The comment below is put in the sometimes eternal status of pending. It was posted and then put on pending. A shorter version of this comment was posted.
To Gene Veith and his blogpost on the tendency for multiple sides to lean towards totalitarianism. This appeared in Cranach.
Unfortunately, the conservative perspective partially sabotages the argument against totalitarianism here. That is immediately seen in the claim that Communists and Nazis agreed on totalitarianism. We should note then that totalitarinism can come from the left and the right, that was one of the points that came from Orwell's book, 1984.
Regarding communism, it was the Bolsheviks who wanted totalitarianism. But the Bolsheviks were not the only communists. THe Mensheviks and others, such as the Kronstadt sailors, wanted a bottom-up democracy that the actual soviets could provide. The Bolsheviks were oppotunists who ruled in a similar way that the Tsars ruled.
But regarding the problem with the conservative perspective here, conservatives can only see the threat of totalitarianism as coming from government. They don't see how private elites can rule over society either directly or by making government their proxy. And we should note that the controlling motivation for many of those elites is to maximize personal profits. That motivation comes from the belief that pursuing self-interest is one's only moral obligation. Again, we should consult 1984.
Another problem with the conservative approach here is perception. Take the following paragraph as an example:
So is there anything outside of the scope of the government in the United States? Today the government is a prime mover in the economy, decides moral issues, finances the arts, operates a vast educational system, sponsors scientific research, has a say in what you do with your private property, regulates how business must operate, supervises our food supply, approves what medicine we can take, and insinnuates itself into other areas of life
The conservative approach says that the role of the government is to protect its people from 'crime and conquest' and other social spheres whose growth and success are needed by society. But isn't government protecting us when it regulates our property like our cars and isn't government protecting us when its regulations prevent businesses from poisoning the environment or exploiting the people? Do we want only private sector elites to control research? Just remember how scientists representing the tobacco industry denied that smoking posed significant health risks. We should also note that in most of the spheres mentioned, government is not the only participant. Government's participation in the arts, education, research and so forth coexists with participation from the private sector.
Note that in the basic conservative premise are the seeds of totalitarianism. Government's job is to protect people, not represent.them. That was the approach of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jung-un, and past leaders of Red China. We can look at any government that is strongly controlled by single ideological group as being on its way to totalitarianism. That is because those who sieze control become the final judges as to what protects the people.
I agree with Veith when he says that democracies can become totalitarian. But then why not accept the, from what I am told is, the cultural Marxist view of democracy? That democracy is not just a set of political procedures, it is a state of being where all people equally share society and the state. To view government as representing all of its people instead of just some majority, is to hold the silver bullet that can kill any totalitarianism.
The real indicator of possible totalitarian possibilities for any government is not found in government's size, but in its fidelity to all of its people. A government that has other lovers than all of its people will venture off into totalitarianism. And the question is whether an ideology that has a penchant for authoritarianism, like conservatism has, can adequately battle totalitarian urges by itself.
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Oct 29
To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost that calls the Chicago Teacher strike immoral. This appeared in the Acton blog.
Actually, the opposite argument could be better made. To underfund public schools is immoral because it sabotages government's attempt to adequately educate public school students. One way of underfunding is to divert funds from charter schools, which by themselves could never replace public schools. In addition, private charter schools lie outside most of the constraints of a community's democratic processes.
Underfunding results in attacks on teacher morale, increased class sizes, reduced resources, and attacks on student morale. in an age where public education must respond to the infringements from poverty on the educational experience of the students both at school and at home, diverting funds from the public schools to charter schools where the later could never replace the former in terms of serving all students is both illogical and morally questionable because it sabotages the attempts to educate the vast majority of students.
And we should note one other thing. The push for charter schools by conservative religious sources could very well be an anti-government? Why sabotage such government services? It is because the government lies outside of the power of the Church to influence. And that is a fearful prospect when it comes to educating children. In short, the religious support for charter schools could be nothing more than another theater in the turf war between the Church and the secular world.
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