Statism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ok, so I have seen several posts where someone will dismiss another person's argument because they are a statist, so I looked up the definition and I fail to see why its a basis for dismissing an argument. It looks like another definition of liberalism to me :shrug:
That's part of the problem. Liberalism and Statism have indeed become almost synonymous, but it wasn't always so.
Not so long ago, liberalism was an ideology that promoted individual liberty, moderation in government intervention, and yes even self-reliance.
The classical liberalism of the Founders gradually morphed into a social-welfare statism, and a postive-rights-enforced-through-redistribution-of-wealth ideology that requires an enormous and powerful state to achieve... if it can be achieved at all, which I doubt.
Indeed, in the past 200-odd years the meaning of "liberal" has practically been turned inside-out and upside-down.
So, let's deal with this modern liberalism, which seems to include a heavy dose of statism.
There's only so much economy, and there's only so much power. The more of it gobbled up by Government, the less there is for The People. Only the private sector grows the economy; the government "sector of the economy" is fed by taxes taken from the productive. This retards economic growth when government gets too big, and there's a certain maximum size of government control of the economy beyond which things begin to collapse. This is because the parasite side has grown so large it begins to kill the productive side by sucking all the life out of it.
Many of us think we're not far from that now. Government takes over a third of everything at all levels, and yet a third of our budget is DEBT. That can't go on... but the modern Statists currently running things just keep adding MORE to the budget! You can't keep doing that without causing a collapse, eventually.
With bigger government inevitably comes more regulation and law. Every time a new regulation or law is passed, a choice has been taken out of your hands and made by government... this means less freedom for the individual overall.
Now sometimes certain laws and regulations are truly necessary, because there are some things that can't be left to individual citizens and private organizations. But, most of us that lean to the right interpret "necessary" with a
strict interpretation... that is, you've got to PROVE that it really is essential, that the lack of it will do real harm, and that the law/reg will actually make things better and not cause unintended consequences that are really negative. We hold government intervention in citizen's lives and the private sector to a higher standard, in most regards.
That's the longer version than just "oh, that's statism, in brief: No way."
