When I was eighteen I knew that the left is generally deceived. It required a few years to find out what the core delusion was but many years to appreciate how radical is the lie they believe and why it leads to so much deception. The idealism of the left is based upon the romantic delusion that "progress" is inevitable and is leading us to a future utopia. Utopia is a romantic fantasy of a perfect future secular society on earth built by man with God left out. The cruel delusion of utopia is responsible for many of the twentieth century disasters such as brutal dictatorships, major wars, countless atrocities, and destructive revolutionary movements.
Why is utopia a false hope? Original sin. We are born contaminated by the nature of sin. All parts of our human nature are infected and corrupted. Such beings are constitutionally incapable of utopia. Yet, against all reason, experience and common sense many hope for an impossible utopia. Perhaps utopia is a substitute for heaven in a post Christian secular society.
Catastrophic Utopias
Attempts at utopia almost always have catastrophic results. Why is this? Utopias always turn out to be totalitarian in the end. There are no restraints on the power or the impulses of the rulers. If man is inherently good, as the left believes, and the revolutionary leaders are god-like beings, as utopian regimes invariably assert, why restrain their powers?
Frankly, there's a lot of truth in that... so expect to be bashed mercilessly for it. :mrgreen:
There is some truth I agree. However, what truth there is, is intermingled with speculation. For example, while I agree that most liberals feel that progress is inevitable (I know I feel that way), I have no real personal concept of what utopia would look like (nor do I ever think about it) and I certainly have a major problem with worshiping humans. So while, plausable in its initial assumptions, I don't see much truth in its conclusions.
I don't think it's right for the article to universally bash people of the liberal persuasion.
I think it is important to note that some "utopias" can be small.
Like many supposed silver bullet cure all (i.e. universal health care.)
Progress is good but slow sustainable progress is better.
The way I see it is that no society is ever going to exist that has no problems, but this does not mean we should not try to fix what problems we currently have. I think that is a statement that most could agree with (since its such a nonspecific one).
The problem is in what different people believe the proper solution to whatever the problem is (or even if a certain condition really is a problem or not). Any intelligent person is going to realize that the world is a dynamic place and some societal troubleshooting of today may not work tomorrow, so to think we would ever get to a perfect state would be to deny the dynamic of an ever changing world. That is why I dismiss the idea of utopia.
But again, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to fix our problems, because if we do not take action, they will not go away (usually). So, I am less interested in a silver bullet cure and more interested in what I think will fix problems, even if we have to revisit those fixes again at some point in the future.
The idealism of the left is based upon the romantic delusion that "progress" is inevitable and is leading us to a future utopia.
I agree and there is (mostly) nothing wrong with what your saying.
There are many instances when I know we are going to have to revisit a problem because the legislation doesn't deal with adverse behavior.
I think if we are going to try to fix things for people, we're going to have to start restricting/punishing behavior more, otherwise nothing can really be fixed.
That usually means less rights.
I am of the position that help should be offered, but it may require that people meet certain minimum criteria that isn't onorous. I just don't think that the random chance of life is enough to offer everyone opportunity to make themselves what they wish to be.
Why is utopia a false hope? Original sin. We are born contaminated by the nature of sin. All parts of our human nature are infected and corrupted. Such beings are constitutionally incapable of utopia. Yet, against all reason, experience and common sense many hope for an impossible utopia. Perhaps utopia is a substitute for heaven in a post Christian secular society.
A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.
What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge—he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil—he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor—he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire—he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy—all the cardinal values of his existence.
Whatever he was—that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love—he was not man.
Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.
They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man.
- Ayn Rand
The left does believe that we should strive to progress towards a future that is better than today. But to equate that to a longing for a totalitarian state is just silly. The definition of the left is that they favor personal freedom over economic freedom, and the definition of the right is that they favor economic freedom over personal freedom. A totalitarian wants both low personal freedom AND economic freedom:
For some reason folks on the right seem to constantly forget all about personal freedom... They describe the left as favoring totalitarianism out of one side of their mouth while they attack the left for fighting to let people marry who they want, for opposing the patriot act, for fighting for a woman's right to choose, for fighting against the death penalty and the drug war, etc...
Personal and economic freedom are interdependent.
If you restrict one, you are restricting the other.
That's why I'm a libertarian.
They can be related. Very low personal freedom makes it hard to have very high economic freedom and vice versa, but complete economic freedom and complete personal freedom are also incompatible. With complete economic freedom you just end up with the wealthy dominating the rest of the people completely. In the sense of "low government control" you might consider that freedom, but in reality it would just be a way to tranfer the power to oppress people from the government to the corporations, so I would not consider that freedom.
Regardless though, between those poles you can have different mixes of economic freedom and personal freedom. For example, the countries in Scandanavia tend to have fairly low economic freedom, but extremely high personal freedom.
They can be related. Very low personal freedom makes it hard to have very high economic freedom and vice versa, but complete economic freedom and complete personal freedom are also incompatible. With complete economic freedom you just end up with the wealthy dominating the rest of the people completely. In the sense of "low government control" you might consider that freedom, but in reality it would just be a way to tranfer the power to oppress people from the government to the corporations, so I would not consider that freedom. Likewise, if you had total personal freedom, you couldn't really consider that economically free because crime and theft and whatnot would rob you of any real economic freedom.
Regardless though, between those poles you can have different mixes of economic freedom and personal freedom. For example, the countries in Scandanavia tend to have fairly low economic freedom, but extremely high personal freedom.
I think that is mostly myth, as the existence of a corporation is usually because of government preference and privilege.
The way I see it is that no society is ever going to exist that has no problems, but this does not mean we should not try to fix what problems we currently have. I think that is a statement that most could agree with (since its such a nonspecific one).
The problem is in what different people believe the proper solution to whatever the problem is (or even if a certain condition really is a problem or not). Any intelligent person is going to realize that the world is a dynamic place and some societal troubleshooting of today may not work tomorrow, so to think we would ever get to a perfect state would be to deny the dynamic of an ever changing world. That is why I dismiss the idea of utopia.
But again, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to fix our problems, because if we do not take action, they will not go away (usually). So, I am less interested in a silver bullet cure and more interested in what I think will fix problems, even if we have to revisit those fixes again at some point in the future.
Most of what you said, sounds like a good argument in favor of steering a moderate/centrist course and avoiding all extremes of either left or right.
That is certainly not what economists argue. The tendency towards monopoly is inherent in capitalism. Even Adam Smith says so. It just makes sense. The larger a company is, the lower their costs of production and the more power they have to raise prices, so they naturally beat out smaller competitors without regulation.
They are largely wrong.
Most, if not all, corporations get large by government privilege.
Almost every single example of a monopoly, or near monopoly, in history has been because of government privilege and preference.
In dynamic economies, with uniform and reasonable regulation, corporations rise and fall.
The fall is, usually, because of their largeness.
The inability to control and respond to market conditions as quickly as a smaller firm may.
Yeah, I would agree. Just to be clear though, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are centrist parties really. The extremes are way off the grid of the US political spectrum.
If man is inherently good, as the left believes, and the revolutionary leaders are god-like beings, as utopian regimes invariably assert, why restrain their powers?
No, that's not true. The biggest monopolies were mostly before the government started busting monopolies up- standard oil, bell telephone, etc.
Economies of scale totally overwhelm that.
Fred Hutchison September 14, 2004
Utopia: The perpetual delusion of the Left
By Fred Hutchison
=snip=
Utopia: The perpetual delusion of the Left
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