In his excellent book “Liberal Fascism,” Jonah Goldberg writes
The popular conception that Hitler was a man of the right is grounded in a rich complex of assumptions and misconceptions about what constitutes left and right, terms that get increasingly slippery the more you try to nail them down.
(page 56).
This is true precisely because the terms are meaningless. Fascism, Communism, Nazism, Socialism, monarchism, and totalitarianism in any form ALL subjugate the individual to a false “greater good” of the “people” or the “collective.”
They all push the ideology that the state is greater than the person. And that ideology is evil.
Whether or not the state is perceived to be “left” or “right” is only as important as which hand holds the gun to your head. Once the trigger is pulled, it doesn’t matter which hand did the pulling.
Jonah Goldberg has offered his take on where the Tea Partiers where while George W. Bush was expanding government and spending money he didn’t have. (See “Tea parties a delayed Bush backlash.“)
Concerning W’s Big Government Republican proclivity, Goldberg wrote:
Conservatives didn’t necessarily bite their tongues (remember the Harriet Miers and immigration fiascoes), but they did prioritize supporting Bush — often in the face of far nastier attacks than Obama has received — over ideological purity. Besides, where were conservatives supposed to go? Into the arms of John Kerry?
This perfectly illustrates the problem. With our two party system, we are given two bad choices: Expand government a lot, or expand it slightly less.
As long as we accept two bad choices, we’ll keep getting them. If you keep buying tripe for lunch because the only other option is haggis, guess what you’ll keep being offered? Tripe.
You can gag it down while you tell yourself, “well, it sure beats the hell out of haggis.”
We need more options. We need to be creative. The two party system ain’t in the Constitution. Neither is plurality voting. My immediate suggestion is adoption of
approval voting.
I’m open to ideas. I’m begging for ideas! Bring me ideas!
