In my previous post, I discussed how Fascism destroys the indivisibility of the Individual, and forces him into a collective society, where his every action becomes a manifestation of the “State”.
Now, I think that it is essential,, in any just political structure of society, that the “Individual” be paramount, and the protection of his Property Rights, which include his own body, be the sole function of any Jeffersonian-Libertarian government. This is the only way that tyrannical government will not come to rule the roost; it is the only prophylactic against Tyranny, and political Philosophers like Jefferson and Madison understood this irrefutable fact, validated by the innumerable systems of despotic government that have terrorized mankind since the beginnings of his collective existence. Libertarian government’s spontaneous arrival in any preceding civilizations is a great rarity. In modern times, only Jefferson’s conception of government has any validity; every other system has led to mass murder, or at the least an economic suffocation that has destroyed the fun of human life, as in Cuba under Castro. (The fact that it was worse under Batista is no justifications for Castro’s egregious injustices against Property Rights and Human Dignity.)
Yet, the Fascists are correct in one respect. That is, that the idea of the “individual” is a myth in the modern world, for our consciousness is an admixture of our own original observations along with the influences that the outer society implants in virtually everyone. So, we are mainly the product of the society around us. Raise a child in a capitalist society, and he will probably become a capitalist and praise the free-market system. Raise a child in a communist society, and he will probably praise the collective, and denounce free-market capitalism as immoral. Virtually everyone in the world lives in a state of economic insecurity, when government can inflate and destroy the value of paper currency at will, and at any time, and with war and terrorism disturbing large areas. There is no security under socialism, or the American form of socialism known as social democracy. The individual is always at the mercy of the collective, or rather those who make the decisions in the name of the collective (government bureaucrats), and the approxamately 22% of the population that elects the politicians in our American “democracy”.
So, our consciousness includes not only our own original observations, but the collective brainwashing and conditioning that influences the vast majority of men. Function is important, and quality of function in the practice of earning a living makes for a good society, but the human being is far more than just his function in the capitalist economy. Yet modern society, so-called capitalist or so-called socialist, has reduced human life to pretty much that sole function of working a job. Ask someone who they are, and they will usually define themselves in terms of their job. The Marxist defines an individual as a “worker”. He never mentions a “philosopher”, or a “father”. Children, from an early age, are aware of the pressure to “be something” when they are constantly asked what they want to become, or what they plan to study in school. They see that money is very important to adults, even if the adults say it isn’t, and they know that the way to acquire money is usually through a “job”. So the child is soon on brainwashed into this “you are your job” mentality that so controls most of the Globe.
Some have tried to evade this contamination of the inner individual by the outside society. The Amish, the Hutterites, the Haredi, the Mennonites, and various other religious and communal orders, have attempted to keep out these influences by living in a restricted, isolated manner, but for the vast majority of Americans, their consciousness is daily deluged with a bombardment of outside distractions that fracture their attention. This fracturing is having a profound effect on society, and you can see it in the speech patterns of many young “intellectuals”, who seem unable to speak in complete, unbroken sentences, and must utilize dozens of qualifiers and digressionary tangents. I’ve been amazed at the inarticulateness of some of the “philosophers”, authors, university professors, and political commentators I’ve heard interviewed on Radio Australia. They can write books, but they cannot speak in complete sentences that go right to the point.
So, the Fascists and Communists are correct in the sense that we are virtually completely conditioned and molded by the influences of the society around us. As “Libertarians”, we are almost completely dependent on : the power company, the internet service provider, the supermarket and its trucks, the auto mechanic, the postman, the Federal Reserve rate decisions, etc. Though Americans verbally eschew Communism, we live in a society where our consciousness is continually subject to communistic infiltration, often in the name of a corporation or business. Several minutes are wasted nightly, on a national level, as people are told a list of the private corporations and donors that contribute to PBS, supposedly a public service which should have no contact with, and should certainly not promote, private corporations. This is technically Fascism, the melding of Government or the State with major corporations, the vision of Mussolini. It is obviously unConstitutional, and highly detrimental to the American public. On the public buses in Los Angeles, riders are subject to a steady stream of commercials, brainwashing and dissipating the energy of their minds as they go to another mind-numbing day at the office. This pollution of consciousness was put together by Liberal Democrats, who applauded the extra revenue this would bring to government. By these examples, we can see the beeline connection between Democrats and Fascism, and how they are slowly destroying society.
So, we are what we think, and what we think is essentially placed there by the outside society. So, therefore, our minds are the collective mind in almost every society on Earth. There are very few originals. The indivisibility of the Individual has been virtually obliterated.
Seeing all this, and seeing that we are mostly the product of the society around us, I believe it is absolutely necessary that, in the political realm, we maintain the fiction of the independent Individual. This is the only way that Fascism or Communism or Socialism will not come to dominate the lives of individual men. Libertarianism is the only political doctrine that will save mankind, for it is the only one based on an unshatterable rock of morality, the Libertarian non-aggression principle: thou shall not aggress against the Person or Property (Rights) of any Individual. In other words a society where there is no coercion whatsoever, except when somebody violates someone else’s property rights.
We may live in a collectivized world, but it is axiomatic, in the political realm, if we want a Libertarian, Jeffersonian Republic based on democratically-decided elections, that we retain the supremacy of the Individual over the collective consciousness.
-Paul Grad, Enviro-Vegan Libertarian, Libertarian Nominee for Governor of Oregon 2014
Paul Grad for Governor 