Plato wasn’t a fan of democracy. He and his protege Aristotle predicted that rule by the people would devolve to little more than mob rule. Aristotle wrote that “to be ruled by men, whose appetites will be something feral, and whose passions — no matter how upstanding they may be — are bound to warp them, is to be ruled by wild beasts.”
Both therefore recommended rule by an educated elite with a “philosopher king” at the top of the hierarchy. This elite would collectively be referred to as an “aristocracy” and would ensure prosperity for the masses with their beneficent but strict rule.
This tendency to distrust the people and prefer rule by an all-knowing, all-powerful elite is not unique to ancient Greeks. We’ve seen it numerous times in the last century, especially in the totalitarian regimes of communist and fascist dictators.
But I would also argue we’re seeing the gradual emergence of a ruling elite in the U.S. who believe that they and only they should be arbiters of our political reality.
We saw it with Covid, where public health authorities, led by Dr. Fauci, claimed with unflinching certitude to know how to deal with the outbreak. We now know they were mostly guessing for the first six months at least. And that they refused to consider data that contradicted their views in their subsequent decision-making.
Democratic politicians especially seemed to relish their new plenary powers to shut down schools, businesses, and churches while permitting and even encouraging protests and riots against systemic racism.
This same elite expends a great amount of time and energy telling Americans how racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and transphobic they are and orchestrating governmental and corporate re-education programs to expunge the populace of their various hatreds.
The elite is so convinced of their righteousness that they are willing to not only teach children about homosexuality and transgenderism, but to poison and mutilate kids under 18 to achieve their desired gender expression.
When people attempt to push back against this gender insanity by simply revealing what schools and hospitals are doing in this regard, they are shouted down as bigots and threatened with violence and legal prosecution. The FBI went so far as to accuse some parents of being equivalent to domestic terrorists, as we all know.
This progressive elite acts like their progenitors in fascist Germany and communist Russia by demonizing their opponents. In this last election, it wasn’t just a bad thing if Republicans got elected; it was labeled the “end of democracy.”
In their minds, any means are justified to fight their opponents and ensure their power. That is why you heard voices from the Left talking about getting rid of the Electoral College and the Supreme Court when those institutions are deemed a threat to the elite agenda after decades of being the servant of that agenda.
That’s why elites in our government do not hesitate to use social media to suppress information about Biden or Covid that went against their preferred narrative. For them, the constitution is not a guarantor of our basic rights, but an impediment to their rule that should be dismissed as a hateful relic of our white supremacist founding fathers.
This is also why somebody like Biden can get away with blatant corruption while the elites falsify charges against Trump to remove him from office.
Remember that Biden bragged about withholding $1 billion in aid from Ukraine unless they fired the Attorney General who was investigating the company that was paying his son to be a consultant. For the elites, this is no problem, but Trump making a call to the Ukrainian president to inquire about that case is deemed to be an impeachable offense.
Some of you may think that my argument is blown up by the fact that the elites also are very strong advocates of much looser voting laws which allow, in theory, more people to vote. Yes, the elites want more people voting, especially those who aren’t educated about our political process or the issues at hand. They use government transfer payments and fear-mongering to encourage people to vote for them, although in reality the terrible results of their policies (higher inflation and rampant crime in low income neighborhoods) show that their concern for the poor is superficial at best.
And look at how they behave when it comes to climate issues. They insist that we not only believe that climate change is a man-made phenomenon, but that we have to drastically alter our way of life in order to survive when much more rational and economically feasible measures are available to adapt to increasing temperatures.
Never mind that the American populace has not voted directly for the kind of top-down controls that climate activists are pushing through our government. Our ruling elite, in true platonic fashion, believes they know better than us and can simply disregard our beliefs when it suits them.
My final example is abortion. The Supreme Court, which used to be a reliable tool of the ruling elite or the progressive aristocracy, overruled Roe v. Wade not because the justices were pro-life, but because it was bad law and injurious to our overall judicial and legal framework. It’s never a good idea to manipulate law to fit your agenda, even if your agenda is left-wing and progressive.
The Left went crazy when the Supreme Court overruled Roe, and not just because it eliminated their preferred top-down system of governance, but because it returned that question to the people, whose beliefs they despise.
