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Mr. Fonte's observations are all unimpeachable. Nor can I fault his essential conclusions. There is indeed a struggle going on, and it is not possible to be perfectly confident that the good guys will win.

In pondering Fonte's presentation, I found myself remembering a passage from William Simon's classic A Time For Truth. He noted that when the forces of the Left start hurling accusations and vilification at such figures as bankers and industrialists, the usual result is not a vigorous self-defense by the latter, but rather a failure of moral courage followed by a campaign of appeasement and propitiation. More often than not, the Left's targets officiate at their own lynchings.

Another thought that struck me was of the pyramidal nature of political organizations, including all the NGOs and special-interest groups Fonte mentioned. The great mass of adherents are probably sincere about their beliefs, and do not grasp their toxic nature. The top operators are clearer-eyed, for their agenda is always the preservation and extension of their power and perquisites. The group's "official" agenda is only a cover for their advancement of themselves.

Finally, we have an ideological shift of continental dimensions, yet one which is so large as to be effectively invisible: the steady elimination of the concept of privacy, especially private property. The private and the public spheres are mutually defining; once there is no more private sphere, there will be nothing which is not subject to thoroughgoing political control. Obviously, as the boundary of the private is pushed back before the encroachments of politics, it will become ever more important to have "friends in high places."

It might not be clear at the outset how all this ties together, but a little reflection will make all the pieces fall into place:

The NGOs and "stakeholder" interest groups always take care to operate from a morally elevated position. That is, such a group always argues its case as a matter of fundamental justice, rather than a matter of relative utility or efficiency. The mere fact of proclaiming their issue to be a moral issue is enough to disarm and put to flight many who have nothing to account for by any objective standard. Their unwillingness to defend themselves leaves many of us wondering what guilts they hide, even when we don't have any sympathy for their attackers' values.
The leaders of the NGOs and interest groups are endlessly willing to accept compromise offers, and will defend such actions to their "outer party" constituents as steps in the right direction that are all that's practically achievable at this time. But. these "compromise offers" never involve any absolution or exculpation of the other party, be it a government, a corporation, a religion, or any other kind of institution. The compromise is all in one direction. Inevitably, it weakens the target institution (especially its moral stance), strengthens the predator group, and improves the position of the predator group's leadership -- "Look how far he's brought us!" This is true even when the concessions flow directly into the pockets of the leader, as for example with Jesse Jackson and Yasser Arafat.
The groups' recourse to the UN and other supranational fora is the most expedient way to neutralize the protections of privacy, especially private property, since that concept is accorded little respect anywhere outside the United States. As with the "compromises" mentioned above, there is never a final settlement possible with these groups concerning what is properly and unchangeably private and therefore beyond the reach of political machination. Each concession only strengthens their conviction that someday they can eliminate the concept of privacy, private property, and private life in its entirety, reducing us all to Winston Smith's state of continuously monitored fear where one's sole private possession is the few cubic centimeters inside one's skull.

The Constitution, that uniquely American idea, will not protect us from the "transnational progressives" unless we protect it. It is not the origin of freedom, but rather a plan conceived by men already convinced of the rightness of liberty, that sprouted from American defiance of invalid authority and was watered by the blood of patriots. In these days, when few are willing to go to the barricades for freedom, justice, and the rule of law, our founding heritage and its documents provide little cover.

To protect our rights will involve regenerating our understanding of them: whence they emerge, their scope and application, and their implications for our treatment of one another when we find ourselves in disagreement. Isabel Paterson believed that this could be done by encouraging students to approach the Constitution as an engineering plan, a blueprint that emerged from the Framers' understanding of the fundamentals of freedom and the stresses and strains a diverse, often fractious people would undergo. Her book The God Of The Machine was an attempt at such a presentation.

There are few certainties in political combat, but there is always this one: For evil to triumph, it is necessary only that good men do nothing.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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