#105: Obama’s “Czars”: What Are They Really?

May 9, 2012

According to one listing, BHO (Barack Hussein Obama) has appointed 32 czars during his three years in office. For those who remember “czars” to be all-powerful Russian potentates, I must digress to explain that BHO’s czars are not Russian and, while frighteningly powerful, are apparently not as powerful as their earlier Russian namesakes. The new czars are unelected appointees to special domains (like the “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones) so-called because of their undefined and apparently limitless control over their “portfolio.” We don’t ever find out what each czar is paid, nor do we ever find out what his or her budget is or how many minions are under his or her control. So the new czars are on the face of it actually quite a lot like the old ones, other than that the old ones spoke Russian and sometimes French or German.

The mere fact that there exist this many shadowy figures wielding great power without being subject to review or the giving of account should by itself be very disturbing in a democracy, but others have been pointing this out since BHO, the czars of czars, was installed. I have here entirely another bone to pick with modern czardom.

Words have meanings and we should be aware of them. Words can focus our attention on relevant facts or they can distract it from them either intentionally or not.

The choice of the word “czar” in this modern context is easily defensible since there are such obvious similarities between the Russian czars and BHO’s appointees: both, after all, are unelected, unaccountable, and arbitrary in the exercise of their power. What I want to suggest is that the choice of this word was and is fortuitous for the people who are czars or who wish to appoint them. Here is why.

The fact that the word “czar” has the negative associations that it has prevents the mind from looking for an even more apt term, one which might express far more trenchantly the real nature of the evil lying at the heart of such a position. And there is such a term, fascinatingly connected to “czar,” the one that was picked.

The scribblers who choose our words decided that the word to be used would be “czar,” but this is in fact arguably not the best word for the task. Had there been a discussion at the time the word was chosen, someone might well have pointed out that the real czars did not have limited, defined domains, they were total masters of everything that they surveyed. Modern czars are actually only flunkeys at the beck and call not even of the POTUS, but of much lesser lights (Van Jones, for example, reported to one Nancy Sutley, the “Head of the Council on Environmental Quality” and who has even heard of her!). These nasty appointed apparatchiks were no czars!

Why call them “czars,” then? Calling them apparatchiks should give us the clue. Look to the U.S.S.R.

I think they called them “czars” to avoid others calling them what they were really like: Commissars!

While commissars were formally kinds of minister, the word became indelibly associated with Russian communism and implied precisely the exercise of arbitrary and unaccountable power by Communist Party functionaries.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, those who chose the handy term “czar” chose a word from the right language and a word which included some of the relevant features, but one which carefully drew our attention away from the most telling model out of Russia, the model that comes from Bolshevism.

For if we had to look to history to see exemplars of our contemporary “civil servants” intruding unopposed by court or law into every aspect of citizen private lives, we would not find them among the Czars, we would find them rather among the Commissars.