Posted on 01/27/2003 1:52:19 PM PST by Noumenon
Agreed. I post a link to his essay, A Childish Letter whenever I see anyone post a story about a school letter writing campaign or a story that asks school children what they think about some important issue.
His Culture trio is also excellent and worthwhile.
Yes. I've read Race and Culture and have Conquests and Cultures on the table in front of me. One of these days, I'll get to it...
Sorrythat I hadn't noticed your previous postings of Muravchik's work
No problem. Free Republic contains so much information that its easy to miss something like that. If you had posted your article on a different day, I might have missed it.
- and I agree - that last paragraph alone IS worth the price of the book.
What I really like about it is that it states that, almost as an axiom, socialism requires coercion and cannot exist within the context of democracy. I tend to post it whenever the theme of socialists being undemocratic thugs comes up.
Muravshik really intrigued me with the notion that only in the last few millenia has mankind's religious outlook included a moral dimension, incorporating a moral code. This is the common thread running through all the world's great religious and philosophical systems. Another common thread is mankind's propensity for manipulating that moral code for their own ends.
You might find this essay on ancient law codes interesting. It talks about what makes the Biblical laws different from other law codes of the day.
At the end of the day, the essential nature of the conflict remains the same. It's the millienia-old struggle between those who believe that they have the right to dictate the terms of existence to eveyone else, and those of us who believe that no such right exists. Once again, that struggle is coming to a head, another watershed of human history. What's at stake is more than most of care to recognize - the potential for a fall of humanity into a thousand years or more of slaughter, slavery, brutality and darkness that'll make the worst of the Dark Ages seem tame.
The problem is that most people take morality for granted and don't understand how much damage has been done to the foundation. One of the biggest dangers I see is that we are moving from a culture that valued humility to a culture that one that values bravado and "cool" (which, in essence, means emotional detachment and apathy -- being emotionally cold). And restraint and self-control are no longer valued by a society that wants to "just do it". What people don't seem to realize is that without humility, empanty, and restraint, we will become the sort of adult children depicted in pagan mythology.
Kate, here's an excellent article that noumenon posted for your reading and ammo. Good stuff.
Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not steal (by proxy even). Doesn't sound like a very stable society to me. Doesn't sound like one in which it's possible to get ahead. After all, if you've gotten ahead your neighbors will just send in the JBT's to even things out again in the name of 'stable society'.
When you reward success, people compete to be successful...
When you reward need, people compete to be needy.
There are none. You cannot engage in any sort of reasonable debate with those whose final arguments devolve to the gun and the gulag. Socialism, despite its efforts to create the 'New Man', has ever and always relied upon coercion to maintain itself. Where experimental socialist/utopian communities such as Robert Owens' did not prevent their members from walking away, they all failed without exception - because people simply walked away when the problems arising out of the collision with socialist ideals and human nature became irreconcilable. As Muravchik said in the introduction to his book," If you build it, they will leave."
We're very close to fighting the next American Civil War over this and many other issues. Think long and carefully about your position once this starts. Fence sitters tend to catch fire from both sides.
One goal of Socialism is to compel citizens to view "government" as being more important than the people themselves.
Thus, a Socialist will see "government" as the answer to every problem. In fact, the most important thing to a Socialist is the government (and ideology).
Suffice it to say that such a centralized mindset has yet to survive and thrive for any decent length of time.
On the other hand, free people view the world from a different perspective. When they walk outside and see that their fields need to be plowed, they don't ask "what government subsidy or program will plow my fields". Instead, they take it upon themselves to actually do the work. Not only does this view foster de-centralization, but it is also more productive even at the macro-level (you work harder for your own rewards than for rewards that are shared amongst others - especially those who didn't do any of your work).
Centralization is a big stick. You can make a mighty military as well as grand public works projects with a centralized government, however, a big stick is not always capable of supporting itself (e.g. making a profit, increasing productivity every year, et al). Moreover, a big stick isn't known for its intelligence. Knowing what each individuals needs (in order to be motivated to work for maximum productivity) is NOT the specialty of Centralization.
Maybe we need a big stick in our arsenal. Perhaps some level of Centralization is required, but the more one moves in that direction, the more one flirts with instability and inevitable collapse. Japan's banks have been insolvent for over a decade. France and Germany have over 10% unemployment. Sweden is on the edge of default. Argentina did default. Brazil is on the brink. Venezuala is rioting even tonight, and those are the PROSPEROUS examples. Zimbabwe and North Korea make up the lower tier of Centralized failures.
Yet it is alluring. The Siren Song of Socialism is that you get something for nothing. Hey, just pass a law and the world becomes a better place, goes the mantra. Raise some taxes and start some new government programs and all will be fine, cry the politicians.
And yet it will always fail.
I suggest that your entire premise is flawed and that the actual premise is much more basic than that.
It is simply freedom vs. compulsion.
That is why the fight is so basic. That is why the divergence grows so wide. That is why noumenon (IMHO) related to you that there are no methods to reconcile the two issues. There never have been.
A system that promotes and protect the liberty of individuals to exercise unalienable rights and acrue to themselves the rewards of that exercise while allowing the freedom to help others is what America is all about. This emplies several critical things:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love thye neighbor as thyself. etc.
Simply stated, we as a people either buy into that code, and do so freely ... or we will lose our freedom. It is a natural law.
A wise man once said when asked why his people were so thrifty, united and lived in such harmony ...
I teach the people correct principles and they govern themselves.John Adams, when speaking specifically of America and its constitution, which he had a strong hand in helping develop, said the following ...
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798This is the sum of the whole matter and again, in the end, simply boils down to freedom vs. compulsion.
Fregards.
PS - Here are some more of my thougts on this same matter if you are so inclined.
And thereby he demonstrated how relentlessly unscientific socialism really is. Owens experimental communities like those of John Humphrey Noyes in upstate New York (the Oneida Colony) and certain experiments in Massachusetts, such as Fruitlands simply did not work: Because there was no disadvantage to any member of the community who simply chose not to work, but simply to live off the labor of others. Pretty soon the supply of labor inexorably diminished, and along with it, the production of necessary goods.
Socialism relentlessly drills down to consumption, the distribution of goods. Absent coercion (i.e., forced labor, aka slavery), it does not appear to have any particular rational plan with regard to how those goods get produced, the supply side. By destroying incentives to production, socialism winds up with rising demand for free goods that are not free to produce in the first place. The result is a declining supply of goods.
Owens hypothesis left out one indispensable dynamic: human nature. And that is the reason that socialism does not work. JMHO FWIW
Great post, Noumenon. Thank you!
Given the stark, unyielding quality of the evidence provided by the historical record, socialism and its outcomes could only be embraced by the willfully ignorant, the evil or the insane. Although we hope and pray for a peaceful resolution to this millenia-old conflict, deep down, we know that that is simply not possible. We can only preapre ourselves and our children for the reckoning that's coming.
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