There’s no reason for me to criticise the left-wing politics any more. They are so obviously insane that nobody in his right mind needs any kind of argument regarding this. However, I am increasingly troubled by the right-wing apologists, and I’m going to explain my reasoning here. However, this might be difficult since I’ve been thinking about this extensively and the depth and scope of my true analysis will certainly exceed the limitations of a single article. For this reason, I’ll try to start with the conclusion, and then branch the argument further until I get something usable.
The conclusion is that they have nothing to offer that hadn’t been tried already, and the attempts to fix the problems that arose in the historical attempts to implement their ideas gradually produced the mess of a political scene and, on a more profound level, a dysfunctional civilization in the process of collapse.
They offer nationalism as a remedy for globalism, secularism as a remedy for the infiltration of Islam into the social fabric of the West, occasionally they resort to some sort of a spiritually vapid form of Christianity as a remedy for the even more spiritually vapid secular atheism, they assume that the separation of Church and State is the way to go, democracy is implicitly assumed as a superior solution, they never question the concept of the rule of law as opposed to the rule of specific individuals, they never question the concept of shielding oneself from the corruptibility of individuals by resorting to impersonal bureaucracy and legislature, they never question equality of individuals before law, and so on. However, we already are very close to the end-result of following those implicit premises to their logical conclusions, into madness and evil.
What the right-wing apologists are saying now is that they would like secularism and separation of rule from person, but that’s how we got the slaughterhouse that was the French revolution. They say that nationalism is preferable to globalism and internationalism, but nationalism resulted in two world wars of the 20th century, and internationalism and globalism were thought of as remedies for the evils and extremes of nationalism. They ridicule the leftist gender bullshit and extreme egalitarianism, but all those things were the result of accepting the assumption that Hitler was wrong in the core aspects of his politics, and that he was defeated in the second world war because he was wrong, not because he had weaker military and less resources. You can’t be both virgin and fucked. Hitler came to power as a remedy for the leftist madness of the Weimar republic, which was very similar to what we are having today. What the right-wingers of today are tiptoeing around is the fact that Hitler was more right than he was wrong. He was wrong about solving problems with genocide. He was wrong saying that the Germans are a superior race, and then in the same breath saying they need help competing with the Jews in a meritocratic society. He, too, tried to have it both ways – if the Germans are superior, then you don’t need genocide, racial laws, and segregation of the “inferior races”. If you consistently implement meritocracy, the superior ones will win, however the results might not be neatly aligned across racial and national lines, which is why Hitler couldn’t allow it; the results would contradict his ideology. He was right about opposing degeneracy in art, culture and science. He was right saying that the nature and the environment must be protected. He was right stating that the races and people are different and that there are superior and inferior ones, he just couldn’t bear to act as if this was actually a fact and introduce completely meritocratic laws. He was right stating that the genetically defective humans should not reproduce and that human reproduction should conform to eugenic guidelines, he just forgot that implementing eugenics without regard to compassion and love would produce a dysgenic human race. He was wrong about many things, but he was also right about enough things that he ought not be dismissed out of hand without carefully considering his arguments, and he was certainly not wrong enough to be used as a standard for evil and wrongness. However, if there’s something both left and right of today’s politics agree on, it’s that Hitler was evil and that the “good guys” won the second world war. Also, they agree that the right side won the French revolution, and that all basic precepts of secularism are valid. This is why the political right of today is unable to offer solutions that don’t consist of performing a rollback to some already tried and failed state. They have no original, new, radical solutions. Nothing that hasn’t already been tried, and nothing that hasn’t already failed so badly that it produced the main-stream politics of today as an attempted solution.
