The Flight From Reality: 21. Divide and Conquer

Dr. Carson is Professor of American History at Grove City College, Pennsylvania. Among his earlier writings in THE FREEMAN were his series on The Fateful Turn and The Ameri­can Tradition, both of which are now avail­able as books.

Ideas have consequences, said Richard Weaver. He wrote a book on the subject, mainly to demon­strate that ideas which entered the stream of thought centuries ago have continued to inform our thought and unfold in the direc­tions implicit in them. (Perhaps he also demonstrated in yet anoth­er way, how the sins of the fathers are visited upon the chil­dren to the seventh generation, or beyond.) Ideas have conse­quences in two realms. Ideas which serve as basic assumptions (often unconsciously held and un­examined) have consequences in the realm of ordinary beliefs and thoughts. When applied, ideas also result in acts, which have consequences. This can be stated as a proposition: Ideas lead to acts which have consequences.

This latter formulation facili­tates a most important distinc­tion. Our ideas may become more or less determinative in the area of thought and belief, and thus determine our actions. But ideas do not determine the consequences of acts. The consequences of acts follow, of necessity, from the na­ture of the acts. This is so be­cause the universe is ordered in a certain way; it is so ordered that the consequences appropriate to the act follow from it. Ideas may be inaccurate, invalid, or bear no relation to reality. It is possible to act on the basis of such ideas. But action, any action, brings the one who acts into the orbit of reality. What follows is governed neither by his will, his beliefs, nor his claims about it. A man may, for example, believe that he is on the first floor of a building when he is actually on the twelfth floor. If a fire breaks out and he attempts to jump to safety from the window, he will fall twelve stories, probably to his death, just as surely as if he had known he was on the twelfth floor.

It is a measure of the extent of the general confusion of our age that so obvious a truth would need spelling out. It is generally ac­cepted, at least among intellec­tuals, that ideas have consequences; but it is not usually admitted that acts have consequences which bear no necessary relation to the ideas and beliefs or motives which prompted them. If this were well known and admitted, there prob­ably would have been no occa­sion for undertaking the work in hand; for this work is an account of men under the sway of an illu­sion, who are on a flight from reality.

The flight, however, has been in the realm of ideas. Once the ideas have been applied, a fateful junction with reality has been made; the consequences that have followed have been quite real, and they have been those that follow from such actions. The matter is more complicated than this sounds, however. There is a sense, also, in which the consequences have fol­lowed from the ideas — not from the claims about them, the hopes for them, or the illusions about them, but from the nature of the ideas themselves. Ideas, too, have the consequences appropriate to them when they are applied.

The misunderstanding of re­formist intellectuals extends not only to the nature of the universe but also to the nature of ideas. Ideas must be about reality, else, when applied, they will produce not what is claimed and hoped for them but what must follow from their character. The inner contra­dictions of meliorism have borne their bitter fruit in actuality. Ideas which result in acts have consequences appropriate both to the ideas and to the acts.

Applying the Ideas

This work, thus far, has dealt mainly with the development of reformist ideas and their propaga­tion. That is only part of the story. The ideas have been applied, and this application has had con­sequences. In many ways, the story of the application and conse­quences is more important than an account of the development of ideas. At any rate, intellectual history by itself is incomplete and misleading; it needs to be joined to actuality by an account of what happens when ideas are brought to bear on reality. To do this, the first step is to deal with the ap­plication, and the second is to treat of the consequences.

Meliorism is the gradualist way to utopia. To accomplish utopia, society must be transformed. Me­liorism is the method for gradu­ally transforming society by the use of government power and force. It has been the perennial claim of meliorists that they be­lieved in and were using demo­cratic methods for transforming society.

There were tremendous obsta­cles in the way of translating me­liorist ideas into action and none more formidable than those in­volved in attempting to justify the use of force to transform so­ciety in the name of democracy. The democratic use of force to transform society is such a basic contradiction that it should be rejected prima facie as preposter­ous. It has all the logic of a man’s holding a gun to his head to force himself to do something. If those who make up a society want to change their ways of doing things, what is to keep them from it? They can only be prevented by force from making the changes they desire; and if government has a monopoly of force, the only obstacle to such changes would be government. But, in this case, all that would be needed would be to remove the governmentally en­forced rigidity. There would be no call for the use of force to ac­complish the transformation. For a society to be transformed dem­ocratically by the use of force would have to mean that the mem­bers of a society would be using or sanctioning the use of force on themselves to transform them­selves. This is so unlikely that it will hardly be believed until the matter has been carefully ex­amined.

