When you can get it for free!
From ourfuture.org:
The modern conservative movement is united less by belief in small government – a traditional constitutional value – than by disdain for government. They don’t just want to shrink it. They want to “drown it in the bathtub.” That willingly courts anarchy and chaos.
Now. I'm not particularly a bright guy. However, if I understand this assertion correctly, only the state keeps us from falling into chaos? I can detect "brainwashing" when I see it. I don't know if the entire conservative movement thinks this way but that's not my concern here. What intrigues is the last bit about "willingly" courting anarchy and chaos. If conservatives wanted that they'd be, well, anarchists. And even then, it doesn't follow that if there's no government there's chaos.
"I disapprove of, disagree with, and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called 'hippies of the right', who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism... Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshipping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs." Ayn Rand.
I'm not sure about the "no government leads to chaos" bit. It screams like a claim made by people only a mother can love.
Didn't Native tribes live and exist without the nation-state concept? How about the Berbers and a host of other cultures, tribes and societies throughout history?
Yeah, well propaganda is written for two kinds of people: those who will buy into it (I didn't say they will necessarily believe it), and those who pay the propagandists to write it.
ReplyDeleteI still think the right of center crowd does need to get back to basics -- one of my earliest rants on my blog. I highly recommend Frederic Bastiat's "The Law" as a good starting point.
http://www.fee.org/pdf/books/The_Law.pdf
It is around and in print, easily available from Amazon.com in paper form.
Each tribe wether nomad or sedentary has a leader who controls everything and those tribes are mostly at war with the nomads intruding on the sedentaries teritories and the sedentaries fighting to keep them out.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't forget that the Saoud family before finding oil on it's range was just a roving group. They are now one of the most totaltarian regime on earth.
Nowhere is there no government.
Thanks Zeus. It's been years I've been wanting to relook at Bastiat.
ReplyDeletePaul, that's why I said nation-state and avoided using the term "democratic" because as you say, many of those tribes were in control of one person or a council. But they weren't "governments" in our sense. They were "free" from the empires among them at large to control them.
Having a structure in place to maintain order is a necessity but I bet you most of those tribes were more "democratic" than we are. I'll stop here because I'm way beyond my element to comment.
The question is if the assertion has merit.
The assertion has some merit if not taken absolutely. Like anything else it would need some nuances since nothing is black and white.
ReplyDeleteJohn Locke has some interesting comments about Government that are worth looking at too in his two treatises on Government. Again, a back to the basics couple of works that folks to the right of center should be looking at again rather than just bitching about Obama.
ReplyDeletehttp://zeusiswatching.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/get-to-work-or-just-shut-up-in-color/
ReplyDeletehttp://zeusiswatching.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/john-locke-and-load/
These two links are part of my back to basics point I try to make. A lot of useful links are embedded in the postings. I try to use embedded links often so people can go and read and think for themselves.