In The Social Contract, Rousseau warned that “Those who dare to undertake the institution of a people must feel themselves capable . . . of changing human nature, . . . of altering the constitution of man for the purpose of strengthening it.” Robespierre & Co. thought themselves just the chaps for the job. The fact that they measured the extent of their success by the frequency that the guillotines around Paris operated highlights the connection between the imperatives of political correctness and tyranny–between what Robespierre candidly described as “virtue and its emanation, terror.” That is the conjunction that should give us pause, especially when we contemplate the good intentions of the politically correct bureaucrats who preside over more and more of life in Western societies today.
They mean well. They seek to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment. Inequality outrages their sense of justice. They regard conventional habits of behavior as so many obstacles to be overcome on the path to perfection. They see tradition as the enemy of innovation, which they embrace as a lifeline to moral progress. They cannot encounter a wrong without seeking to right it. The idea that some evils may be ineradicable is anathema to them. Likewise the traditional notion that the best is the enemy of the good, that many choices we face are to some extent choices among evils–such proverbial wisdom outrages their sense of moral perfectibility.
Alas, the result is not paradise but a campaign to legislate virtue, to curtail eccentricity, to smother individuality, to barter truth for the current moral or political enthusiasm. For centuries, political philosophers have understood that the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom. That species of benevolence underwrote the tragedy of Communist tyranny. The rise of political correctness has redistributed that lust over a new roster of issues: not the proletariat, but the environment, not the struggling masses, but “reproductive freedom,” gay rights, the welfare state, the Third World, diversity training, an end to racism and xenophobia, and, last but note least, universal health care. It looks, in Marx’s famous mot, like history repeating itself not as tragedy but as farce. It would be a rash man, however, who made no provision for a reprise of tragedy.
Thank you, Roger. Your article today, again, calls for another drink(not in celebration, of course). I’m going to bust into one of my 86 Gruaud-Larose’s tonight. In fact, I might just have to start popping em all and passing it around before the government takes that away too. Hey, red wine’s good for heart, eh?
Since you mentioned Stove, I’d like to point how our supreme leader embodies the four character flaws so rampant in human natre: the simple inability to shut-up:(okay, we all suffer from this one)the man has not closed his mouth since the first day he started campaigning. Now of course, politicians suceed and fail by opening their mouths; most however do make some sort of attempt to make their statments sound rational, but each and everyone of them knows that they must inspire the people as opposed to make logically valid statement(this bring up a question: can a politician make a logically valid statement?).
Hunger for Power: to say that this man is a megalomaniac is the understatment of the day.
Determination to be thought deep: he is deeply concerned about the state of our nation(as anyone ought to be)but his prescription for our ills will certaintly cause more of our demise by “curing” of the thought that we may actually be better able to care for ourselves than the government can. Fear: not fear of an idifferent universe, but fear that if we don’t enact his plans that we’ll spiral downward to the status of a 3rd world nation. Of course his policies, if they’re all enacted will create a new nation status: the 4th world nation, a nation so deprived and impoverished (not just financially) that it will virtually cease to exist.
Sorry, my link was bad. Here it is again.
http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections
Sorry again … my first comment didn’t appear.
The link in #3 is to a psychologist’s analysis of Obama’s narcissistic personality, posted a year ago. It’s not encouraging.
“…the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom. That species of benevolence underwrote the tragedy of Communist tyranny.”
The brilliance of our constitution is that the founding fathers based it on Judeo-Christian principles. Not to sound preachy, but especially in Judaism, as far as I know, only G-d can legislate the moral imperatives as found in the Decalogue. It is false to believe in the cult of the personality of man alone as the rational being who can create moral law(history under the communists & fascists has proved otherwise.) Those who believe solely in a secular morality, divorced of divine absolutes, contribute to the disintegration of society where this fantasy of equality for all is usually a deathknell for all.
The communists believe that man is rational, hence good, hence able to make moral law. The fallacy, as Judaism points out is that man is not rational, but complex, & hence cannot be trusted to make moral law. Our Constitution is a fence to those like Obama who believe they can divine moral law base on an ethos detached from a maker…(then again Obama thinks he is divine & he will chip away at the periphery of the precepts of even secular morality to reason rational & accommodate his lust for power & liberal “absolutes” i.e., the welfare state, gay marriage, global warming, euthanasia…)
Well done, but a very sobering post (in spite of Scott #1 and 2, although I might accept some fine Georgian wine…)
From the Brothers Karamozov, “The Grand Inquisitor”:
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dostoyevsky/d72b/chapter36.html
After all, its for our own good.
