A reader inquires,
I was wondering if you could expand on a statement you made in Political Correctness and Gender Neutral Language . . . . The statement is as follows: "The Left is totalitarian by its very nature and so it cannot leave any sphere of human concern unpoliticized." I wholeheartedly agree with your statement, but I was wondering if you would explain why the Left must be totalitarian. All I know right now is that it is, and has been from at least the days of Woodrow Wilson and especially FDR.
A huge and daunting topic, but I'll hazard a little sketch.
My statement telescopes two subclaims and an inference. The first subclaim is that the Left is totalitarian, while the second is that it totalitarian by its very nature (as opposed to accidentally). From these two subclaims the conclusion is drawn that the Left cannot (as opposed to does not) leave any sphere of human concern unpoliticized.
1. Is the Left totalitarian? The answer to this depends on what is meant by 'totalitarian.' The word is derived from the Italian totalitario, meaning complete or absolute. The original connection is with Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism. Mussolini referred to his regime as lo stato totalitario, the totalitarian state. But the term 'totalitarian' came also to be applied to Hitler's National Socialism and to Communism. Roughly, 'totalitarian' characterizes those systems of political organization in which the state recognizes no limits to its authority and aims to regulate every aspect of public and private life. By extension, the term applies to political movements and ideologies.
When I say that the Left is totalitarian, I mean that it is a political movement that moves us away from individual liberty and the unregulated pluralism of civil society toward state control of every aspect of our public and private lives, including state control of the economy. This totalitarian drift is readily discernible in the policies of the Obama administration. For example, the Obama health care initiative, with its so-called 'public option,' will increase government interference in health care delivery and reduce individual options. Individuals will be forced by law to carry medical and dental insurance whether they want it or not. The government, which is not subject to market discipline, will be pitted against private sector heath insurers driving up their premiums and driving many of them out of business. The rest of us will be stuck with rationing and inferior care provided by a demoralized corp of doctors who will have no incentive to work hard and long because of government interference with their pay schedules and every other aspect of their professional lives. The drift is toward socialized medicine, i.e., total state control of health care delivery.
Another example is the threat of the reinstatement the Fairness Doctrine or something like it, the aim of which is to squelch dissent in the name of 'fairness.' Examples can be multiplied.
2. But must the Left be totalitarian? Well, what does the Left stand for, and against?
A. It is against religion as against an opiate that promises 'pie in the sky' when 'pie in the future' is attainable, they falsely maintain, by collective human effort orchestrated by a vanguard that sets itself apart from, and above, the masses. Being against religion, the Left is against something that eludes totalitarian control. Religion belongs to private life and so must be opposed as one of the factors that prevent the Left from gaining total control. Leftists in the USA battle religion by way of extermist interpretations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.
B. The Left is against free enterprise and private property, which is the foundation of individual liberty.
C. The Left is against the family as the fundamental building-block of society.
D. The Left is for uniform indoctrination of the population. E.g., it opposes school vouchers and home schooling.
E. The Left is for central planning 'from the top' by an elite that seeks to equalize by, among other things, redistributing wealth via the tax code. The irony, of course, is that to implement their egalitarian schemes, the elite must be unequal in power and privileges to those beneath them who they seek to make equal.
This is a very rough and incomplete sketch. Reams could be written on each of these subtopics.
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