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Well, I wrote a long sympathetic response to your post, but had to plant some duthman's pipe, so left for one more review before I posted it. It's gone. Oh well, this will not be so long, so possibly not so sympathetic.

I'll start out with the way I ended the other.

I know if you thought for one second any of your views or practices would harm another or were in any a way compromise with evil, you would immediately drop them. I know you believe you veiws are totally benevolent (and totally correct, of course, or you wouldn't hold them).

But, they are mistaken. Every failed society in the history of the world has been the result of trying to implement some variety of the views you hold.

Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-tung, [were] idealists....

This is news to me, Hank. There is a distinction to note between an idealist and an ideologue. These men were the latter, plus brutal, vicious dictators, the very spawn of Hell.

Of course they were evil, but they did not gain power by promoting themselves as evil. They did not say, "put us in power and we will be brutal, vicious dictators who will turn your world into a hell." No, they promised peace, prosperity, equality, and, except for Pol Pot, these were the ideals these leaders held and believed their ideologuies and policies would actually fulfill, at least in the beginning of their careers.

This is not what "balance" is!

You flatly repudiated, "an extreme preoccupation with the discrete, individual self," and said, "balance is needed." If strict individualism by itself is unbalanced, it must be balanced by some form of collectivism.

I made some more comments about liberty, but do not think they were edifying enough to repeat. This only I'll say, if I cannot feed myself and free myself, than I am no value to myself or to any other individual in society. Only if I am independent enough to live without a society, do I have a moral right to be part of a society.

Hank

If strict individualism by itself is unbalanced, it must be balanced by some form of collectivism.

Hank, this statement is a nonsequitur: The conclusion does not follow from the premise. In my view, "strict individualism," or "unbalanced individualism," leads to personal and social disorder. When conditions of disorder on a mass scale obtain historically, as they did in ancient Athens, and as they arguably do now, inevitably the tyrant steps in on the pretext of "restoring order." If conditions are bad enough, the populace (in its disorder) may actually welcome the tyrant. But not all tyrants are collectivists.

I think that what you are trying to say is that Utopianism is evil, and I can agree with that. Trying to remake man into something else is inherently evil because we are creatures of God and no man can remake us into something better. Freedom, the freedom to follow one's own conscience is a central part of Christianity which all the ideologies you mention try to destroy as well as most Utopian ideologies of any sort. Because they are contrary to the central theme of Christianity, they are evil, but Christianity is not because it does not want to destroy man's freedom to follow his own conscience, it wants man to follow his conscience.