It’s interesting how the Jews act as if Hitler was more right than he was wrong; they accept the fact that there are races of different value, they just think they are the superior race. They accept the fact that a superior race can use genocide and violence against inferior races and peoples that threaten it, and they use those measures against the Arabs. Basically, the only thing they have against Hitler is that he was on the opposite side and a threat, but they accept his basic assumptions and methods. If they can do this, and they would in theory have every right to assume he was wrong about everything and accept him as the etalon of evil, where opposite of Hitler is good, there is obviously something quite not right about the European right-wing in their willingness to accept the assumptions that Israel, despite all reasons for the opposite, was unwilling to accept. That’s why Israel is, in my opinion, a spiritually much healthier society than Europe. They, at least, are ready to accept the premise that they are the best, that they are worthy, that they have the right to assume supremacy and rule over others, and if something is different from them, it’s probably because it’s worse. If a civilization is unwilling to accept those premises, it ceases to defend its right to exist and to fight others for supremacy and, even existence. If a civilization, or a person, approaches life from a position of cynicism and scepticism towards oneself, it is by definition degenerate and in the process of extinction. If you don’t think you’re the best, you are basically calling others with less scruples to wipe you out and take your place. That’s how things work. You can’t have a healthy, or even sane society if you are unwilling to accept the fact that the same fair rules must apply to everyone, and that those who succeeded under those rules deserved to succeed, and those who didn’t most likely deserved to fail. And you also can’t have a sane and functional society if you are unwilling to inspect those who failed and determine which ones failed due to no fault of their own and help them as a community, and which ones failed because they are no good, and allow them to suffer the consequences of their poor choices and serve as a reminder to others.
I wanted to type something for a while now but I felt that the timing wasn’t right, and whenever I would decide to finally type it you would say something that would make me reconsider the whole thing. I know I might get flak for some of the views but I looked at this from few different angles and I’m unable to see where exactly I err.
The main problem with the right wing that I have is that.. the right wing isn’t really the right wing. The liberals (classical, libertarians, whatever) and the egalitarians are the two factions of what I call the “bipolar left” (two pillars of the French revolution – liberte and egalite), and almost everyone in the West primarily follows these ideologies (although the ratio differs). Actual right wingers (and right wing style of thinking) got decimated during the French revolution and afterwards by this unholy alliance. Just to get over the semantics: for me, the right wing approach is quality-based and reality-based approach. Left wing approach is dysfunctional, focused on utopias and illusion, it’s against hierarchy; egalitarianism denies quality itself while liberalism equalizes the value of everything and so the effect in the end is the same. This doesn’t seem to contradict your first article on the left and right (in that what you said there can just as well be applied to liberalism), but is a bit different from seeing liberalism as the extreme opposite of egalitarianism. They are opposites the same way that being burned to death is the opposite of freezing to death, but in every relevant way it is life that opposes both.
I initially wanted to comment just on liberalism because I was curious why it’s getting a free pass; what am I missing, is it because it’s relatively better than egalitarianism and these two ideologies are pretty much all we have left in the West, or is it something else. Since this article is about the right wing in general, I’ll make some modifications.
Current view of liberals is that the West is becoming more and more far-leftist and the solution to this is “more liberalism”. That America is the best country in the history of the world. And that the West got almost everything ‘right’ and now just needs to maintain the course and not stray into far-leftism. I have a problem with all of this. I’m not sure that modern West got anything ‘right’, other than accidentally, for a brief moment while the pendulum was swinging. And the West was never as liberal as it is today. It is so liberal now that you can even choose your own gender. This is not the far-leftist thing as is often seen. In essence, It’s liberalism at the extreme. This is the ideology that puts liberty as the foremost principle (motto is basically: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”), and just as egalitarianism is inherently totalitarian, liberalism is inherently hypocritical. It’s pretty much impossible to find a liberal who sticks to his principles and every liberal view contradicts another liberal view.
Liberalism is not functional on any level. On the level of an individual liberalism is the lack of self control. On the level of society / civilization.. I can’t think of a single historical example of a functional liberalism. When there is liberalism it’s few moments before the collapse, and the formula is always the same: more liberalism, faster disintegration. Liberalism doesn’t work even in the spiritual sphere. Hell is not a concept that to me seems compatible with liberalism. And while I don’t want to presume too much, I hope you won’t mind if I use something you wrote about to make a point here. The way that I see it, that divine being whose task was giving permissions for the creation of worlds had the role of the state, and his position exist(ed) exactly because there was no liberalism. Moreover, it could be said that liberalism is what killed him.
Paradoxically, the end result of the far-left (which is against oppression and poverty) is more oppression and poverty. The end result of liberalism is actually less freedom, not more.
The “right” wingers in the West are a mixture of the elements of liberalism, egalitarianism, and of the actual right wing. As politically incorrect as this may sound, I don’t think the “right” wingers seem less insane than the far-leftists because they are more liberal. Mostly, it’s because more of their views are right wing. Liberal ideas are fantasies, not unlike utopian socialism, and they are so detached from reality that usually even liberals themselves choose egalitarian or right wing approach in practical situations. This becomes obvious when one observes how they act when they have power and are in a position to make decisions.
