, I tried to get government assistance. Striking out, I went to the Social Security Administration. The woman behind the desk told me that once I was completely disabled for a full year, I could re-apply, but there was nothing they could do for me in the interim. I started visibly shaking – and the woman, who was NOT hostile, took a break to go outside with me. She told me bitterly that she was less than a year from retirement and could not wait to get out of there because of what the system had become. “If you were a black woman from East St. Louis, we have immediate “emergency assistance” if you get a hangnail,” she said. “But you are a middle-aged white man. The only thing your government will do for you is take your kid and put him in the system if you don’t figure out a way to stay afloat.” Fortunately, I had some friends who did help me do just that and to whom I remain profoundly grateful. But the system has been fully corrupted whether a Democrat or Republican is in charge. When I was working full-time on political matters, I heard federal bureaucrats justify ignoring Republican Presidential directives by saying, “Presidents come and presidents go – but we go on forever.”

I came to see how satanic this all truly was. The devil saw, as I did, that a large thrifty, industrious middle class was a massive obstacle to his efforts to bring man to his knees. So, using seductive, lying promises of virtue, (“You will not die…you will become as gods) he changed our mindsets so as to ingest whole the deadly poison he offered…and in the process made war on and laid waste to much of the middle class. Oh, how he chuckles with mirth at our foolishly thinking this is a mark of our compassion and virtue!

Almost every country among the crowned heads of Europe was a culture of dependency. Every authoritarian society is a culture of intense dependency. The 18^th Century Europeans thought the common man was incapable of making good decisions for himself. So they (the “enlightened” – though really just the privileged – classes) made it for him. The authoritarian societies were more sinister, figuring that a dependent class is far less likely to revolt against its masters. America was founded as an “opportunity” society, based on the then exotic belief that every man, if given his freedom and largely left alone by the government, has the opportunity to make his own way and become a self-supporting patriot. That would give everyone a stake in the welfare of the country – and stakeholders are most interested in the welfare of their stake. For the truly indigent, the federal government had no business with them. Individual states could experiment with various programs, but the bulk of welfare was to be covered by what were termed as “voluntary associations,” groups of (usually religious) people who, motivated by charity and generosity, would come together to help see that all the people in their community had basic care. This also had the benefit of keeping fraud to an absolute minimum because the people who provided help had direct contact with those provided for. Europeans thought this was a crazy idea doomed for failure, because they viewed ordinary people as greedy, piggish, and incompetent to deal with small things, much less larger, things. It is why John Adams, when asked what the nature of our new Constitutional system was responded that it was, “made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

To the amazement of all the Europeans, after about 60 years, the U.S. was not only surviving but actually working better than the European ‘ruler-ruled’ and ‘elite-dependent’ models, including in social welfare. The French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, undertook an extended tour of the U.S. in 1831, which was the first of many. Out of this came his masterwork, Democracy in America, which is still the best exposition of what America was intended to be, the philosophy underlying its system, and why it worked so well for its citizens. (Spoiler alert – the predominance of Churches and almost universal adherence to some form of Christian faith played a huge role in what he discovered. That, of course, would not have come as a surprise to John Adams). If you read it, you will be shocked at how far we have come from what we were intended to be. It can be well argued that we are as bad as – or much worse – than the oppressive European regimes we broke free from. I strongly encourage you to get it. It is a fully engaging read.

When I first read it, I thought of a way in which America originally resembled a key element of what Christ commanded. People (including Bishops) often justify massive gov’t welfare programs by saying it is what Christ wants. IT IS NOT. Christ did NOT command His disciples to go lobby the Roman government to do great acts of charity on their behalf; He told them to do it, themselves. The left and much of the modern religious establishment have come to think that government is the only legitimate means of distributing alms, when in reality it is perhaps the only illegitimate means. It fosters an “I gave at the office” mentality and makes people into the image of the early Ebenezer Scrooge, angrily saying our taxes cover that so it is not our concern. But Christ intended we be our brother’s keeper – up close and personal. It is not just the alms that matter, but the bonding of solidarity between people. Is there any sense of solidarity between those of us who work and the TikTok-ers on SNAP during the government shutdown who angrily told us that we owe them this, they should NOT have to work if they don’t feel like it, and that of course their SNAP cards should cover lobster, all while dripping with rings and technological gadgets? Behold what we have wrought through our indifference!

