You are correct. Radical individualism and radical equalitarianism are destroying our country and civilization. An excellent book to read about this is Judge Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah.
Siamese Princess wrote:
Radical individualism and radical equalitarianism are destroying our country and civilization. An excellent book to read about this is Judge Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah.
______________________________________
Another view, published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute:
January 1997
Slouching Towards Statism
Which is a greater cause of cultural and moral decline: the private sector or the government? Asked another way, which is doing more to promote a return to civilized social norms: the market or the central state?
The answer highlights a dividing line between left ad right.
Robert Bork's book Slouching Towards Gomorrah provokes this query. He chronicles a dizzy array of depressing cultural data that even left-liberals can't ignore. His thesis is that civilization is slipping through our fingers, and he's probably right.
However, his suggestions for change require new forms of government intervention, a grave error that dooms his analysis.
Bork has confused the cause with the cure.
It's government policy, not the private sector, that has caused social collapse by politicizing culture in the first place.
Whether it's fostering welfarism, backing ugly art and music, punishing society's natural elites with income and inheritance taxes, or shortening time horizons through persistent inflation, the government has debased tastes, subsidized moral squalor, and dumbed down social norms.
I'd rather have "radical individualism" than "radical equalitarianism" any day.
Much as the liberals' idea of making everyone the same, by making them individuals (yes, it's tortured logic), as much as that train of thought tortures me... I see from some on the right, a similar tack. Everytime I hear "long-haired hippie" from a radio host, I wonder if they're giving Ted Nugent a slide because he's a conservative. There's still plenty on the right who would love for every man to look like Ollie North and every woman like June Cleaver; they may not admit it in public, though, and with good reason. There's an element of "it's okay if you're your own person, as long as you match our appearance and beliefs" in the right.
Of course, the Hillarites and their "it takes a village" mentality are far more insidious, but whenever someone on the other side says "no man is an island", my Collectivist Thought Alert goes off.