Let’s look at the essence:
Democracy is an egalitarian political system and almost all “right” wingers are for it, even liberals who are supposed to choose anarchy (which they don’t because it doesn’t work at all, although I understand the frustration that would make anarchy appealing). As for the right wing political systems, bipolar left does not allow them. You can’t create a right wing political party because it would be declared unconstitutional (it can’t be against democracy and it can’t be for discrimination).
These days everyone who isn’t a far-leftist is talking against equality of outcome.. but democracy is supposedly still the best system ever. Even though no matter who you are and what you achieve you will never have more than one voting point. Which is equality of outcome. Do they try to compare various groups of people using any metrics at all, or do they just conclude that, no matter what, the groups (religious, genders, sexual orientations, ethnicities, whatever) are equal? That’s equality of outcome.
Migration crises. Is it only the fault of the far-left? Would the far-left alone be able to pull it off so easily without any meaningful resistance? The truth is that liberals are not against it, especially libertarians. And if they say they are, they’re just being hypocrites and not acting in a principled manner. On what ideological basis is a liberal, especially libertarian, opposing this migration? Borders are a state construct, so who cares about that. And people should be free and not tied to the land like some medieval serfs. The only thing that a liberal can say is that these migrants should not receive welfare. But millions of Africans and Muslims moving into Europe is perfectly in line with liberal ideas of freedom and tolerance. Yes, we will end up with less freedom in the end but that’s exactly how liberalism works.
How does the foreign policy of America look like? Such free country, and a huge favorite of all liberals, is supposed to have a liberal foreign policy, right? Live and let live, and all that? Then why is American foreign policy the most totalitarian one not just now but in the history of the world? I can’t think of a single other country that, if we take into account its entire existence, had more totalitarian foreign policy than the US. Some of the reasons why the US doesn’t have liberal foreign policy is that liberal approach is terrible if you want to spread liberalism around the world, and it’s terrible for defense. Liberals outsource that to the egalitarians. That’s how it’s been since the French revolution. But why would the liberals need the rest of the world to be liberal, they can just enjoy living in their own place? Well, not really. Because tolerant liberalism is so useless at defense, the entire world needs to be domesticated, tamed. The mere existence of those who oppose American civilization is not just a matter of economic prosperity of America. It’s a matter of life and death for liberals and liberalism, which is why so many of the “right” wingers (yes, libertarians included) are ready to throw everyone else under the bus. This is pure instinct. They will talk fervently about non-violence, truth, and how freedom of speech should exist especially if someone disagrees with what is being said, but exceptions are always made for those America wants to crush because they oppose it. This was much easier when the only ones opposing America were the communists and Muslims, and it’s tricky now against “thug” Putin and “communist” China. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t bet on the far-leftist pressing the nuclear button in the US. I would bet on the liberal.
This also explains why the liberals are against power and powerful individuals. There’s nothing liberal about the system of “checks and balances”. And yet, the reason why liberals are for that is because they want their (their) freedom at all cost, and a powerful individual is a threat to them.
