Plenty of cults exist - every cult has its 'religious dogma', its idols, its 'prophets', its 'science', its 'proof' and its intolerant liturgy of demands. Cults everywhere: Corona, 'The Science' or Scientism, Islam, the State, the cult of Gender Fascism, Marxism, Darwin and Evolution, Globaloneywarming, Changing Climate, Abortion...
Tempus Fugit Memento Mori - Time Flies Remember Death
The desire to bury the individual into the mass is always strong
by StFerdIII
Throughout history there have been two basic forms of social organization: orientalism and individualism. In the twentieth-century orientalism has taken many forms: socialism, fascism, nazism, welfare-statism, Islamic fascism and communism are its more notable variations. The only social system commensurate with individualism is laissez-faire capitalism and in particular its political-economic model of orthodox liberalism. This model premised on individuality, the rule of law, the recognition of limits and parameters and the imposition of responsibility – both individual and social – as well as the understanding that markets and consumer choice are the best guarantors of innovation and supply. Yet sadly the Western model and method, is rarely defended in the modern world. George W Bush is a notable exception, but even he is a big spending large government ‘compassionate’ conservative. There are unfortunately few who will postulate on the immorality and corruption of ever expanding government largesse.
As Hobbes remarked life before the advent of limiting tyrannical government through a constitutional division of powers, market capitalism, a middle class, and the explosion of service and products matched by price to consumer demands and needs, was a nasty brutish and very short affair. The extraordinary level of material prosperity and political reformation achieved by the capitalist system over the course of the last two-hundred years is not only a historical oddity, but a fragile revolution that can lapse into tyranny if not defended. The system of orthodox liberalism is not only efficient, and ingenious, but morally uplifting and spiritual.
Sadly very few people are willing to defend capitalism as morally uplifting. It has been fashionable among college professors, journalists, and politicians for 100 years to jeer at the free-enterprise system. These self serving elitists demand that we recognize the modern system of market economics as baseless, callous, exploitative, dehumanizing, alienating, and ultimately enslaving. Amusingly and paradoxically most of these intellectual gadfly’s are dependent on the extortion of other people’s money to allow them the freedom to create bizarre theories ranging from neo-colonialism, economic autarchy, class exploitation or the capitalist curse as the ‘root cause’ of Terrorism. Marx after all survived only due to the largesse of his capitalist and rich friend Mr. Engels.
The soi-disant intellectuals’ creed, obnoxious and illiterate, is basically the following. In the perfect theoretical world of ignoring the true human condition and appetite for improvement and self realization, socialism is the morally superior system since all results are equal. Guaranteed results in all areas of life are to be the norm. Socialism is better since it destroys complexity. Spiritual debate, inner meaning, choice, hard work, thinking and innovation are unnecessary. Socialism wants to submerge the individual under a massive government regime in which individuals are collectivized like cattle and follow rules. The moral absolute of socialism is achieved by a ruling class of intellectuals, bureaucrats and social planners who decide what people want or what is good for society and then use the coercive power of the State to adjudicate, regulate, tax, and redistribute the wealth of those who work for a living. In other words, socialism is a form of legalized theft, property appropriation and criminality. Such a creed is not only insipid but immoral.
The immorality of socialism can be summed-up in two words: theft and obeisance. Theft is the desire to possess another’s wealth or to ensure that another’s wealth is lowered to your own level. Socialism’s teaching on obeisance can be summarized by two of its greatest defenders, Hermann Goering and Bennito Mussolini. The highest principle of Nazism (National Socialism), said Goering, is: "Common good comes before private good." Fascism, said Mussolini, is " a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his own private interests…realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies." Socialism is the social system which uses force and compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer class for its redistribution to the parasitical class. To achieve such theft it forces its will unto the population telling its citizens to endure ‘sacrifice’ for the common good. Orwellian loudspeakers proclaim that love, justice and equality of result are to be enshrined, and while some pigs are more equal than others, the vast majority of farm animals will animate their lives through the miserable religion of state sanctioned fear and force. The mantra is truly ‘Comply or else!’. The state religion is manifest in its violence.