When the federal government gets into the charity business, it is not offering benefits: it is purchasing dependents – in order to go from the citizen sovereignty model to the ruler-ruled model. Personally, I am radical about that, so radical that I take neither Social Security nor Medicare, though I don’t recommend that to anyone else. I understand that I have to make allowances for what our culture is and that people live within the system as it is. But I will concede that it chafes me mildly every time I am at a conservative gathering and people gripe about their various government “benefits” packages. In fact, at the turn of the 20^th Century, there was a debate in the British Parliament about extending the vote to people “on the dole” – on public welfare. One argument that stuck with me intently came from a Member of Parliament who argued that if they extended the vote to people on welfare, who were not actual stakeholders in their society, it would give incentive to some political faction to trap people into a permanent dependency and harvest their votes.

We have redefined so many concepts – both words and philosophical theses – that we are lost at sea. The left – and far too many on the right – have no concept of what actual wealth is. The only lasting wealth is the goods and services that men produce, themselves. The left thinks that it is something only the government creates. Bah, humbug! The government creates currency, which is not wealth, but simply a sort of encryption key to easily unlock the value of the wealth that people actually create. But since the cretins in government think they create it, they think they can do with everyone’s wealth what they want. Actually, I have long thought there is a subtle, but divine elegance in what actual wealth is. God is, fundamentally, a Creator. Made in His image, we are subordinate creators. There is a great and resonant harmony in the reality that the only lasting wealth is what we create. And if we dive deeper into that, we would see the glorious, staggering wealth in what God has created. Like Job, we would put our hand over our mouths and gaze with wonder at the beauty and symmetry of it all. Though I hide it, it enrages and shames me that so many of our Churches take so much money from the government, becoming dependents themselves, and make decisions based on how it might affect their tax or grant or contract status. The plea that they have to take it because they are not taking in enough from the collection baskets only outrages me more. Why would they think that brazenly confessing their dependent status would make it more palatable to a true believer? I have argued internally that if the Church is so focused on immigrants, financially sponsor them, taking responsibility for the welfare of deserving recipients for the first three years. Quit demanding that everything be dumped on the American taxpayer and telling him it is his responsibility to pay for all the world’s needs while not putting your own skin in the game. And for Vatican bureaucrats and leaders, either stop enforcing some of the strictest financial penalties in the world for unlawful entry to your city or shut up. I would prefer they keep the penalties and shut up.

The off-year elections, which Democrats won in Democratic states where they had high concentrations of laid off federal workers, did carry a warning for conservatives and traditionalists, but it was not the warning the idiot establishment media thinks, nor that I have even seen in conservative media. There has been a fundamental breech in the tacit contract between generations. Whatever the transient problems of policy, this country has always credibly held out the promise of the American Dream to each successive, emerging generation – until now. The problem started building dramatically in the Clinton administration, then took off with rocket fuel under the Obama administration. We are not bequeathing the next generation opportunity, we are saddling them with huge debt and obligations to finance current ongoing political whims. Oh yeah, the privileged children of the elite still have the promise of that Dream through inheritance and highly paid careers. How is that different from the imperial monarchies of the 18^th century? It isn’t. What about the son of a ditch digger? All of those people who once were the embryonic form of the middle class find doors shut tight on realistic opportunity for them. They can’t buy houses, they can’t afford apartments, they can’t realistically use their enterprise to start a business because most all of those regulations to “protect the public” are actually just barriers to entry to protect the elite from competition and keep the “wrong” sort of people from having a voice in cultural affairs. But hey, if they have no pride or sense of independence, they can easily become dependents. The American Dream, once open to all – including an impoverished, obscure log-splitter who became our greatest president – has now been closed off to a huge class of our young people. And they know it. That creates genuine, growing revolutionary pressure. That, of course, is what both the satan and the left have wanted.

I admire Trump and some of the things he is doing to make systemic changes and bust up the old conventional wisdom. But most Republicans and conservatives, including the commentariat, are acting as if this is just another debate over policy. It is not. We live in revolutionary times. Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally transform” America. He did not complete his work in his two terms, but he laid all the groundwork needed to bring down the old liberty and opportunity-based society and replace it with an authoritarian model, run by the actual elites for the benefit of those same elites. That is why the left doesn’t care how bad their policies actually work. They are not debating policy; they are trying to collapse the old model of our society and replace it with a new one, reminiscent of the old monarchies or the more recent tyrannies. For them, chaos is a feature, not a flaw. Rulers and the ruled, baby. That is their focus – and they will have it or bust.

We are now in a crisis of legitimacy. People on the left freely say we should outlaw billionaires. Shoot, Bernie Sanders said we should outlaw millionaires, until he became one, himself, and then switched to outlawing billionaires. How is that different from saying we should outlaw blacks…or Jews…or people with blond hair and great jeans? If there is any difference at all, it is in degree, not in kind. America was founded on freedom and property rights. What somebody else does with his property is not my affair, nor that of anyone else unless he genuinely encroaches on the public good. Offending the rampant politics of envy and greed has nothing to do with the public good.

