Two extremes of thoughts are tangling in my mind this morning, neither of which
I find admirable, both disturbing: One is a kind of motto developed by the DNC,
and used in their video: "Government is the one thing we all belong to." The
other comes from a "liberal-libertarian" whose article I read this morning,
arguing for the needlessness of having any government at all. Two extremes,
both have wide appeal, apparently.
The second view, which is really
anarchistic, probably comes to us from Ayn Rand, and as far as I can tell,
leaves the weak and poor utterly at the mercy of the wealthy and powerful.
Private "insurance companies" would take the place of any "coercive
government." The view is propounded by a professor in Nevada, and it typifies
what I think of intellectual pursuits in American universities (other than
physical sciences): in large part, brain-washing by ideologues, left or right,
who seem divorced from reality. I pity our students and young people. Best
advice I would have for someone going to college now: study a physical science
or engineering, and keep as free as possible from all ideologically-inclined
courses taught under the guise of "history," "liberal arts," "political
science," "philosophy," and so on. And that is most unfortunate, as the life of
the mind suffers. But the main casualty of our ideologically-drunk culture is
the life of the mind, real thinking.
As for the slogan from the DNC, that
"Government is the one thing we all belong to," it is nearly an inversion of our
Founding principles: "We the People" form a government, and are in principle
superior to it. Civil society precedes and overarches any and all governments.
On a popular level, the common in "the people" or "the country" was captured in
JFK's well-known phrase, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what
you can do for your country." (He did not say, "Government," nor did he tell
folks to ask what Government can do for them.) Here, we are all members of "the
country," which has a government as a part of it, not as the whole; and
government needs to defend the whole country, protect the weaker members from
the strong, serve justice. Or again, remember the classical understanding that
nourished western thought for centuries, and is so unlike this Governmentalism
heard at the DNC: We all belong to the Whole, the universe; and participate in
it with our bodies, souls, reason. Not "government," but reason (logos) is the
common (koinos) which all share--a view articulated 2500 years ago by
Herakleitos of Ephesus.
The claim that "Government is the one thing we
all belong to" would be an ideological child of European "Democratic Socialism"
from the late 19th century to the present. It is based on the creed of Marx,
but has dropped the call for violent revolution, and freezes the
Marxist-Leninist stage of the "dictatorship of the Party" through government,
not going on to Marx's goal of a "classless society" without any need for
government. In effect, this Democratic worldview is a more or less "benign"
totalitarianism, in which the individual human being, and all non-governmental
groups within society, are subservient to the "Government." (And the
"Government" is preferably controlled and dominated by one "Party," of course.)
This phenomenon was already analyzed by Nietzsche in the 1880's, who wrote about
"the Idol State," and explained how degenerate Christianity, Socialism, and
Democracy form the creed that creates a "herd mentality," making all subservient
to the State. Fascism, Soviet Communism, and National Socialism are all based
on the same essential desire: the individual and social units are subservient
to the almighty, controlling, compelling, monopolistic Government.
So the
liberal-libertarians want to dismantle the State, and at least the chosen
spokesman for the Democrat Party (USA) seeks to elevate the Government / State
as the one and only common reality to which we all belong. I do not find such
views "scary" (it is common now to find things "scary," as children do), but I
find them disturbing, because these extremist views, detached from reality, have
gained such a powerful grip in the consciousness of so many of our people. "Age
of ideology" indeed. Common sense, with its grounding in reality, is
increasingly eclipsed by ideological non-thinking.
I must wonder, as I
often have, if our country has not in reality become totalitarian, a way of life
(or of death) developed mainly by men / women seeking power, and embodying their
will to power in all-powerful institutions (mainly, Government). What are
political parties but means to get and to keep political power? That is the
foremost lesson of the recent party conventions.