This is the regime that is in power now, trying to quell all dissent and make permanent their domination in our country. The current policy at the border to let hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into the country is not a mistake. It’s a gambit to secure more votes for the future and create the kind of chaos that causes people to put more of their trust in government at a time when our trust should be at its lowest level ever.
This current condition also explains why there is so little real criticism of the massive failures and lies of the Biden administration, whereas there was a cottage industry devoted to highlighting Tump’s real or supposed failings.
The elites will not and do not critique their own no matter how egregious the violation because they are playing to win at any cost. Which means that the fourth estate, which is supposed to keep our politicians in check, totally fails to do such a thing when it comes to left side of the aisle. This gives them encouragement to run rough shod over constitutional and legal principles in pursuit of evermore centralized government control and top-down rule over our citizenry.
The good news is that in our country, at least, we have enough independent thinkers to stand up to this new progressive aristocracy and thwart their plans. Just by speaking the truth and refusing to blindly accept various mainstream narratives, we will succeed in preventing the complete takeover of our country by our elite overlords. I look forward to seeing how this all plays out in 2023.
Trey Hoffman
Peachtree City, Ga.
New Year, same ol’ Trey – The left is bad ’cause Fox News told me they were.
JP – So, what is your disagreement with what Trey wrote? You can do better than blaming Fox, can’t you?
I don’t think Trey is calling the left bad. I think he’s calling them wrong. There’s a difference.
Trey’s argument is flawed. In his eternal campaign to advance his right-wing agenda, he can’t bother to offer a logical argument.
How about this logical argument from Trey: “The elites will not and do not critique their own no matter how egregious the violation because they are playing to win at any cost. Which means that the fourth estate, which is supposed to keep our politicians in check, totally fails to do such a thing when it comes to left side of the aisle.”
For the egregious violation – remember not long ago how aghast the 4th estate was at Trump’s FBI raid and a few documents he had? Now they’re finding documents of equal secrecy levels, in 3 or 4 different locations that Biden has stashed away. And the media? Crickets. The View is holding Biden to a different standard. CNN is even trying to cover up and make Biden’s issue less significant than Trump’s.
So tell me…..is that not a logical argument from Trey?
Actually, the mainstream media, including CNN and the NYT, are giving this story great significance. It is the lead article in the NYT today, including the special prosecutor coverage.
If you read the MSM instead of what Fox tells you about the MSM, you will discover that nothing is being swept under the rug.
Again, Trey makes a cult argument about the MSM, not a logical one.
Will you feel different when they come for your “stuff”. The left wants “equity” and will actively attempt to override personal and property rights to seek their goals.
I find it interesting that Hoffman worries more about progressive lawmakers than about insurrectionists murdering police and attempting to overthrow a presidential election, BLM arsonists, or any other fringe group on either end of the political spectrum. I guess everyone has his own boogeyman.
This letter is inaccurate on many fronts. The U.S. Founding Fathers (sans Jefferson) were terrified of the mob ruining our new republic. Adams wrote about it continually, and the Constitutional framers and early state legislatures severely restricted voting to men with property, even appointing (instead of electing) Senators. You don’t have to return to Hellenistic times to find populist terror.
The more substantial problem with Trey’s argument is that it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The policies he laments like pro-choice, attention to climate change, respect for all kinds of marriage, accepting homosexuals into society, more access to voting, refusing to tie the hands of teachers, etc. are favored by the majority of the population. The majority of Americans have voted for the Republican Presidential candidate only once (2004) since 1989. Democratic members of the House and Senate have gained far more overall votes than Republicans over these years as well. Polls show that majority of Americans have lost faith in the Supreme Court because it is seen as an extreme political force rather than an arbiter of the Constitution.
If political elites are a subset of the government that forces its will against the majority of the populace, Republicans more readily fit that bill than do Democrats. Polls show that most Americans support much stronger gun control laws, want abortion on demand (at least through the 1st trimester), want election finance accountability, support easier voting options, etc. but conservative legislators (elected by a minority of Americans overall) and the judges they have installed have stymied these changes.
Hoffman’s often repeated and most illogical canard is that the main stream media is propping up a group of nefarious elites. This is a typical trope used by cults. The more any person or organization criticizes the cult, the more it proves that the cult is authentic. Of course, this is circular reasoning that is impervious to criticism a priori. The main stream media must be accurate, not because it doesn’t have an opinion, but it must have facts to back up the opinion. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, the NYT, Washington Post, etc. will gladly eviscerate one another when error is reported, for ratings and to bolster their own egos.
