The Democratic Total State

The late Andrew Breitbart is credited with the statement that “politics is downstream of culture.” Since Breitbart made that memorable assertion, Red State, Daily Caller and other Republican websites have expressed the same view. By now this remark has risen to the status of an axiom. Too bad it’s simply wrong as a description of contemporary Western societies! Clearly, those repeating Breitbart’s statement have not read my work on the managerial state and its changing ideological justifications. Having spent decades trying to demonstrate the power of modern democratic states over moral attitudes and social practices, I’ve noticed that no one of journalistic importance has considered my arguments.

Let me begin by noting that modern public administration and its judicial and educational arms should not be equated with any government at any time. A specifically modern Western state has behind it vast coercive power and the capacity to socialize its subject-citizens. Moreover, since elections are scheduled at regular intervals and since rotation is supposed to take place between two parties or party blocs, citizens assume that government operates “democratically.” Never mind that entrenched parties and politicians by their presence and activities serve to strengthen the status quo or that representation becomes more distant and vaguer as both population and bureaucratic centralization continue to grow. Despite occasional complaining, most of the population take on face value what is presented as “democratic” representation. Being free to manage their lives matters less to them than other things, such as not giving actionable offense in the workplace, making sure that government provides social services and not having to fork over “too much” to other state clients. discrimination against blacks, women, and other protected groups, overseeing an expansion of the suffrage for minorities, and opening up the doors to massive immigration. Most Republican politicians and publicists not only have no trouble with such measures but also wish to take credit for them. A now released film by Republican filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, which has attracted throngs of the GOP faithful, attack the Democrats for being the party of racists and sexists. Among the charges against the Democrats in D’Souza’s film is that they dragged their feet on the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

Republicans have no desire to criticize certain measures that have been decisive for cultural change. They have enough trouble wooing blacks, Hispanics, and unmarried (read, feminized) women into their predominantly WASP big tent. Why should they compound their electoral difficulties by pointing to the obvious? My point is not to force them to do what they’re unwilling to do, something I couldn’t achieve in any case given my limited resources. But I’d be happy if accredited conservatives stopped babbling about how the state is a tributary of culture. What they say on this subject is no longer credible.

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