Obama as the Devil’s Advocate

“What manner of men had lived in those days…who had so eagerly surrendered their sovereignty for a lie and a delusion?  Why had they been so anxious to believe that the government could solve problems for them which had been pridefully solved, many times over, by their fathers?  Had their characters become so weak and debased, so craven and emasculated, that offers of government dole had become more important than their liberty and their humanity?  Had they not know that power delegated to the government becomes the club of tyrants?  They must have known.  They  had their own history to remember, and the history of five thousand years.  Yet, they had willingly and knowingly, with all this knowledge, declared themselves unfit to manage their own affairs and had placed their lives, which belonged to God only, in the hands of sinister men who had long plotted to enslave them, by wars, by “directives,” by “emergencies.”  In the name of the American people, the American people had been made captive.” 

Taylor Caldwell, The Devil’s Advocate

Back in my mispent youth I read quite a bit more fiction than I do currently.  (Lack of time and much greater access to more non-fiction works are probably the two chief factors in my changed reading habits.)  I read several of the novels of Taylor Caldwell.  She was a competent novelist, I can’t praise her novel about Cicero, Pillar of Iron, too highly, and she wrote from a distinct point of view.  Her point of view was that freedom was a rare commodity in human history and that it perished quickly.  I could call her a conservative, but that would be a bit weak in describing her.  She wrote pieces for the John Birch Society for a time, but she probably regarded them as too timid in standing up for the liberty she treasured above all.  She shared with them a conspiratorial view of the world, and her novels usually depict sinister behind the scenes forces plotting the end of freedom.  However, even paranoids can have real people out to get them, and Caldwell was usually correct in her novels in her description of the desire of so many to escape from the need to make decisions on their own, and to leave everything up to a supposedly benevolent ruler, even though all of human history argues against the reality of such a pleasing fantasy.

In her 1952 novel, The Devil’s Advocate, Caldwell envisions an America where freedom is only a faint memory.  America has long been ruled by a leftist military dictatorship.  The Republican party has been outlawed and even mentioning the Old Constitution is a criminal offense.  The protagonist of the novel is Andrew Durant, an official of the leftist government, but also a secret lover of the Old Constitution.  He and other patriots within the government hit upon the plan of increasing repression until they trigger a revolution to reestablish American freedom.  The rebellion succeeds and Durant is killed in it, his fate in history is to be damned as an official of the toppled regime, his role in the reestablishment of liberty dying with him.

Now let us consider the impossible.  Let us think that Barack Obama is cast in the same mold.  Secretly repulsed by the way in which the American people have been ceding liberty for security for generations he embarks upon a plan to become president and to implement a regime so oppressive that it will trigger a reaction that will safeguard traditional American freedom for generations to come.  He is dismayed by how long the process is taking, and therefore he continually ups the ante:

Well, if sending a trillion dollars down a rat hole won’t do it, surely ObamaCare will do it.  Obamacare didn’t so it is time to attack religious liberty through the HHS Mandate.  Even that wasn’t enough so time to let good men die in Benghazi and lie about it.  Still not enough?  Time to move against guns.  Still no reaction?  Roll out the IRS.

Impossible that this is the secret motivation of Obama?  No doubt.  But if his administration comes to a bad end, and his example causes a rebirth to the freedom bestowed upon us by God through the Founding Fathers, it would be the greatest irony of all for Obama to secretly think, “Success at last!  Thank God!”

“The primary purpose of the IRS is not to collect taxes but to force federal controls upon the people, to bribe the obedient and destroy the dissidents, [and] to elicit favors and impoverish independence”.

Taylor Caldwell