There's a word for Rudy and his ilk: statists. And there's nothing more disgusting or more pathetic than those who are willing to stand up and applaud for that sort of thing.
The history of the last century doesn't augur well for those who applaud statists into office.
"There's a word for Rudy and his ilk: statists. And there's nothing more disgusting or more pathetic than those who are willing to stand up and applaud for that sort of thing."
Well, then there's nothing more disgusting or pathetic than me!
I am a statist, through and through.
I believe in law and order, and in peace.
None of those three things has ever existed among man, or CAN exist among men, without being imposed and enforced by a powerful state. When states are weak, crime is rampant and violence is horriffic. Yes, states can do terrible things with organized violence, no doubt about it. So can religions. So can fire That means we have to watch government closely, and organized religion too, like a fire.
In no rational sense does that mean that we are better off without states, religion or fire. The state is the source of law and peace. There IS NO OTHER. I strongly support law and peace, and therefore, I strongly support the state.
I believe in universal education. Only the state has ever provided that, and only the state CAN provide that, because universal education is immensely expensive, and can only be supported by the power to tax. People will never give enough money of their own volition to pay for the education of every single child of every poor family within the national boundaries. The only way to educate every child is to extract money from everybody, beyond their willingness to voluntarily pay, through taxation, enforced by the power of the state. Most people's parents could not afford private education, and as in all countries with weak states, most people would be illiterate peasants in the service of feudal overlords if the power of the state - the armed, mailed fist of govenment - did not smash down the power of individual money and property enough to make sure that EVERY child gets to learn to read and right and has a fighting chance. The only source of liberty in the entirety of human history, anywhere, has been the state and the state alone. I love liberty, and therefore I love the state and am a proud statist. This is so even though I recognize that the state can destroy liberty just like gas can cause a house to explode. Government and natural gas lines must always be watched, but I don't want to do without either, because life is immeasurably better with both.
I like the idea of living past 24. To do that, I need to have hospitals, a reliable food supply, and sewerage. All of these things cost great gobs of money. Medical infrastructure is expensive...so expensive that most people cannot pay for it in the most critical cases when it really matters. Food supplies require road networks, rail networks and refrigeration, which requires electrical networks. All of these things were built or massively subsidized by the state. Sewerage systems are the single greatest contributor to human longevity, because contagious, infectious disease is the primary cause of human death in history until the present. Today, because we have sewers, and refrigeration, and road systems and railroads, and hospitals, and vaccines, most of us - in the organized, civilized world of strong states - are not in danger of dying from disease before we're 25. Instead, we live to three times that long, and get the luxury of dying of cancer or heart failure as our old, fat, flaccid bodies finally give out from sheer fatigue. The West is becoming a society full of greybeards BECAUSE we have vanquished the epidemics that still keep life expectancies in anarchic Africa down in the 20s. And all of this is BECAUSE our states are strong, and have built the infrastructure, hospitals and sewer systems that allow us to live as long as we do. I love sewers. Therefore, I am a statist.
I like speaking English, and French, and not German or Russian. I can because of soldiers. Those soldiers existed because of the state. I love the nation. We have a nation because of the state that defends it.
I hate slavery. We don't have that anymore because of the state.
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that I stand up and applaud for the state, the STRONG, ORGANIZED state, and for the power to TAX which is the core power that the state musters, which PAYS FOR those armies, police, courts, jails, schools, hospitals and sewers.
The history of the last century tells us that without the strong, powerful, organized, systematized state, with the full power to tax and spend - the Royal British State and the American Republican State, centered in Washington DC, that the German State would have conquered the entire world. I like Jewish people, and therefore, I like the state. Without OUR state, we would still have a state, but we would be slaves of it.
Our state, America, is not simply a "necessary evil" any more than fire or the church are necessary evils. It is a positive good, a thing to be praised, not execrated. We cannot let our state go in the wrong direction, because it certainly can become oppressive...and the electricity in our walls can fry us dead in two seconds too. But electricity is not a necessary evil either. The state, the church, fire, electricity and natural gas: all things that can be dangerous when mishandled, but all POSITIVE GOODS, PLUSSES, ABSOLUTE ADVANTAGES for humankind.
I am an unabashed and proud statist. States mean civilization. The absence of a state is utter barbarism. The absence of a strong state means slavery, cholera, illiteracy and a life expectancy in the twenties.
I like freedom, sanitation, universal literacy and living to 80. And all of those things were created by the state, and the state alone. I am a statist. And proud of it.