Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 5, 2012

Vladimir Lenin, the founding dictator of theSoviet Union, digested politics into two simple propositions. The first was that the fundamental political question is who does what to whom. The second was that when the ?right? people obtain political power, they are entitled to exercise it without limit or legal restraint.

Lenin?s doctrines led to the death of tens of millions of people in theSoviet Unionand elsewhere. Despite that fact ? or perhaps because of it ? he remains the most significant political figure of the modern age. An illustration of his influence is offered by the sections of the 2012 Democratic Party National Platform dealing with civil liberties.

As Mother Jones magazine points out, ?the Democratic Party has given up on its 2008 promises to roll back the national security state? now that Barack Obama presides over the vast machinery of detention, regimentation, surveillance, torture, and summary execution.

The two major parties constitute the ?who? and ?whom? in Lenin?s formula. Now that the Democrats are the ?who? rather than the ?whom,? they have embraced the ?what? in this equation ? meaning the exercise of dictatorial presidential power.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.