Soft Tyranny

Soft tyranny is where the social conditions of a specific community hamper any prospect of hope among its members. When this hope is taken away, liberty goes with it. During the 1930s, the Weimar Republic of Germany experienced a soft tyranny, as did the French Third Republic in 1940. All hope for a future of prosperity died in these two situations. Fascism filled the holes of lost hope and mistrust.

In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville came up with the idea of soft tyranny during his texts titled Democracy in America. His goal was to explain why the representative democracy in America is succeeding and is failing everywhere else. He speculates in his work about the future of the philosophies of America and how they will be threatened.

He mentioned terms such as "soft tyranny," "soft despotism" and "tyranny of the majority" to describe how these events would happen. Basically, through gradual, small changes in policy, the United States would be fundamentally transformed into a state controlled completely by the government.

When a soft tyranny occurs, there is usually a majority in the governmental houses. The system of checks and balances doesn't matter because they generally all agree on the same principles. This allows these representatives and policymakers to impose whatever will they wish upon the population.

On January 20th, 2009, the United States of America ushered in a new age of tyranny and oppression. This is a prime example of a tyrannical majority rule where there's a democratic majority in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. In addition to this, the executive branch is smeared with far-left ideologists.

With the sign of the pen, many policies that have existed and worked for years to protect the United States against itself and its enemies have been overthrown. Relativism is rejected and the difference between right and wrong, bad and good, just and unjust are obfuscated.

Soft tyranny requires us to sit by and watch as our culture, principles and values crumble to pieces. Government power is now more important than human rights. We rely on global action rather than act, even if it means the lives of many will perish.

Tax revolts and other insurrections are often because of the influence of a soft tyranny. We are seeing it even now in the streets with the various "tea parties" which are a stand against the government for the fiscal irresponsibility it has brought in the recent months. Fascist and marxist tactics are consistently the center of a soft tyranny. Whether it be price controls or other regulations which cripple a free market society, we gradually stray farther and farther away from what our country was built upon.

Individuals that believe that socialism is the most efficient way of running an economy have been clouded by the ideals of their teachers. While capitalism rewards success, socialism rewards failure. These individuals will stop at nothing to use any crisis such as the housing bubble to impose their policy upon the people.

 

From supreme court decisions that break the constraints of the constitution such as Roe v. Wade, to the reversal of policies that defend out country against terror and oppression, we have given up small liberties over time in the same manner that happens in a society touched by soft tyranny.