The Beginnings of Society

The examination should begin by getting clearly in mind what society is and by making a careful distinction between society and government. "Society is produced by our wants," Thomas Paine said, "and government by our wicked­ness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices." To make clear the natural origin and felicitousness of society, Paine imagined what might happen to people newly arrived in some land, under no compulsion but that of their own needs:

In this state of natural liberty, so­ciety will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto, the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same.’

John C. Calhoun made a similar observation a few years later:

In considering this, I assume as an incontestable fact that man is so con­stituted as to be a social being. His inclinations and wants, physical and moral, irresistibly impel him to as­sociate with his kind; and he has, accordingly, never been found, in any age or country, in any state other than the social. In no other, indeed, could he exist, and in no other — were it possible for him to exist — could he attain to a full de­velopment of his moral and intellec­tual faculties or raise himself, in the scale of being, much above the level of brute creation.2

Society, then, is that which re­sults from the needs of men to commune, to exchange, to special­ize, to be nurtured, to learn, to ex­press, to be solaced, to associate in common undertakings, to work, to play, to give, and to receive. A so­ciety is any community of men who share a preponderance of means —language, customs, habits, tradi­tions, procedures, and beliefs —which facilitate such interchange and communion. Certain practices are anathema to society as well as being harmful to individuals, such as fraud, deception, violence, and thievery.

Government is that agency of a community which has a monopoly of the use of force for the legiti­mate purpose of keeping the peace by administering justice and deter­ring or punishing those who would do harm to individuals and disrupt the harmonious relations necessary to society (that is, to the peaceful association of men). As Calhoun said, "It follows, then, that man is so constituted that government is necessary to the existence of so­ciety, and society to his existence and the perfection of his facul­ties."3

Communications Changed

Those who speak of transform­ing society must mean the chang­ing of the means generally em­ployed in a society to facilitate in­terchange and communion. That is, they must mean to change the lan­guage, customs, habits, traditions, procedures, and/or beliefs, for there is nothing else to be changed.

Now these things do change, usually very slowly and over a long period of time. For example, lan­guage does change; new words are added and old words dropped, pro­nunciation subtly altered, and even the modes of expression varied. In the absence of force, it may be assumed that changes in language oc­cur in accord with other changes in the ways of people in a society and in keeping with what is acceptable to the generality of people or those who are looked to for standards.

In like manner, changes may oc­cur in habits, customs, traditions, and procedures. It should be noted, however, that any drastic change in any or all of these will disrupt rather than facilitate social rela­tions, will produce confusion and disorder rather than harmony. For example, if words are suddenly em­ployed in unconventional ways, by decree, as it were, communication will be crippled, and uncertainty will prevail.

If the generality of people want to change their ways of doing things, there is nothing to prevent their doing so. There can be no oc­casion for the use of force (i.e., government) to produce the change on the grounds that it is what the people want. If they wanted it, they would have only to make the change. Actually, such evidence as I am familiar with would indicate that people do not ordinarily seek change, at least not most people. They may want to change others, but in their own affairs they cling tenaciously to the ways with which they are fa­miliar. This is as it should be, for it means that such changes as are made will be limited, be accepted piece by piece, and will not be dis­ruptive of human relations which make for society. Generally, only such changes will be accepted as can be fitted into the familiar pat­tern of one’s life and social rela­tions.

The Injection of Force

Force, aimed at transforming so­ciety, does, in fact, tend to destroy society. It introduces violence into the delicate framework of human relations; it produces resentment and resistance, and, at best, reluc­tant compliance. Men cannot be made to commune with one an­other; they can be forced to go through the motions of doing so. Society flees compulsion; it is formed once again in the inter­stices of the areas of the applica­tion of force. As these are closed up, society moves into the black market.

Examples of these developments are numerous in the contemporary world. Compulsory efforts at racial integration have resulted in the movement of people into the sub­urbs. Compulsory integration of recreational establishments have resulted in burgeoning private clubs. If a language is proscribed, people will speak it surreptitiously. If the sale of alcoholic beverages is prohibited, people will turn to boot­leggers. If men cannot exchange goods on mutually acceptable terms, because the law forbids it, they will do so illegally in black markets.