Socialism’s warped desire to submerge you the individual into the state, is nothing more than orientalism. Western enlightenment and our Judeo-Christian framework makes a mockery out of political systems that are orientalist and despotic. Socialism is no different than the God King system of the Near East, the communist ideal of the party dominated state, or the Islamic belief that only bending to Allah’s will is important. Orientalism and socialism are systems of immorality and destruction. The fascist ideology of modern Islam is but an expression of such perversity, as was the communist and nazi ideologies which butchered 100 millions in 20 years during the early 20th century. The rape of mankind is premised on the socialist – orientalist contention that forced submission to state control – whether in the godless communitarian form of Stalinism – or the fascist Islamic form of mullah control – is the proper fate of men.
This singular and sick obsession with control animates the ‘intellectuals’’ psychotic hatred of orthodox liberalism and capitalist systems. Their hatred is fueled by the unimaginable ideal of not being able to control, regulate and pacify. Leftists, Democrats, Canadian Liberals and weak kneed EU-philes rage over the apparent illness that informs capitalism – specifically its appeal to freedom, liberty and individual rights. Capitalism is the only moral system because it requires human beings to deal with one another as contracted freed men -- that is, as free moral agents interacting on the basis of mutual consent. Such a philosophy is antithetical to the modern orientalist bureaucracy.
Capitalism with its latin root Caput or head, is the only just system because the sole criterion that determines the value of anything [time, product, love, money or any item], which is exchanged, is the free, voluntary, universal judgment of the individual. Coercion and fraud are anathema to the free-market system. It is both moral and just because the degree to which man rises or falls in society is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind. Capitalism is the only social system that rewards merit, ability and achievement, regardless of one’s birth or station in life.
The requirements for success in a free society demand that ordinary citizens order their lives in accordance with certain virtues. As written elsewhere capitalism would fail if the system was immoral. All orientalist systems have failed due to their ignorance of freedom and individuality and lack of respect for private property and for morality. In the Western world rationality, independence, industriousness, prudence, frugality, and caring for those in need are the moral hallmarks of a free society. In a free capitalist society individuals must choose for themselves how they will order their lives and the values they will pursue. Under socialism, most of life’s decisions are made for you.
Both socialism and capitalism have incentive programs. Under socialism there are built-in incentives to ignore responsibility and claim ‘rights.’ I am born therefore I deserve. There is no reason to work harder than anyone else because the rewards are shared and therefore minimal to the hard-working individual; indeed, the incentive is to work less than others because the immediate loss is shared. This is embedded in such crassly dumb programs as Canada’s Federal redistribution program in which some richer areas of the country compensate other poorer areas which are badly managed, incompetent, corrupt and statist. There is simply no reason to perform well or excel. Soak the rich, and give to the poor !
So who wins in the society of the mind ? The winners are those who are honest, industrious, thoughtful, prudent, frugal, responsible, disciplined, and efficient. The losers are those who are shiftless, lazy, imprudent, extravagant, negligent, impractical, and inefficient. Capitalism is the only social system that rewards virtue and punishes vice. It applies to all in society. What then are the social and political conditions which encourage or inhibit the entrepreneurial mind? The free-enterprise system is not possible without the sanctity of private property, the freedom of contract, free trade and the rule of law.
The most valuable right is that of freedom--the freedom to experiment, invent and produce. The one thing that the individual free man dreads most is government intervention. Government taxation and regulation are the means by which social planners punish and restrict the man or woman of ideas. Welfare, regulations, taxes, tariffs, minimum-wage laws are all immoral because they use the coercive power of the state to organize human choice and action; they’re immoral because they inhibit or deny the freedom to choose how we live our lives; they’re immoral because they deny our right to live as autonomous moral agents; and they’re immoral because they deny our essential humanity.
Such immorality is embedded in modern ‘Welfare States’. Modern socialism is just the expression of age old orientalism. Bow to Gods. Believe socialist propaganda. Be a good little tax paying serf. Obey the divine right. Submerge yourself into an intellectual landscape of conformity, theft and obeisance. Deny your right to exist, think, create and contract. Demand your rights. Steal another’s property. Pacify dissent through redistribution.
Such orientalist ideals are old and none of them promote freedom, morality, respect or human rights. These were the ideals of the Persian Satraps, Chinese despots, Russian Tsars, European Sun Kings, and the Islamic warrior Caliphs. One would have thought such lunacy would have long ago been rejected by a rational West. Sadly such ideals continue to permeate most modern national-social constructs.
