Posted on 09/02/2017 7:06:31 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
Society is society. Government is government. They are two entirely distinct, and completely separate things.
Not in the land of Progressivism, however. For progressives, society is government and government is society. They are equally the same and there is no possible distinction. You can routinely see the rotting husk of this when someone proceeds to inform you that "they believe society should do x or y" but when talking of x or y they are instead referring to government action. "I believe that we as a society should take care of the poor, and that's why I support {insert name of welfare program here}".
But sir, you're not talking about society when you made that statement. You specifically excluded society from that statement, and you inserted government.
How can it be that progressives get this so wrong? It all goes back to the word "social". That's the key. Progressives are collectivists, which means that they are incapable of truly interpreting individual action and moreover, they suspect individual action. They have contempt for it. How often have you heard that one man cannot make a difference?
In the progressive's mind, humans are a "social" animal. Now, a progressive wants you to believe that when they say humans are "social" animals, that they merely mean you like to sit at Starbucks and shake people's hands, talk of sports and trifle things, exchange stories of yours and others' families and friends. You're being sociable! That's not what they mean. They have a dual word definition here. They mean collectivism, which is far more sinister. And you can easily prove it. So by "social justice" what they mean is "Starbucks justice"? It's a nonsensical thing. Of course they do not mean that. But if you were to say, "collective justice" - Now you're on to something.
Now, how do I know all off this is true? It's all in the progressives writings. Some progressives are more descriptive than others, but one progressive, Lester Ward, really sums this up well. In his book "Applied sociology: a treatise on the conscious improvement of society by society", he writes the following: (page 337)
When we say that society does anything we mean of course that it does it according to some settled method of social action. Society of course is an abstraction, but it is one of those abstractions that are always doing something. Society always possesses an organization, and it is this organization that acts. It would be as reasonable to object to the statement that an army does anything. An army is an abstraction in the same sense that society is such. It is an organization capable of doing much, and this is all that is meant by the action or the work of society.
Now, note how many times you see the word 'society' in his paragraph. I count 5. That's just one paragraph! But note what the title of this section is (for those of you who clicked the link) - Attractive Legislation!! And more of page content talks about representatives, he talks about the Russian government, autocracies, and much more.
He is thoroughly using the words 'society' and 'government' interchangeably here. All progressives that I know of do this. This is one of the biggest issues of all why progressives cannot understand and do not like America.
So, here is the formula: (Note again, the passage I quoted from Ward)
Society possesses an organization. Society's organization is an organization that acts. Therefore, government is society. They are one in the same. There may not be anything more foundational than this for progressivism. This also explains why progressives get so much other things wrong.
Why does a corporation exist? Well obviously, a corporation exists to create jobs. It's a social organization, and society has organizations in order to do things. Society has organizations that act. But, but, but! Let's not forget, that all corporations are subjugated to the one true societal organization that acts. That's why government must control corporations. Society's acting organization makes proxies out of these other little acting organizations.
And what of non profit organizations? How many of them do nothing but political activities? In order to build up the organization of all organizations, government, non profits are completely justified in organizing dead voters, organizing illegals, Mickey Mouse and Mary Poppins are registered voters; - did you vote three times? Vote again! Whomever and whatever and however the big organization of society can make the big organization bigger, it is all justified. Big government is purity.
What of churches? Or should I say, social churches/social religion. No, churches are not places for you to worship your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! That's bigotry. The real magic of churches is that they are a great club! Yeah, and from churches we can make government bigger! It's the big organization of society. Churches don't need to do anything, they don't need to be charitable, we can have government do it all.
And what about individual charity? Why is it that progressives are the least charitable individuals on the planet, but act as if they are the most charitable and YOU are the greedy sob? It's because you only gave a couple thousand dollars. The progressive? They gave millions and billions and trillions of dollars in charity. You couldn't have possibly have given more than they did. But if you would just give all of your money to society, to the big organization that acts, you could be charitable too.
This also explains how it is that progressives come to see all of us as groups. You Christians over there, you unemployed over here, you have groups of hispanics, and the this group and the that group and the Rotarians, the Moose and the Elks, there's the gays, the employed, union members and non-union members, and any other group you can name. All groups are equal you know. We are all groups in the big organization of society.
It all stems from the fact that they, the progressives, do not see society as distinct from government. They see them as exactly the same.
What of our Founding documents? To a progressive, our founding documents are a great contradiction. Perhaps, the ultimate contradiction. You want "we the people" but you also want government limited? This cannot be! For the progressive, government is the people. Government is society. Government is everything. "We the people" means to the progressive that the American government needs to be the biggest government ever known in the history of mankind.
But those of us who are not collectivists, we see "we the people" and we realize "yes, ---------->I<---------- must do these things. Me. I should not be lazy, I should get off the couch, I should not wait for someone else to do it. I shouldn't connive some trick to get government to do it. I should do it. Right now. Because me, because I, because of my individual action, I am making society better".
And you can see this in play in real life. What happens when progressives protest? The scene gets trashed, people get raped, graffiti painted, and police cars get defecated on. Heck, even sometimes bombs get thrown.(See Weather Underground) Who cares, government will clean the paint off, put the fires out.
But what happened at the Tea Parties? The grounds were cleaner when the Tea Partiers left than when they first arrived. Why is this?
It's because of the individual making society better, despite government. I can speak to this first hand because I did this myself. I didn't wait for some park ranger or government official to walk by and clean up that empty paper cup for me. I bent over all by myself, picked up that paper cup, and I walked over and threw it in the trash without having to be told to do so.