I recognize that Trey proudly contends that he will never brook any criticism of his points, so his letters will not become more logical. But many readers of The Citizen are too sophisticated to be taken in by illogical and shoddy arguments.
STF – I had been looking forward to see how someone might justify a political class that has lost its way as our representatives, straying from the bounds of the Constitution, the best interests of America and financial reality.
Unfortunately, you miss on facts and on where most people who reject the woke socialist way are on the issues.
For example, you claim that protestors murdered police on January 6. Completely false.
Most Americans accept homosexuals. Pushback is a reaction to the extreme LBGTQIA+ agenda: grooming and transitioning children, allowing men into women’s sports, restrooms and locker rooms, pronoun silliness, and being expected to “celebrate” and give preferences to others’ lifestyle choice.
Access to vote is already easy. A hard no to making it possible for non-citizens to vote, or easier to cheat. A verifiable ID and vote tally is a basic requirement we all should agree on.
I’m with you on election finance accountability. Both sides play the game, and it distorts the will of the people.
Judges are there to rule on the law as it was written and intended by elected officials, not on popularity or their personal opinion. Roe failed because it was wrongly decided Constitutionally – – even Ruth Bader Ginsberg thought so – – and the Court rightly returned abortion decisions to the states.
Along the same lines, the Constitution is clear on guns.
So many other corrections to make, but I’ll end with one last one.
Yes, most parents want to tie the hands of teachers, if that means sticking to making sure students can read, write and do math. Protect childhood. Stay out of how parents choose to raise their kids.
One only has to look at what is happening in Scotland with the “Gender Recognition Act” to understand exactly what the danger is in the current promotion of “transgenderism” in schools.
A violent, convicted rapist was supposed to be transferred to a women’s prison because he claimed he was really a woman…and the GRC allows “self ID”…if he says he is a woman, then he is a woman. It didn’t matter in the least that his claim only was put forth after his arrest for two separate rapes, or that people who knew him best (including his wife) openly stated that this was simply a ploy to allow him to be incarcerated among future victims, the proposed law would have allowed it.
His victims were forced by law to refer to him, and his genitalia, in court by female pronouns, and it was only the outrage of concerned citizens that this male rapist was going to have multiple further opportunities to rape women in prison that forced the government to declare that “this” transgender person might not really be “transgender” after all…which is in direct contradiction to their previous policy statements.
Yet here in America, a 14 year old girl was suspended from school for correctly and accurately stating that the “transgender female” allowed into their locker room over the protests of the girls he was watching undress, was “literally a guy”. Her father, a coach at the same school, was fired for supporting her in her belief that this person should not be allowed into the girl’s locker room to watch them shower and change clothes.
Think about that…a man lost his job, for defending his daughter who didn’t want to allow a male student to watch her undress and shower, because it is now considered “bigotry” for girls and women to not want a male to see you naked. When “teachers” are promoting that idea, their hands should be tied…tightly.
Read the stories of “detransitioners”, mostly young girls, who were convinced by LGBT groups and “gender therapists” that they were “born in the wrong body”, and only came to their senses after years of drugs and radical mastectomies that removed their healthy breasts.
Women’s rights and the safeguarding of children are under attack in America as they haven’t been since the 1950’s…and we just appointed a Supreme Court Justice who claims not to know what a woman is, despite being one herself.
When government is attempting to compel you to speak their message or stay silent, when you are being informed that you must deny that which you know to be true lest you “offend” someone with that truth, we can no longer claim to be a free people.
You forgot to name-drop Tucker Carlson and reference a bowl of stew.
Would you agree with Trey more if he had remembered to? Or is your response the only thing you can think of, since you aren’t intellectually honest or smart enough to refute his points?
Trey – you identified many of the problems that has a sizable portion of the US believing we are on the wrong path as a nation.
We need to get back to limited government with full funding for the proper federal responsibilities (eg military, border security) and no more debt on the $31,000,000,000,000 we already owe.
We’re also in a battle for the “soul” of our country. Woke is national social rot.
Grabbing popcorn, waiting to hear from the usual suspects who think America is not exceptional and kneel for our anthem, who know no limits of government or spending other people’s money, who look the other way when the corruption on “their side” is exposed, who fail to protect children, who value characteristics more than character and competence, who favor feelings over truth….