An Eerie Warning from Hans Morgenthau

From American Thinker.com (Sept. 15, 2021):

Hans J. Morgenthau was one of the leading scholars of international relationships during the mid-20^th century. He served as a consultant to governments and an advisor to presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, before resigning due to disagreements over LBJ’s Vietnam policy.

Among his many books was Politics Among Nations (1948), at one time the “bible” of international relations scholars. In 1970, a volume collecting some of his articles and essays written in the 1960s was published under the title Truth and Power. Essays of a Decade 1960-1970. Included in that volume are essays that have particular relevance to U.S. politics in the early 2020s.

Politics in America today includes a dangerous collusion between scientists, big-tech/social media oligarchs, and the federal government that promote their version of the “truth” and try to stifle and in some cases punish dissenting voices. This dangerous conglomeration of social and political power is cheered on and abetted by the mainstream media. Whether the issue is climate change, pandemic mandates, the validity of the 2020 election, or combating “systemic racism,” only one “truth” is acceptable, and those who dissent from the “truth” can be canceled, socially ostracized, publicly condemned, denied employment, or worse.

Morgenthau wrote the essays in Truth and Power during the turbulent 1960s, but some of his observations have an eerie relevance to today’s politics. For example, in 1964, in an essay entitled “Modern Science and Political Power,” Morgenthau warned that our democracy was endangered by the scientific-technological-governmental trinity. “Power,” Morgenthau wrote, “has shifted from the people to the government. Within the government, power has shifted from democratically responsible officials to certain technological elites, military and

scientific, which are not democratically responsible.” This development, he wrote, had “drastically decreased” voters’ control over the affairs of government. And this situation, he warned, “makes totalitarianism possible.”

Modern scientific and technological innovations, Morgenthau explained, “have given modern governments the tools with which to penetrate and overwhelm the sphere that tradition has reserved for the individual and his freedom -- to condition his thoughts and control his actions without limitation.” “Our age,” he continued, “has given modern governments the ability to make themselves total masters of the individual.”

Morgenthau foresaw the emergence of a governing system involving rule by a “scientific elite.” “The ascendancy of such elites,” he explained, “is the inevitable result of the central positions science and technology occupy in the affairs of modern government.” Science and technology are increasingly serving the interests of those who wield political power. “This utilitarian orientation of science and technology toward the interests of the state,” Morgenthau wrote, “constitutes a radical break with tradition.” [read more]

Morgenthau nailed it.