It is doubtful that society ever has been or can be destroyed, so long as men exist. So deep is the need for meaningful and fruitful relationships, for those that arise willingly out of men’s desire to participate in them, that when so­ciety is driven from the public do­main it will be formed once again in the byways and closets which men seek out and find.

Change by Conquest

It is unlikely that a people would invite such hardship upon them­selves. So unlikely is it that at­tempts to transform society by force prior to the twentieth cen­tury have been made in two ways: by conquest and by revolution.

There have been a number of in­stances in history of conquerors at­tempting some degree of transfor­mation in society. Before the Mod­ern Era these usually had as their object the consolidation of rule and control by the conqueror. An ex­ample of this would be the changes made in England after the Norman Conquest. After William, Duke of Normandy, defeated Harold God­win at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, he imposed his own system of feudalism upon England. He parceled out the lands to his war­riors, making his lieutenants the great tenants-in-chief of the realm. He provided that in cases of subinfeudination the primary alle­giance of all vassals would be to him and only secondarily to their particular overlord. Castles, the impregnable fortresses of the Mid­dle Ages, could only be built when he licensed them. The Church was brought securely under William’s control.

It is doubtful that William "transformed society" in England; rather, he changed the political or­ganization so that the main lines of power led to and came from him. In general, local custom and tradi­tion continued to hold sway, hardly altered by his innovations. He did authorize a census of the land, the results of which were compiled in the Domesday Book, but even this was met with a great deal of com­plaint and grumbling.

A somewhat more thorough ef­fort at social transformation, after conquest, was made in the United States after the Civil War. Crusty Thaddeus Stevens proclaimed, from his pinnacle of power in the Congress, "The future conditions of the conquered power depends on the will of the conqueror." Con­gress proceeded with a right good will to attempt to reconstruct the South. By constitutional amend­ments slavery was abolished, pro­hibitions made against payment for slaves and the payment of the Confederate war debt, and restric­tions placed on state activity. The South was occupied by military forces, part of the population dis­franchised, others enfranchised, and local governmental power fell into the hands of Carpetbaggers, Scalawags, and newly freed Ne­groes. These attempted to use the force of law, assisted and enforced by Federal troops, to transform the South. The South was changed, too, but not in accord with the vision of reconstructionists. The whites re­gained political power in the course of time, effectively disfranchised the Negroes, and new laws and practices were adopted in the light of altered conditions. Society lived on in the interstices of political power and, as force receded, re­gained sway in the lives of men.

Revolution is only a more subtle form of conquest, not an entirely different approach to social trans­formation. It differs from the con­ventional idea of conquest in that those who would reconstruct the society are not foreigners but come from among those whose lives they would change. (Even this distinc­tion has begun to break down in the communist revolution of World War II and after.) Nonetheless, it is a kind of conquest, as all histori­cal instances indicate.

Initially, there may be an at­tempt to make the changes by leg­islatures, though the members of these shortly cease to stand for election, if they ever did. Military forces are employed in subduing the population. In short order, all power gravitates into the hands of a single man — to Oliver Cromwell, to Napoleon Bonaparte, to Nicolai Lenin, to Mao tse Tung, and so forth — and he uses it to impose his will upon the populace. The differences between William of Normandy and Joseph Stalin are the differences made possible by technology and in aims. They were both conquerors.

By Vote of the People

A new phenomenon has occurred in the twentieth century: the con­certed effort to transform society by force with popular consent. The truly amazing feature of this is that it apparently is being done. Elections are still held, devices for divining the popular will em­ployed, and social reconstruction proceeding apace. Certainly, a great deal of ingenuity has gone into bringing about this state of affairs. As I have said, the use of the government to transform so­ciety by popular consent means that the populace must sanction the use of force upon itself to make it change its ways. It means, too, that men must support measures which decrease the control of their own affairs, that they must give their approval to the reduction of their liberties. They must assent to the reduction of the avenues open to their voluntary endeavor. They must sanction the use of force in ever larger areas (for the trans­formation is to be achieved grad­ually) of their lives and the shov­ing of society into such corners as remain.