I did it because it was the right thing to do. It wasn't my trash. But so what? It needed to be done. Progressives do not think this way. That's society's job. (That's government's job. See what I mean.)
"We the people" wasn't a celebration of the biggest government ever known for the Founders, but for progressives it is, because society is government and society "has an organization" that acts. For myself, I agree with the Founders, "we the people" was and is an indictment of government. Government merely gets in the way and only makes things worse.
Ping.....
Hegel distinguished between the “state” and “civil society,” but because he was a German (a Prussian) in fact, he used the word “state” (”Staat”) so much that he infected much of the 19th century with something akin to “state worship.” You can find Ward’s articles on Hegel at Google Books.
These are the same doofusses (doofi?) who believe Emma Lazarus’ poem is Federal law.
When you take a big chunk of what we consider to be individual rights and liberties and give them to government, then it makes sense that you’d start to see government and society as the same thing.
Remember we’re dealing with adolescent minds that have reached the age of majority.
If you live in NYC and see where half+- of each paycheck goes it becomes easy to be confused.
Government regulations can create problems - big problems: lack of affordable housing, lack of (affordable) medical care, massively expensive drugs, etc.
Imagine you live on a $1.2 million five-acre estate backing to farmland.
Imagine if your farmer neighbor decided subdivide 10 acres that lovely farmland into a 30-tarpaper shack per acre subdivision.
Many of your new neighbors would have kids.
If you had a public school system it would become vastly overcrowded.
Maybe the new neighbors might have motor vehicles.
They might consider auto insurance a luxury.
Many might also be lousy drivers. One might make a big impression into the back end of your new Mercedes.
Government is Baal, and we must all worship and make sacrifice to it.
"When we say that society does anything we mean of course that it does it according to some settled method of social action. Society of course is an abstraction, but it is one of those abstractions that are always doing something. Society always possesses an organization, and it is this organization that acts. It would be as reasonable to object to the statement that an army does anything. An army is an abstraction in the same sense that society is such. It is an organization capable of doing much, and this is all that is meant by the action or the work of society."
The author of this screed shows a poor mastery of English grammar, as well as a fundamental inability to understand the concepts underlying the words "army" and "society."
An army is not, as he claimed, an abstract concept. It actually has very concrete definitions (depending on the context). Society, on the other hand, is a very nebulous concept. It can be seen as groups of people who have adopted certain customs in order to live harmoniously. The problem I see with so-called socialists is that they have elevated the status of society to that of a super-organism, built up of tiny meaningless cells (that are individual human beings) that have no particular value individually. So they discard any considerations for harmonious co-existence and instead adopt this attitude that anything goes to advance the interests of the super-organism--including killing millions of people that they consider a blight on the super-organism.
Imagine if your farmer neighbor decided subdivide 10 acres that lovely farmland into a 30-tarpaper shack per acre subdivision
Not the business of the Federal Government
Many of your new neighbors would have kids
Not the business of the Federal Government
If you had a public school system it would become vastly overcrowded
Not the business of the Federal Government
Maybe the new neighbors might have motor vehicles
Not the business of the Federal Government
They might consider auto insurance a luxury
Not the business of the Federal Government
Many might also be lousy drivers. One might make a big impression into the back end of your new Mercedes
Not the business of the Federal Government
The natural limit of a US patented drug price is about $10,000/year for sustained treatment or as low as about $1,000 for one-shot treatment.
This is because US citizens could fly overseas and buy pirate copies of patented drugs.
Basically, no company would invest in drugs with a development cost in excess of the natural limit, such as the new ~$475,000/patient Novartis drug:
But if you are a Congressman’s, Senator’s or a President, your only serious personal worries are medical.
Their natural response is to try to save their own lives - which means an artificially propped-up drug pricing system, such as that provided via the PPACA.
“Not the business of the Federal Government”
We are discussing only “government”, without a preceding adjective such as federal.
Progressives don’t believe in the concept of society.
Atomization of the individual is a necessary component of totalitarianism.
They don’t confuse society and government. They see it as necessary that everything social should be determined and regulated by the government, that there should be no distinction between the two.
On that they are not confused.
Because they’ve made them the same. Government can’t regulate speech but they’ve achieved the same thing by their control over society.
Progressive income taxation is a key plank of the Communist Manifesto.
“In 1894...The federal income tax was strongly favored in the South, and it was moderately supported in the eastern North Central states, but it was strongly opposed in the Far West and the Northeastern States (with the exception of New Jersey).”
“On July 12, 1909, the resolution proposing the Sixteenth Amendment was passed by the Congress and was submitted to the state legislatures. Support for the income tax was strongest in the western and southern states and opposition was strongest in the northeastern states. Supporters of the income tax believed that it would be a much better method of gathering revenue than tariffs, which were the primary source of revenue at the time. From well before 1894, Democrats, Progressives, Populists and other left-oriented parties argued that tariffs disproportionately affected the poor, interfered with prices, were unpredictable, and were an intrinsically limited source of revenue.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
In 1913, the leftists got their way. You’ve got to pay.
My hope is to have the ratification votes of some states declared to be equal protection violations of Amendment XIV.
One year after ratification, World War I broke out in Europe.
That war made it impractical to export goods in large quantities at lower tariffs to the US.
The income tax deal for cheap goods backfired badly.
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