One of the phoniest and utterly unrealistic notions that seem to be bandied about with reckless abandon nowadays is the concept of “community”. We hear of the Mexican-American Community, the African-American Community, the LGBT Community, the Armenian-American Community, as well as other “communities” like the gun-owners community.
Will we soon hear of the hermit-community or the recluse-community?
Community, of course, is a collectivist concept like “society” or “the Nation”. It creates an image of all the people that fall under that label as getting together in some vast hall and agreeing 100% with what the “leaders” or “spokesman” of that community say. You imagine all the members of the Mexican-American community or the Serbian-American community nodding their heads in unison after listening to their spokesman’s proposals.
This unity of voice obviously is untrue. But the idea of “community” fits in very well with the collectivist’s or Marxist’s idea that people are not individuals but rather subsumed into large political or social classes. Marx talks about the proletariat vs the “bosses”, and puts forth the deterministic doctrine that man is doomed to act in accordance with his economic class. He conveniently forgets all the wealthy men who have dedicated their wealth to improving the lot of the poor and even advocated socialist programs, and all the poor people who have been staunch Libertarians as far as respecting property Rights.
Of course, “community” is a valid concept when it comes to small, tightly-knit groups of people who live in close proximity to each other and share a specific ideological dogma. I think it valid to refer to American Indian tribes as communities. Also the Catholic religious orders, the Hippie communes of the 1960s, the American-utopian Brook Farm experiment, the Jewish ultra-orthodox who crowd around one particular rabbi, the Hutterites, and the kibbutz movement in Israel, are all examples of what I would validly call “community”. But when the concept is stretched to include millions of people, like the so-called “Gay and Lesbian Community” or the “Native American Community” it obviously becomes a ridiculous concept with no validity. It is a mental phantom designed to brainwash the perceiver into a collectivist thought-pattern.
So let’s not be fooled by the subtle brainwashing of the thoughtless commentator who speaks of “such-and such” community. They are contributing to the brainwashing of mankind, and the promulgation of the collectivist concept that says man is not an Individual but rather part of a collective — a false idea.
— Paul Grad, Enviro-Vegan Libertarian
Paul Grad for Governor 