An example of how efforts at social transformation by force lead to just such consequences can be given from contemporary develop­ments. One of the bonds that linked most Americans together in society has been religion. More specifically, almost all Americans have a Judeo-Christian back­ground, and for most of them it is Christian. This bond was strengthened by the fact that force was removed from religion early in the history of the Re­public, and men were able to live in peace with those of different sects, denominations, and churches while sharing many religious con­cerns and beliefs with one another. Communities frequently were suf­ficiently homogeneous in religious background to observe religious rituals in public affairs without giving offense to members of the community.

Eventually, though, the passion for social transformation was in­troduced into the schools. Attend­ance at schools was compelled, and schools were financed by tax monies. So long as this was done locally, conflicts about religious observance were minimal. But American society could not be transformed to the ideological prescription if local variation were permitted. Eventually, the gov­ernmental unit with power over all America must take over the direction and control of the public schools.

At this level, religious differ­ences are magnified, and are a potential source of perpetual con­flict as well as an obstacle to uni­form social transformation. Re­ligion must be driven from the schools; even voluntary practices cannot survive the uniform appli­cation of force in an area. There is a logic to recent Supreme Court decisions, however illogical they may appear from a strict construc­tion of the Constitution.

Men have not knowingly con­sented to the use of force upon themselves to have their ways of life changed and their liberties circumscribed and reduced. It is conceivable that men, somewhere at some time, may have done or will do so. In some few instances, regarding particulars, they have probably done so in America. But as to an over-all effort at social transformation, which has been going on, Americans have not given their approval to it. Before any such undertaking occurred, the government of America was taken from popular control. More precisely, the control of the United States government has been and is being taken bit by bit from the American people. There has been a rough correlation between the extent of social transformation and the decline of popular control.

The Democratic Way

The greatest irony of all, per­haps, is that this has gone on in the name of democracy, that is, in the name of government by the people. This development has been advanced subtly, and it must be described in detail before it can be understood or should be ac­cepted.

Certain developments in ideas prepared the way for this flight from "democracy." They have al­ready been presented and need only to be summarized here. De­mocracy was changed from a means to an end. As an end, it could serve as the object for doing things that could not be done in a "democratic" manner.

A most subtle intellectual device for taking attention away from the choice to be made has been for reformers to proclaim that whatever they wanted done had become inevitable as a result of trends and developments in his­tory. Obviously, if it is inevitable there is no choice to be made, though one may go through the silly motion of ratifying the "in­evitable" trend at the polls by voting for it. (Of course, there have been "die-hards" who have had the temerity to oppose the "inevitable.") At least, one will have voted; and that is, after all, all that matters! More subtly, men were prepared for the turning over of their affairs to supposed experts and authorities by scien­tism. There was yet another idea — the theory of classes and class struggle — which played a large part in the flight from popular government, but it can be brought up again in connection with the first major step in cutting society apart.

There should be no doubt, how­ever, that majorities frequently have voted for the advocates of melioristic programs. At a casual glance, it looks as if the changes have been made with popular ap­proval. When I say that they have not, I mean that men have not generally known what they were voting for. They have listened to the claims of politicians, not ex­amined the nature of the actions proposed nor the substance of acts passed by legislatures.

Probably, not one person in ten thousand has read any consider­able portion of the major acts passed by Congress in the last fifty years. Of those who have, a much smaller number can have understood much about them. As to the consequences of these acts, no man could, in a lifetime of study, perceive more than the out­lines of them. It has been beyond the abilities of the electorate to give their approval to what has been done. At best, men have voted in favor of those who made cer­tain claims, not for what was act­ually done.

Even so, electoral approval has meant more than this would sug­gest. The claims often reveal a part of the truth about the nature of what is to be done. It is un­likely that men will vote to have their ways of life changed, but they will vote for changing others. They will vote for those who promise to shackle railroad mo­nopolies, break up the Wall Street money monopoly, make business­men follow fair trade practices, curb the economic royalists, and handcuff predatory activity. Northerners will vote to make Southerners toe the line on the racial issue. Negroes will vote to make white men behave more con­genially toward them. Farmers will vote for forcing industrialists to give them their "fair share" of the national wealth. The aged will vote to have the young taxed to support them. Parents can be at­tracted by the notion of having those without children assist in educating theirs. There is some­thing irresistibly attractive to most people about others being penalized and oneself benefited.

