Woodrow Wilson started expanding the government in earnest, FDR took over where he left off, and LBJ made the hog trough even bigger, all in the name of a more enlightened, "fair and just" society. Every one of them had a convenient crisis to exploit that instilled fear and uncertainty in the electorate, and they were able to convince voters that they and their programs were the solution.
But even then it was nothing new. The formulation of leftist ideology has always been the bailiwick of "intellectuals" who actually contribute little or nothing to society and do little or nothing but sit around gazing at their navels and dreaming up reasons why they're not glorified and praised and why they should be. It always has been and always will be about power and control. At the core of every incarnation of far left thought lies the tenet that society should be governed by authoritarian administrative states headed by councils or bureaus of "enlightened experts."
Three guesses as to who those "enlightened experts" should rightfully be.
The fact that this didn't happen in the west has been eating away at their narcissistic little hearts for two centuries. Since the Wilson administration, and especially after WWII, they have infiltrated our society with the intention of molding public thought and the dissemination of information, and they have been quite successful. Once a bloated administrative bureaucracy was in place, it was child's play for them to co-opt it to their purposes.
The opinion of leftist "intellectuals" has always been that the people are too stupid and ignorant to know what's in their bests interests and to govern themselves. Only they can do that. After a century of their manipulating modern society via our education systems, media, and entertainment institutions, a century in which the human nature the Founders feared, anticipated, and guarded against, incrementally ran its course, and we have arrived at a time and place where they are basically correct.
Being a good person--a good Christian, if you will--is not inherent in a basic human nature that is still programmed at a tribal level where all "other" is an enemy to be violently reacted to and does not have the same rights as "we" or "us." It requires effort. The same goes for maintaining liberty in a constitutional republic; it doesn't just occur. It requires work and constant vigilance on the part of the people, not the government.
We stopped being involved citizens and started being self-absorbed consumers; we stopped questioning things for ourselves and, at best, abdicated that responsibility to talking-head pundits who served their own agendas and fed us the "information" they wanted us to hear; we tuned out of public discourse in favor of sitting in echo-chambers where the only voices and opinions we heard were those that fed our own confirmation bias and instilled in us the firm belief that we were Right. And worst of all, we became more interested in being entertained than being informed
Yep, we.
Me, you, and all those other guys and gals who just want to live our lives and be left alone. The Founders knew that this was not a realistic possibility, that there would always be those who would attempt to subvert the republic to their own ends and that basic human nature had to be constantly guarded against. We didn't do that. They took advantage of that fact. They showed up at town council meetings and we didn't; they showed up at the school board meetings and we didn't; they formed groups and coalitions and lobbied congress and we didn't, not really. That too was abdicated to organizations that supposedly represented our interests but in reality only represented their own.
And here we are.
They will never leave us alone. Not going to happen.
A repblic if you can keep it.
