Lew Rockwell On The Dangers Of Leftism

Echoing my post from a few days ago:

Thus are we again reminded of what a profound threat the left represents to liberty. It's been more than a decade now since we've seen this at work, and probably longer really. Clinton was a pain but he was smart enough not to take his reigning ideological framework too seriously. He actually showed some deference to reality from time to time.

The Obamaites are different. They are woefully ignorant of economics. They seem to actually believe all that socialist claptrap that has provided an excuse for innumerable foreign dictators: the idea that government is the source of wealth, and can make anything happen with the push of a button.

They see no limits to the possibility that government can make society perfect, righting every perceived social injustice, and bringing prosperity to all via stealing from the haves and giving it to the have-nots. Is there inequality? Mandate equality. Is there deprivation? Provide! Recession? Spend hundreds of billions!

What we have here is not just a profound love of the state; it is a profound confidence in the capacity of the unlimited state to create heaven on earth. How does this square with the idea of human liberty, of social cooperation and the rights of all? Herein lies the great mystery of leftism. The left seems oblivious to the relationship between their chosen means and their ends. It's not that they hate liberty as such [I disagree here--Cork]; it is that they believe that it must always take a backseat to other social priorities like equality. In the end, they have a tendency to build the total state and find themselves taken aback when the whole of society is caged.

Those Obamaites! So compassionate, loving, universally minded, progressive – except that their ideological cousins managed to starve and destroy whole civilizations. Loyalty to their creed means death because their ideology is the pathway to the gulag, and for one simple reason: their preferred means of social change is the state. The state is always and everywhere a threat to liberty, and liberty is the basic building block of prosperity and civilization.