American Minute with Bill Federer: Calvin Coolidge: “Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted it breaks down representative government … having authority over everybody and being responsible to nobody”

President Calvin Coolidge warned in a speech at the College of William and Mary, MAY 15, 1926:

“But there is another … recent development … the greatly disproportionate influence of organized minorities …

Artificial propaganda, paid agitators, selfish interests, all impinge upon members of legislative bodies to force them to represent special elements rather than the great body of their constituency.

Coolidge continued:

“When they are successful, minority rule is established …

The result is an extravagance on the part of the Government which is ruinous to the people and a multiplicity of regulations and restrictions for the conduct of all kinds of necessary business, which becomes little less than oppressive …”

Coolidge continued, exposing the autocratic deep-state bureaucracy:

“No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline.

Of all forms of government, those administered by bureaus are about the least satisfactory to an enlightened and progressive people.

Being irresponsible they become autocratic …

… Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted it breaks down representative government and overwhelms democracy.

It … sets up the pretense of having authority over everybody and being responsible to nobody …”

Coolidge added:

“We must also recognize that the national administration is not and cannot be adjusted to the needs of local government …

The states should not be induced by coercion or by favor to surrender the management of their own affairs.

The Federal Government ought to resist the tendency to be loaded up with duties which the states should perform.

It does not follow that because something ought to be done the National Government ought to do it.”

An example of what Coolidge described could be the Department of Education.

Since its establishment in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, student’s proficiency in math and critical reading have declined, with public education shifting from an academic achievement model to that of behavior modification.

The warnings of Coolidge are reflected in today’s calls to as “drain the swamp.”

He stated:

“I want to see the policy adopted … that instead of an extension on the part of the Federal Government there can be a contraction.”

Calvin Coolidge stated at the unveiling of Equestrian Statue of Bishop Francis Asbury, October 15, 1924, Washington, DC:

“There are only two main theories of government in the world.

One rests on righteousness, the other rests on force.

One appeals to reason, the other appeals to the sword.

One is exemplified in a republic, the other is represented by a despotism.”

Collins English Dictionary defines “despotism”:

“the rule of a despot; arbitrary, absolute, or tyrannical government.”

SparkNotes on Locke’s Second Treatise states:

“Despotical power is absolute, arbitrary power of one person to take the life and property of another against their will.”

John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government (Ch. 14-15) stated in a republic there should be:

“No absolute or arbitrary power.”

States such as Kentucky and Wyoming specifically state in their Constitutions:

“Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic.”

President Coolidge continued:

“The history of government on this earth has been almost entirely a history of the rule of force held in the hands of a few.

Under our Constitution, America committed itself to … the power in the hands of the people …

… Our government rests upon religion.

It is from that source that we derive our reverence for truth and justice, for equality and liberty, and for the rights of mankind.

Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government.”

Coolidge’s reference to the history of “rule of force held in the hands of a few” was demonstrated in Europe.

After Napoleon’s lightning fast conquering of Europe, Prussian King Frederick William III wanted to strengthen his German state.

This led him to embrace the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Hegel was a professor at the University of Berlin.

He taught:

“The state is god walking on earth …

We must worship the state …

The state … recognizes no authority but its own … acknowledges no abstract rules of good and bad …

All the worth which the human being possesses … he possesses only through the state.”

Hegel explained:

“The state is … the ultimate end which has the highest right against the individual, whose highest duty is to be a member of the state …

The nation state … is therefore the absolute power on earth. A single person, it hardly needs saying, is something subordinate.”

Under Hegel’s system, the “general will” is determine by the ruler. In Philosophy of History (Jacob Loewenberg, ed., Hegel: Selections, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1929, p. 398), he wrote:

“… It is not the isolated will of individuals that prevails;

individual pretensions are relinquished, and the general will is the essential bond of political union …

… The origin of a state involves imperious lordship on the one hand, instinctive submission on the other.

Obedience — lordly power, and the fear inspired by a ruler.”

Students at the University of Berlin, who admired Hegel formed the Young Hegelians.

A member of the Young Hegelians was Karl Marx.

Kelly O’Connell wrote in “Pagan Government Theory Insures Tyranny Returns to the West” (Canada Free Press, June 18, 2012):

“… but Marx did get his idea of ‘government as god’ from Hegel.”

Marxist socialism influenced Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedung, and other socialist dictators.

Harry S Truman stated, March 6, 1946:

“Dictatorship … is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing … the state is the only thing that counts, and that men, women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state.”

Hegel’s process of using division and disruption to bring change was called “Hegelian Dialectics.”

It can be described as a triangle:

Hegel’s dialectic struggle influenced Darwin in his development of the theory of evolution and its survival of the fittest.

Marx translated Hegelian Dialectics into a political application, where people are content with the status quo (thesis), there must be created a crisis that is real bad (antithesis), so that people will surrender their freedoms for a solution that is only half as bad (synthesis).