People often misquote the Bible to say that, “Money is the root of all evil.” The actual verse is that, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” I have known some greedy, corrupt millionaires. But I know far more people who are of moderate – or even impoverished – means who are ferociously focused on money and envy. That verse was for them, above all. Where your heart is, there your treasure will be. For too many of us, our heart is fully engaged with rank envy, greed and resentment. What a pitiful, empty treasure!

When ICE is violently attacked we have come to accept it as an unpleasant given. Not nearly enough people are demanding that the insurrectionists be jailed. And by our indifference, we undermine the legitimacy of the rule of law. One of my very dearest, long-standing friends is a federal District Court Judge. But the lawless revolt of District Court judges, abandoning any pretense of following the Constitution, undermines legitimacy of the entire judiciary. We are coming to see it as just another tool in the political box to smite one’s opponents. Sadly, there are only about a dozen such offenders – but they are holding our entire culture and Constitutional order hostage to their preferences, contrary to law.

The chaos inherent in these and other major dysfunctions is what the left – and the satan – want. If they can strike down the pillars of cultural legitimacy, all will collapse and they can more easily erect their authoritarian dream state (which, of course, would be a nightmare akin to the gulags and the camps for ordinary people. Actually, it would ultimately be a nightmare for all. Leftists are dependent on having something to hate and decry. When they lock up or kill all their overt opponents, they always start turning on each other. It would only be a very transient dream state even for those eagerly trying to usher it in). We are having policy debates while the radical left is determined that we must submit or be crushed. Until we understand that we have to fight in this revolution, our culture will slowly keep declining – until it falls suddenly. I have said the power of evil is broken – and I hold fast to that. But it will win if we do not fight – and continue thinking we are just in the midst of a common policy dispute. This is systemic, not operational.

I have a few modest proposals that we could adopt. These are just some beginning thoughts:

• Start arresting rioters and those who intentionally impede law enforcement in the course of their lawful duties. Every time.
• When riots occur, try to de-escalate. But if the rioters will not, start using full force, including lethal force, to put a stop to it. The late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago took a lot of the wind out of the sails of rioters at the 1968 Democratic Convention when he ordered police to shoot to wound looters and shoot to kill arsonists. Adopt his policy with a warning broadcast first.
• Enact a way besides impeachment to discipline and dismiss judges who flagrantly ignore both the Constitution and statutory law to impose their will. Their offense is as flagrant as if the president came into their courtrooms and told them who they could hire and how they must rule. A judge is not an unaccountable philosopher king – though if he stays grounded in the Constitution and law, he can be a very good one. Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson thought the lack of systematic formal accountability of judges was the great flaw in our system that might eventually topple it.
• Formally declare the United States to be a Judeo-Christian country that is tolerant and accepting of all other religions of good will. But no judge can stop any act of worship or gratitude, public or private, of the Judeo-Christian God. Any religious adherent who tries to use force or violence to impose their will must be deported or jailed.
• Vigorously arrest and prosecute those who mutilated our legal system against mere political opponents. You can’t let bygones be bygones with revolutionaries. It only encourages them to new heights of depradation.

Above all, don’t just work for “affordability.” Dig deep into how to make the American Dream accessible to all people, of whatever means, who are willing to commit to industry, thrift, and fortitude. If we do not repair that breach, young people will be easy prey for the false and deadly promises of socialists – and our society will be lost in less than a generation. That, I think, is the great temporal public issue of our time.

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Many people have asked me what I think about the Vatican’s decision on naming Mary “Co-Redemptrix.” I will discuss that exclusively in the CORAC newsletter that comes out next week. If you aren’t signed up for CORAC, do it now. This week only, subscriptions are free. (Okay, I lied about that. Subscriptions are free every week – but someone told me that would be a great marketing ploy.)

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We are busily preparing for our CORAC Global ZOOM call on Sunday, Dec. 7, the eve of the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception. Join us to hear me yammer on for a while and then answer your questions and hear your comments. We went into stage 1 of the renewal of the faith and the face of this world this year. We go into stage 2 next year…and it will involve a lot of critical decisions and action to get it right. The best time to defeat evil is to attack it when the power of evil is broken. But if we don’t stand, we lose. Are you prepared to go forth with faith as your only reliable lantern? Let’s talk about it on Sunday, Dec. 7.

I did not choose that date, but when MP proposed it to me, my heart leapt with excitement. It is the 30^th anniversary of the most pivotal, extensive visitation I ever had – Dec. 7, 1995. It may mean nothing, but I am taking it for a good omen until proven otherwise.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

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