By Douglas V. Gibbs
Profit does the most societal good when it comes to making a civilization prosper. Individual drive to better one's stock in life, driven by the desire for more profit, fuels the market, creates jobs, and creates wealth. Everyone involved in an individual's drive for profit prospers.
The Founding Fathers called it the pursuit of happiness.
Government sanctioned collectivism proposes the equity of outcome. The progressive theory suggests that individualism poses a danger to society as a whole. The progressive model suggests that man's materialistic nature is a danger to the collective harmony of society, and humanity's problems arise because of their environment and the untrustworthiness of individuals. If they can change the environment to one of communal coordination, man will be happy.
As a result of a perceived need for a collective utopia, argue the progressives, the individual drive to better one's life is a detriment to the proper functioning of a more fair and equitable society. Profit is greed, according to these people, and cannot be trusted. The collectivists believe that what is the benefit for society as a whole is something the individual units of society are unable to recognize, and the general well being of society, or at least the processes to get society to that point, is only known by the ruling elite. All aspects of human life, therefore, must be included under the control of the necessary steps to achieve a fair and equitable society. Whoever refuses to obey the processes to achieve utopia are a danger to the policies of the ruling class, and then must be separated from the collective through ridicule and personal attacks until they either conform, or give up and back into the shadows. Those who do not succumb to the class warfare waged by the liberals go against the wishes of the ruling elite and then must be restrained by the body politic, and either be re-educated to think in line with what the elite demands, or be removed from the community. In this way, progressivism uses coercion to ensure that socialism may be reached.
The progressive aim desires to dissolve the people into a homogeneous mass while abolishing decentralization, the sovereignty of nations, individualism, religion, and representative institutions that give the populace a voice in government.
By centralizing all decision making to the body politic which is managed by a ruling elite, the government can then achieve more control over the people for their own good. The progressives believe that all voluntary associations must be subjected to government regulation and control in the name of the good of society, as interpreted by the ruling elite. Individual liberty and economic prosperity must be eliminated, and are simply speed bumps in the way of achieving a more fair and equitable liberal society.
This, according to the political liberal elite, is all done in the name of the public interest. Never mind that in order to achieve their perfect world order they must have government policies that condition the public to be dependents upon the governmental system while working to benefit small but powerful special interests at the expense of the rest of society. Preferential treatment of groups that can provide a voting block or a voice for the liberal cause are for the general public's best interest, according to the progressives. These groups are no more than useful idiots to the progressive hierarchy, and once the socialistic model is firmly in place, they too will lose the freedoms they believe they are enjoying.
The road to socialism, according to Karl Marx, is democracy, therefore the ruling elite are working to spread "democracy" worldwide, while also working to change the republic of the United States into a democracy as well. The leftists know that all democracies evolve into a state that reaches a point where the net beneficiaries of government (those who receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes) outnumber and dominate the net taxpayers (those who pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits).
Unfortunately, for the progressives, the individual units of society are not so easily convinced to follow the communist model, as the government incorporates mercantilism to help achieve the goal. The progressives advocate special-interest policies, like bailouts, that primarily benefit politically connected merchants, manufacturers, speculators, and bankers at the expense of the taxpaying public. However, the ruling elite do this under the guise of saving the country from economic catastrophe, basically pulling the wool over the eyes of the general public in the name of public interest, while destroying freedom simultaneously. Through these stealth methods of "change," the progressives turn the public into believers, and hapless sheep that follow the piper to the cliffs of ruin.
Norman Thomas, a six-time U.S. Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, said in 1948 that, "The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."
Eventually, it will be determined by the political elite that the only way to save our crumbling economies is to unite them into a global system. The progressives are recommending what they claim to be a more effective scale of operations, in which the nations ought to be deprived of their sovereignty and be subordinated to the sovereignty of a global world system of governance. Obama gave us shades of this when he ignored the American Public and Congress regarding the affair in Libya, and instead appealed to the United Nations and NATO for his barking orders.
Another way to move society to a more collective model is to remove from the minds of the people their individualism, loyalty to family tradition, national patriotism, religious dogmas, and any adherence to moral standards other than those recognized by the government. The eradication of right and wrong, except as sanctioned by government, will benefit the collective by changing the behavior of the people. Then, after destroying man's basic loyalties to family, moral standards, religion, and patriotism, the nation must then be conditioned that less is better than more. The standard of living of those in the affluent nations must be reduced. This is being done right now in the United States under Obama and the Democrats, who are constantly telling us that we must survive on less than we produce.
These liberal policies are proving to be disastrous. For example, the U.S. government "helped" the American Indians, and the result is poverty and misery.
The federal government manages Native American lands, provides their health care, and pays for housing and child care. Twenty different departments and agencies have special "native American" programs. The result? Indians have the highest poverty rate, nearly 25 percent, and the lowest life expectancy of any group in America. Sixty-six percent are born to single mothers.
The assistance of the federal government to Native American tribes has been an unmitigated disaster.
Ronald Reagan was once quoted to say, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
Government help creates dependency, and this kind of dependency kills the entrepreneurial spirit of the individual, and conditions the individual to expect more from the government. In return for the gifts from the treasury, the dependent gives his or her vote to the politicians most willing to continue the entitlement programs.
Entitlements are simply a method to gain power by buying votes.
Prosperity comes from freedom, individualism, personal responsibility, self-reliance, and profit - all of which the liberal left has proclaimed to be the enemy.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
A. Ralph Epperson, "The Unseen Hand," Tucson: Publius Press (1985), pages 367-370.
John Stossel, "Government Creates Poverty," Human Events (4-27-2011).
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, "Hamilton's Curse," New York: Three Rivers Press (2008), pages 22-24.
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