Each synthesis then becomes the new thesis, and the process is repeated until all power is voluntarily relinquished by the people to the dictator who promises big government solutions.

To create an antithesis, there needs to be division in society.

In Communism-A History (Random House, 2001) Richard Pipes described:

“As Fidel Castro, the leader of Communist Cuba, would explain … ‘The revolution needs the enemy … The revolution needs for its development its antithesis’ … And if enemies were lacking, they had to be fabricated.”

To create division, citizens of a country must stop thinking of themselves as citizens.

Instead, they must be made to identify with subgroups, which can then be pitted against each other.

Subgroups can social, ethnic, racial, sexual, economic or religious.

David Horowitz explained:

“An SDS radical once wrote, ‘The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.’

In other words … civil rights or women’s rights – is never the real cause; women, blacks … are only instruments in the larger cause, which is power.

Battles over rights and other issues, according to Alinsky, should never be seen as more than occasions to advance the real agenda, which is the accumulation of power.”

Successive, manufactured incidents of violence between subgroups destabilizes the country.

When enough people fear for their lives, they will panic and surrender their freedoms to a big government politician promising to restore order.

Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises, in his 1947 book, Planned Chaos, described innocent youth who naively allow themselves to be organized as “useful innocents … confused and misguided sympathizers.”

They are manipulated to support minor divisive issues when the real issue is the revolution.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned June 30, 1975:

“I … call upon America to be more careful with its trust … Prevent those … falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road … They are trying to weaken you.”

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels explained (Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 318):

“It goes without saying that these conspirators by no means confine themselves to organizing the revolutionary proletariat.

Their business consists in … spurring it in to artificial crises …

For them the only condition required for the revolution is a sufficient organization of their own conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution.”

Hegel was against citizens ruling themselves.

He wanted power to be in the hands of one person.

He wrote in Philosophy of Law (Section 279):

“When it is contrasted with the sovereignty of the monarch, the phrase ‘sovereignty of the people’ turns out to be merely one of those confused notions which arise from the wild idea of the ‘people.’

Without its monarch … the people are just a formless multitude.”

Similar to today’s “fake news” and “social media censorship,” Hegel wrote in Philosophy of Law (Jacob Loewenberg, ed., Hegel: Selections, NY: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1929, pp. 457, 461-62):

“The many … whom one chooses to call the people, are indeed a collection, but only as a multitude, a formless mass, whose movement and action would be elemental, irrational, savage, and terrible …

Public opinion deserves … to be esteemed as much as to be despised …

The definition of the freedom of the press as freedom to say and write what one pleases … such a view belongs to the uneducated crudity and superficiality of naive thinking.”

Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda for the National Socialist Workers Party, stated:

“It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion …

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”

Hegel’s dialectic struggle influenced Adolph Hitler, who wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle).

Hegel’s theory influenced Saul Alinsky, who taught how to identify tension “fault lines” in a society, fan real or perceived injustices into emotional flame till they reach the boiling point.

Once anarchy breaks out, everyone is so desperate to have order restored that they “knee-jerk reaction” relinquish their rights to the state.

Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals (1971):

“The organizer … must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression.

He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act …

An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent; provide a channel into which the people can angrily pour their frustrations.”

Crises can either be created or coincidental, but the consequence is consistently concentration of control.

Some crises include:

Crises can be economic.

Friedrich Engels recommended creating financial crises to put bankrupt small businesses (London: W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 1976; Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844):

“Every new crisis must be more serious and more universal than the last. Every fresh slump must ruin more small capitalists and increase the workers who live only by their labor.

This will increase the number of the unemployed and this is the main problem that worries economists.

In the end commercial crises will lead to a social revolution far beyond the comprehension of the economists with their scholastic wisdom.”

Crises can be healthcare.

Ronald Reagan recorded in 1961 an LP titled “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine” for the American Medical Association’s Operation Coffeecup Campaign:

“Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism.

But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program … “

Reagan continued:

“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project …

Madison in 1788 … said … ‘There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations’ …

We want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms … We do not want socialized medicine …

If you don’t, this program I promise you will pass … and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known … until, one day … we will awake to find that we have socialism.

And … you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

Crises can be ideological — a forgetting of America’s founding principles.

Calvin Coolidge gave insight into America’s success at maintaining order in his address at the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, July 5, 1926:

“The principles … which went into the Declaration of Independence … are found in … the sermons … of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live.

They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image …

… Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government …

In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, WHOLE CONGREGATIONS WITH THEIR PASTORS MIGRATED TO THE COLONIES …”

Coolidge concluded:

“The Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document …

Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are … ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world.

Unless the faith of the American in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish.

We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”

President Calvin Coolidge stated on September 21, 1924, in an address to the Holy Name Society in Washington, D.C.:

“Equality is recognized … from belief in the brotherhood of man through the fatherhood of God …

It seems perfectly plain that the right to equality has for its foundation reverence for God.

If we could imagine that swept away our American government could not long survive.”