Take a look at Stove, L.C, you might change your mind. Otherwise, sorry your found it less than amusing.
The Great Leader exhibits the great Liberal vice of voyeuristic morality, the sign of our times. By vilifying someone else for their lack of virtue, you are thereby cleansed of any virtuous faults in your own nature, even if you keep on doing the same old sins. Obama has relatives living in dire poverty. Is he not his brother’s keeper? He insists that the common tax payer should be, even when the people he claims are their brothers are people they have never met.
Many limousine liberals are morally outraged that “red necks” in Flyover country drive gas-guzzling SUV’s, but feel no guilt when they take a private jet across the globe to go to a party with their enlightened friends, emitting more carbon dioxide than the people who they have such contempt for do in a year.
Its so easy–just decry someone else’s lack of virtue and you are thereby yourself absolved of that sin, forever and forever. Its the new religion of our time.
People seem amazed about how many
I have no idea where that “People seem amazed about how many” line came from in my previous comment. Sorry.
Scott #7: Thanks, I’ll put him on my list of guys to read. And, I was trying to make a joke with you cracking open your bottles of wine and the “sobering” thoughts of Mr. Kimball’s post. Not a good one. Take care.
L.C,
I was just concerned that Mr Kimball might be drinking Lysol, as one commmenator in another post accused him of; didn’t think he should miss out on a good Bordeaux, that, dollar to donuts, probably tastes much better than Lysol.
…and no Kimball, I don’t think you drink Lysol, and if you do then stop immediately.
There is so much of the worst of human history being demonstrated by this administration it IS truly frightening. We really need to return to the basics, but I fear government has grown so large it has rather taken on a life of its own. And like some slumbering monster it is now being awakened by the ignorant and will swallow them whole.
I only hope the rest of us aren’t swallowed up with them.
Sorry for you guys. I live in Eastern Europe and that’s how it all started back there too… Good luck… comrades?!
Maybe I’m reading Roger’s sentence wrong… but I’m not seeing any sign anywhere that Obama “means well” and seeks “to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment.” Rather, it appears to be more like all of us are going to be crammed down to the lowest common denominator, with the exception of those Enlightened Ones “ruling” us. Obama has all the appearances of a narcissist, who displays NO empathy for anyone. All this while he and his fellow politicians live the high life enjoying all the perks of office — free rides on Marine One, skipping out on their taxes, spending (taxpayer?) money on cocktail parties and celebrity entertainment, eating wagyu beef in excessively heated rooms, while expecting the rest of us unwashed masses to be “patriotic” via working hard and sacrificing (as we all listen to the sucking sound of our retirements/portfolios being flushed away). There’s no helping the little people in any of this. With healthcare and cap’n'trade, in particular — it’s all about Control. If they wanted to really help with the environment via government aid, why don’t they start with something like subsidizing recycling and waste minimization??
Yo Comrade Kostragh! Here’s to growing potatoes in our backyards!
Roger, you seem to be committed to pontificating and enflaming fear (of Obama) through ethereal and vaguely philosophical devices which would indict Obama as a socialist (and by your unreasoned extension, a communist tyrant, or czar of an empire).
But if we talk rationally about the history of nations since the end of WWII (the second war of modern empires, and the first imperial oil-war) all former empire nations (in Europe and Japan) which expunged empire, and empire-thinking, and successfully developed as anything close to representative democracies, and progressed toward genuinely serving the interests of their people, with equitable GINI coefficients, ‘universal’ health care, absence of willful wars, and a dozen other characteristics that the vast, vast majority of average Americans pray for, took the very same (and only proven) path out of empire —- ‘social democracy’.
Why, pray tell, would you not consider Obama’s helmsmanship of the American political economy quite pragmatic, and defensible as being pragmatic (rather than the ideological bent that you ascribe) given purely the evidence and this existence proof that only ‘social democracies’ have proven to be a successful model to exit the state of unsustainable empire and enter the state of ‘free world’ democracies?
Perhaps, you would not mind dealing in such mundane terms as what ‘social democracies’ have been able to do for their citizens in the real world, and I would be glad to take the reverse role of showing what this ruling-elite ‘corporate financial Empire’ controlling our country behind the facade of its two-party, ‘Vichy’ sham of democracy has been able to do for our people over the last three decades — wherein we could have a rational discourse and public debate, rather than what passes here for discussion, eh?
Hey there just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The text in your post seem to be running off the screen in Firefox. I’m not sure if this is a formatting issue or something to do with internet browser compatibility but I thought I’d post to let you know. The style and design look great though! Hope you get the issue solved soon. Kudos