Class Legislation

Divide and Conquer — that has been the method employed to bring about social transformation. Di­vide the population into classes: into capitalist and laborer, into farmer and industrialist, into white collar and blue collar, into urban and rural, into Negro and white, into old and young, into Protestant and Catholic. Sow seeds of discord throughout so­ciety. Tell the laborer he is being exploited by the capitalist. Tell the westerner he is being taken advantage of by the easterner. Tell the farmer he is the backbone of the nation but is having the marrow sucked out of the bone by miserly advocates of the gold standard. Tell Negroes they are being exploited by landlords turned slumlords.

Promise to change all this by forthcoming legislation: by the free coinage of silver, by anti­trust acts, by creating a super banking system, by providing low interest long-term loans, by reg­ulating the stock exchange, and so on. When the old demons — Wall Street, capitalists, millionaires —have been controlled or subdued, forge the classes into electoral majorities by making war on ab­stractions, such as depressions and poverty. Such has been the history of gaining the semblance of pop­ular approval for the effort at political transformation of society in recent decades.

The conquest has been much more subtle. There are many facets to it; for all those actions taken in the supposed interest of some group or class have had conse­quences. Some of these conse­quences will be explored at other points in the story. Here, how­ever, the conquest will be examined only for its impact upon men as individuals and upon society, and the import of these developments upon popular government.

Individualism Denied

First, to the extent that a man has become class conscious, to the extent that he assumes the role that is imputed to him, to that same extent he has ceased to be a whole man. A man may be a worker, any sort of worker, and also be in favor of giving an hon­est day’s work. He cannot, how­ever, belong to the "laboring class" and insist upon giving a quid pro quo for his wages. As a "laborer," he must realize that management is out to do him in, overwork him, replace him, cheat him, in a word, exploit him. He must, therefore, insist upon doing as little as pos­sible, resist additional duties, op­pose the introduction of machin­ery, cling tenaciously to every prerogative and position ever cre­ated, though there may no longer be any purpose for it. If he be­longs to the managerial class, he must see himself in opposition to the "laborers," though he may mute this because it may be ad­vantageous to pose as the friend of labor. A man may be a Negro and oppose switchblade knives, but he cannot be a "Negro," a member of that newly arrived class, and openly oppose switchblade knives, because these are supposed to be symbolically associated with Ne­groes by white men.

Numerous other examples could be given, but perhaps it is un­necessary. Those who think in terms of class in the contempo­rary class struggle framework cannot act as whole men. Theirs is not the full-throated voice of man; it is a pipsqueak because part of him is cut off from the rest of him. A man cannot vote the interests of "labor" and vote his whole interests as a man. A man may be not only a worker in a factory but also a husband, a father, a son, a deacon in his church, a Mason, a golfer, a prop­erty owner, a debtor, a creditor, a consumer, a seller, a hunter, an army veteran, plus all those tan­gibles and intangibles which make him the unique individual that he is. His interests are too much those of all other men to be ex­pressed by any single facet of them called "labor." No majority of votes, however large, made up of those who have supposedly voted their class interests can in­dicate popular approval. It can only mean that a large number of people have voted some small portion of themselves, misled into thinking that they were voting for that which was in their in­terest.

Dissecting Society

The impact upon society is equally devastating. Those who have divided the American people into classes have not only set each man who accepts this against him­self but also set men against men and groups against groups. They have broken down the lines of communication which link men to­gether in society. Political force that was supposed to transform society has, instead, cut society apart. The politicalizing of life tends to make all groups into pres­sure groups, absorb the energy that is put into them into seeking favors from government. Those who seek meaningful social life must do so increasingly outside the ambit of organizations.

Yet society is transformed; it is rendered impotent. That is, those who would defend the lan­guage, customs, traditions pro­cedures, and beliefs which make society possible, who would speak in the name of virtue and moral­ity, are drowned out in the ca­cophony of voices defending one special interest or another. The conquest is of men and society. Of the conquerors, it may be said here that they have great power for their reward. But this was ever the object of conquerors!

Of course, there were other ob­stacles in the way of those who would use the power of govern­ment to transform society. The United States Constitution was probably the most important one. It was so drawn, according to James Madison, as to make ex­ceedingly difficult the concert of special interests which might crowd out the general welfare. We will examine next the flight from the Constitution which made it possible to divide and conquer the American people.

The next article in this series will pertain to "The Flight from the Constitution," Part I.