The Democratic Socialists of America made a stir recently with their proposal to mutilate the constitutional system that the United States have known for many generations now. In their own words:

‘For the working class to govern, we need a new political system. . . . Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress. . . . Expand the House of Representatives, . . . and abolish the Senate’ (dsausa.org).

At the heart of this political butchery is transforming the House of Representatives into the fountainhead of power for the federal government and the United States as a whole. For those with dreamy visions of democracy, this will be not simply acceptable but like receiving a precious gift. For those who know a little bit of history, it will be not simply a childish proposal but the reoccurrence of a nightmare.

For England has already experimented with the radical simplification of a complex constitution by cutting away an upper chamber and an independent executive and giving all power into the hands of a lower elected chamber supposedly representing ‘The People’. This happened during the English Civil War in the 17th century. Benjamin Disraeli, one of the leading figures of the Conservative Party in England in the middle of the 19th century, reveals the gory results of that experiment:

‘We still remember in this country the tender and happy consequences of being governed by “the People.” We have not forgotten that “the People” established Courts more infamous than the Star Chamber in every county of England, with power of fining, sequestrating, imprisoning, and corporally punishing all who opposed or even murmured against their decrees; that under the plea of malignancy “the People” avenged their private hatreds, and seized for their private gain and gratification any estates or property to which they took a fancy; . . . that “the People” enlarged the laws of high-treason so that they comprehended verbal offences and even intentions; that “the People” voted trial by Jury a breach of Parliamentary privilege; . . . that “the People” sequestrated nearly one-half of the goods and chattels of the nation, and at least one-half of its rents and revenues; that in seven years “the People” raised the taxation of the country from £800,000 per annum to £7,000,000 per annum . . .’ (‘Vindication of the English Constitution’, Benjamin Disraeli, Whigs and Whiggism, Political Writings, 1833-1853, 2nd edn., William Hutcheon, edr., Regnery, Washington, DC, 2006, pgs. 131-2).

That, folks, is only a part of the list provided by Mr Disraeli. We may be certain that similar actions would result if the DSA implemented their plans for the federal government. For such radical reorderings of political institutions are all of the same infernal spirit of rebellion against tradition and rightly instituted authority. St Valeriu Gafencu, one of the martyrs of the Orthodox Church under the communists in Romania (reposed in 1952), captured the essence of that spirit in his description of Marxism:

‘It is a false Christianity, the counterfeit of Christianity, the materialization of the spirit, the anthropomorphization of God, the rollover of all values, the imprisonment of the world, philosophically and politically. Marxism is a prison. In a Marxist spirit, all values, all reasons, all things, and all actions become prisons for people. Marx refused any transcendence’ (White Lilies: Letters & Poems from Prison, Octavian Gabor, transl., Saint Tikhon’s Monastery Press, Honesdale, Pennsylvania, 2022, p. 102).

St Valeriu continues:

‘Marx denies Christ, but he also denies Moses and any founder of a religion. Marx denies the priority of the spirit over matter. He justifies hatred against religion by the historical ineffectiveness of faith in solving the social problems of the oppressed and exploited people. Thus, he declares that faith is an opium for people, he replaces love with hatred and freedom with the tyranny and the dictatorship of the proletariat’ (Ibid., p. 104).

The English Civil War and its Parliamentary primacy were only a forerunner of Marxism’s dictatorship of the proletariat. In the States we now have direct political descendants of Marx himself in the members of the DSA. And do we think we will escape the orgy of theft, murder, and other outrages that England, France, Russia, China, Cambodia, and other countries have endured from the spirit of Marxism? We would be foolish to think so.

One of our best defenses, then, apart from a more fervent Christian faith, is to protect and enhance the number of political centers of power across the US: the 50 States, along with the hundreds and thousands of counties, parishes, cities, towns, villages, boards, councils, sheriffs, marshals, etc., within them. Distributing political power is a wonderful safeguard against those like the DSA who wish to concentrate all power in one organ of the government for the easier implementation of their designs.

This is one of the few cases where diversity really is our strength.