Today we make note it is mostly Democrats who are keen on authoritarianism, but they are not the sole progenitors of authoritarianism! Authoritarianism is basically a monopoly of power and control by a snall hierarchical cadre, often but not always led by a dictator or monarch, without any practical accountability to anyone.
Democrats are not the problem, at times past especially, and probably in the future, Republicans also bend toward this trait. The Republican leadership typically offers reactionary resistance to most anything that addresses poverty or racism or any real social injustice. This belies their claims to be all about freedom and prosperity, because if you deny justice and equality to some, even if just through neglect, you are not truly for freedom and prosperity. Just as the left wears justice and equality as a banner to repaint their authoritarianism, so the right tend to wave the banner of freedom and prosperity, neither side’s leaders actually live up to these branding claims.
Why then do Republicans in primaries and general elections often promote authoritarians like Mitt Romney and the Bushes? Why did the GOP become essentially a sort of fan club for one man, Donald Trump, whose own behavior and some of his views also tend to go against a true freedom and prosperity agenda? (Being for or against Trump isn’t the issue, the issue is that many simply follow Trump and don’t really have any other reason to support Republicans.)
Why do Democratic voters let people control their party who genuinely reject the fundamentals of civil rights whenever it is convenient and/or hurts their opponents? Why do Democratic voters tend to support an abundance of laws and regulations that fail to deliver on their promised benefit while simply making life harder for more people?
The basic question is, why, after one scratches the surface and finds a politician and/or a policy that tends toward authoritarianism do voters in both parties vote for these people and policies? More basically, why do voters vote for authoritarianism?
The average person and the mass mind follow basic animal instinct, they judge every book by its cover and they weigh most every choice on shorter term personal gain of the most basic of needs and wants. The average person and the mass mind live in a shallow way, they don’t dig too deep or look too high, they cannot see very far in the future or very far into the past. The entire premise of marketing is to understand and influence the instinctive aninal brain and to depend on a population not being trained to dig deeper, to know history, or to use logic and critical thinking to ascertain long-term future probabilities.
If you were to explore, learn, understand, and apply the deeper and more sublime ideals and principles of freedom, the balance of virtue, liberty and independence and the core ideals, you would find that you are not very free, that most all your political options tend to oppose these freedom ideals and principles to some degree, and that you can be more free. But most people don’t think in terms of ideals and principles and they don’t consciously or with any discipline evaluate anything on the basis of ideals and principles.
The word “indoctrination” is usually a negative term for people. When schools stop teaching essentials and skills and seek only to indoctrinate children into following a radical leftwing authoritarian ideology, even though it is not presented openly for what it is, we think of indoctrination as something very bad. But indoctrination is just the internalization of doctrine and if the doctrine is good and the indoctrination process is open, transparent, and engaged in freely, it’s just a way to internalize a compass that gives direction to our decisions and behaviors and thus increases our chances for success and happiness.
The insidious and deliberate use of socializing agents of influence and control to subconsciously inculcate us with what are bad doctrines rooted in authoritarianism is the kind of indoctrination we need to guard our hearts and minds against. The use of this form of indoctrination has never been worse or more prevalent in human civilization. On the other hand, we have never had more information and insight into how socialization and acculturation work than we do now, so we can protect ourselves from this like never before.
Most people are not self-indoctrinated to understand freedom ideals and principles, therefore they can be made to support people and policies that undermine their own freedom, do them injustice, create massive inequalities, and reduce prosperity for most people. It is true that justice, equality, and prosperity matter and tend to promote success and happiness, but the foundation of these things is freedom.
To be clear, our concept of freedom is not to be confused with the brand of freedom used to help elect Republicans. Often this is itself rather shallow and limited and doesn’t include freedom from abuse, injustice, and exploitation.
Freedom exists when you are mostly governed by a combination of your own individual choices and the common standards and norms of your own free associations with other people. Justice happens when all laws and policies by ALL institutions equally and consistently protect your freedom and both respect and nurture your human dignity, human rights, and human flourishing without bias or favor, privilege or prejudice. Whatever other needs and wants are promised by any politician or policy, if they tend to shift the governance of your life towards coercive systems like the system set up by monopoly corporations or the state, then they will tend to be a drag on your life, not a benefit.
But most people cannot fathom this because the causal relationship isn’t direct and immediate, it is indirect and more long-term in its effects. An authoritarian policy can bring short-term benefits to some people, usually the targeted voter base of the party proposing such policies, but the longer term effect is that those very same people experience a decrease in freedom and an increase in cost that doesn’t justify the benefits of the policy.
Welfare as constructed and provided has gutted the family unit and rendered whole cities third-world-like nightmares riven with corruption and violence. Few will ever understand that voting for the party that offered these “benefits” is the reason they were raised by a single parent, went to crappy schools, have brutal police who see them as animals, can’t find a good paying job, and can’t find a faithful mate who will love them for life. Most of these people would never even read these words because The Freedomist itself isn’t endorsed by their quisling leaders who sell their communities to the Party for a pittance and then peddle bogeyman fears and utopian promises as a hallucinogenic.
People vote for authoritarianism because they cannot or will not indoctrinate themselves with a freedom ideology that they can internalize to make better choices, including their own daily life and who and what they vote for. Few people will ever agree to and embrace the truth that ideals and principles should guide our choices, including how we vote, or that every choice should basically be subjected to the litmus test of those ideals and principles.
A quote wrongly attributed by H TrevorRoper to Joseph Goebells, Nazi Propaganda Minister, sums up the methodology of all authoritarians:
There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be “the man in the street.” Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.
The only counter to this is to have and hold a deeper freedom ideology based on sound logic and reason and that promotes success and happiness both broadly and for each individual. Yielding to anything, whether force or empty promises to meet shallow wants and needs should never be an option. But history shows that such intellectual and moral courage and discipline is always the exception for individuals and almost never the rule for the masses.
Obtaining and internalizing a freedom ideology isn’t just a good way to make better voting choices, it is a secret formula for personal success and happiness that, if you use it consistently, will tend to make you more free and more prosperous and will tend to protect you from injustice and unequal treatment based on bias, prejudice, and bigotry. If you want justice, you must start with freedom, but to protect freedom, you must uphold and advance justice.
Until we see a new day emerge where most voters follow ideals and principles before promises and shallow parochial interests, we will always see authoritarianism gain some support from most voters.
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