The Left sees Government as the answer to all our “social justice” ills. Appalled by the abuse of power of the so-called 1 per cent, it has no problem granting unlimited power to those who share its world-view.
“Conservatives” see government as a necessary evil, by definition prone to the very same abuses as our Economic Elites. History unequivocally validates that opinion as does the Contemporary News on a daily basis. We are all of the same imperfect species.
Utopians [i.e., the political Left] willing to mindlessly increase both the scope and power of Government in the pursuit of their Ideals, create a Cancer far more pernicious than the social/economic ills they so thoroughly misdiagnose. Whereas Marx simplistically ignored the quality of the Beliefs and Values of various sectors of the species, cynically attributing their disparate levels of success to deterministic forces acting in consort with the abusive exercise of power, his equally misguided solution to this “problem” absolutely facilitates the abusive exercise of power!
There is no rational argument to the “conservative” principle that Governments need to be held in check, indeed need to be subject to the Rule of Law no less and perhaps more so than any of their citizens. But given their access to the instruments of power, they rarely are, and that includes governments of all political persuasions.
The 19th Century Romantic notion, clearly evident in the revolutionary works of Marx, that armed rebellion against Social Strictures in the name of some noble cause is always justified, is in fact a recipe for disaster.The pragmatic Philosophers of the Enlightenment, as indeed the designers of the American Constitution, while certainly never assuming any social/political domain to be without flaws, saw the Institutions of their projected Democracies, including the checks and balances with which they were equipped, as necessary vehicles to dialectical Civilized Progress. Most of the advancements in the realm of Social Justice in the U.S. over the last 60 years were, as typified by the peaceful efforts of Martin Luther King, achieved within the Rule of Law. Yet through the insidious intrusion of the radical Left into mainstream American politics, what we have witnessed over the last 8 or 9 months is the burning of buildings, the murder of cops, the pillaging of private property, etc., etc., etc.
I refer again to John Ralston Saul’s typically Leftist disdain for the rational [i.e., “heartless”] prescriptions of the Enlightenment philosophers. Over the course of these 90 or so blogs, I have mentioned several other “progressive” academics [ Jeremy Rifkin, Joseph Chilton Pearce, etc.] who also see “feeling” as the key to our moral progress. And of course it is “feeling,” unmediated by rational thought, that energizes our many passionate defenders of “social justice,” those quite certain that there is no point of view other than their own, that anyone who disagrees with them ought to burn in hell, that there is no need for the Rule of Law, that all cops are agents of Oppression, that all White people are Racists, indeed that it is perfectly admissible to rig an election in the name of all that is Right and Holy.
Those given to the arbitrary Religious belief that a Just World is one in which all people share equally in Life’s bounties, those willing to use the power of Government to realize their fatuous dream, are among the most dangerous people on the planet. History proves it. Today’s “cancel culture” proves it. The hateful, authoritarian rants I shall cite in my next blog, absolutely prove it.