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The Spectacle Blog
There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
Salon’s Michael Lind would do well to reflect on the quote above from liberal journalist Thomas Friedman, from an article praising Chinese authoritarianism. Because he’s written a rambling tract entitled “Why Libartarians Apologize for Autocracy.” In it, he bounces from “Milton Fridman helped Pinochet” (“shaky knowledge of history,” there) to “John Stuart Mill was against universal suffrage” to “dismantling the welfare state isn’t popular.”
There is a lot wrong with this article, but we’ll focus on the grandest of errors. After you get past the guilt-by-association broadsides, what it comes down to is that, for some reason, he considers autocracy to be inextricable from a small-government philosophy. And for some reason, for Lind, the only “pure” progressivism is one that wholeheartedly embraces democracy in all forms.
Never mind his colleague Friedman above; never mind Obama technocrat Peter Orszag and his recent column “Too Much of a Good Thing: Why we need less democracy.” Never mind the intellectual history of the American Left’s infatuation with authoritarianism. To Lind, those are all apostates, impure progressives who have betrayed “the cause.” See how easy it is when you define down the purity of your own side?
Democracies produce policies that many individuals are going to think are sub-optimal, and Lind would agree. I’m sure that Lind would say that our democracy has produced a great number of policy failures. Libertarian and small-government policies usually do prove particularly unpopular, because people like it when taxpayer money is handed out to them. But democracies have proven the best and most stable governments in modern history, and that’s not likely to change. Agreeing that a theoretical and impossible Platonic philosopher-king would produce the best policies doesn’t make an authoritarian.
So, why do liberals apologize for autocracy? For the same reasons libertarians and conservatives do: sometimes they like the policies that come out of them. Don’t make the same mistake that Lind does of conflating ill-advised admiration for wholehearted endorsement.
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More Blog Posts by Kevin Glass
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/10/13/why-liberals-apologize-for-aut
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CalMark| 10.13.11 @ 7:39PM
The primary religion and god of liberals is what used to be (and is once again, liberals having dirtied the term "liberalism" beyond redemption) called Progressivism.. Its teachings are infallible, even when the results are manifestly ineffective, oppressive, and vicious.
The answer? Keep trying: it just wasn't done right. But I/WE/MY GROUP will do it right. Trust us on this.
New Class Traitor | 10.13.11 @ 10:52PM
Lind commits what is known as the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. In trying to explain away the inconvenient flirtations of the REgressive leftist gentry with autocratic forms of government (rooted in their own oligarchic collectivist fantasies), he simply narrows his definition of "true left" to exclude all the inconvenient ones.
Lind would have made a better case if he identified his cause as left-populism. In fact, the populist left and the populist right/"Tea Party", at loggerheads about so many things, share a common enemy: the quasi-permanent Ruling Class/New Class.
martin j smith| 10.14.11 @ 7:51AM
Liberals ( Socialists ) do not like democracy because they want to be in control. democracy makes things inconvenient for them That is how I see it. One tinny example: Remember that Gov: in one of the Carolinas ( North I think not sure ) who talked about cancelling Congressional elections. That is what I mean.
martin j smith| 10.14.11 @ 8:15AM
Totalitarian Governments often come to power thru revolution which they either initiate or coopt. In the case of this country I look at the Occupy X city Movement. Now these are not spontaneously originated movements. These were organized by a coalition of groups such as Socialist,Communist Anarchists and other Radical Left groups.
But,for various reasons there are many fellow travelers whose motivations vary. But I focus on the organizers. Who are they and who do they answer to ? Who is financially behind them ?
What is their real,objective. ? To this question apparently at GatewayPundit is a story about Andrew Breitbart stating that has e-mails that demonstrate that the Occupy Movement intends civil unrest, riots to bring down our government.
If this proves to be accurate and true information
then this demonstrates as clearly as anything I can possibly say why any kind of Authoritarian system should be opposed strongly here in America. What we are seeing is a mob--brown shirts, whatever. Mr Glass, do you see what is happening here ?
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