Freedom of speech. This is a huge topic in itself so I have to sum it up somehow. Something is deeply wrong when people say that the biggest achievement of the Western civilization is essentially the ability to freely insult everyone and everything. How the end result of that looks like we can see on the example of Sisupala who was exercising his right of free speech, and who was executed on the spot by Krishna (who apparently didn’t share his ideals). The alternative to totalitarian censorship and oppression isn’t free speech, it’s quality speech. At least as an ideal. But I do want to point out something here. The West was never as free as some people think, and it never had as much of freedom of speech as some imagine. Newspapers were being bought by the same people in order to have control over speech, and the only reason Internet had more freedom in the beginning is because it wasn’t seen as a threat but just some place where nerds gather to do nerdy stuff. Also, it just so happens that when you share certain ideology you don’t notice the censorship because what is being censored is “common sense”. It was something bad anyway, so it doesn’t count as censorship or oppression. At one point I got annoyed by someone who was telling me how free America is, that I decided to visit many online places where people come to comment. I was very polite because I didn’t want to get censored due to “attitude” which would defeat the purpose of the experiment. Long story short, it’s incredibly easy to get censored just about anywhere if you don’t toe the bipolar party line (it usually takes just one right wing sentence). And I don’t mean just the obvious far-leftist places. Subreddit for Trump supporters, for example, censors every single criticism (literary) of Trump, and moderators there say that it’s because the subreddit is basically a rally for Trump and that’s that. There was a huge amount of people who were voicing their disapproval with Trump’s war crime of bombing Syria, and they all got banned and got called “cucks” by other Trump supporters. There was one notable exception: MGTOW subreddit. I had to get more provocative and even then people there calmly argued their point. All in all, for all the talk about the freedom of speech, I’ve seen a huge difference between what people preach when they are in a vulnerable position and their income depends on free speech, and how they act in their own domain where they have the power to censor. This whole thing with YouTube is also entertaining, in that the same (liberal) people who are all for private property, free market, and even against the state, wish that the state would regulate YouTube’s monopoly and think YouTube should allow everyone to be on its property and voice any opinions, even those critical of YouTube. I disagree with the quality of YouTube’s censorship, but what exactly are the principles being used here? Especially since some people who criticize censorship censor a lot of comments posted under their video, often for trivial reasons.
Secularism is atheism in disguise. When the state and the religion are separated the result is atheism and not some kind of equal playing field. Secularism is another nice example of the convergence of egalitarians and liberals. There’s nothing right wing about secularism. But it suits egalitarians for obvious reasons – equality. And of course the only way to make religions equal is to make them equally impotent and irrelevant. It also suits liberals because a powerful authority, in this case religious, is a threat to their freedom (regardless of the quality of the authority). Since no one and nothing can function in a neutral state without an ideology of any kind, different countries compensate in different ways. The West went with human rights, which is nothing but democratization of values. It’s all pleasant sounding, doesn’t cost anyone anything, and it’s completely empty. For comparison, while Russia is formally secular it is somewhat compensating by leaning on religion (Orthodoxy), and some of the things Putin said are pretty much a rejection of secularism. China compensates in a bit different way, with what could be called a quasi-religious approach. And while the leader (Xi) is an atheist (at least formally), here are some interesting things. His mother was a Tibetan Buddhist. His wife is a Tibetan Buddhist. According to Wikileaks document (American intel on Xi), his childhood friend who now lives in the US said that he is very knowledgeable about Buddhism, fascinated with Buddhist martial arts, qigong and Buddhist sacred sites. Also, some monk said that Xi privately practices Buddhism (no idea if it’s true). Reuters article: “Xi Jinping believes China is losing its moral compass and he wants the ruling Communist Party to be more tolerant of traditional faiths in the hope these will help fill a vacuum created by the country’s breakneck growth and rush to get rich”, “hopes China’s “traditional cultures” or faiths – Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism – will help fill a void that has allowed corruption to flourish”, “understands that the anti-corruption (drive) can only cure symptoms and that reform of the political system and faiths are needed to cure the disease of corruption”; “The following month, Xi called for building both a “material and spiritual civilization”.
In your article all the things that you listed are the byproduct of the bipolar left. There is one exception and that’s anti-globalism. And this is primarily because of tribalism, which I guess isn’t limited to the right wing or the West. It’s not that they are against globalism in general. They don’t have actual principles. When America/West is the apex predator, then the right wing is all for globalism. But now when America/West is no longer the apex predator, now globalism is bad. But it’s only bad in areas where America/West lost the dominance (such as the economy/trade).
I recommend the book “Er ist wieder da” (Croatian: Open on). They also made a movie, which I fast forwarded because it’s awful and completely misses the mark. The book is entertaining and wrapped up as a satire which is why the author was able to write politically incorrect views.
I don’t see anything really controversial in there. 🙂
However, I have a problem: I have to watch what I say in public, the way I had to watch myself when communists were in power in Yugoslavia.
The problem with liberalism is that I’m quite liberal myself; not in a sense that there’s no distinction between right and wrong, but in a sense that there are many areas where those things don’t apply. In those areas, I advocate for the position of doing whatever and let the results show which is better. Cars, cameras, computers – I am quite liberal. The same goes for the private lives of people, and even for a certain layer of religious belief, where I essentially don’t care as long as the results are good. However, on the other hand I would never dream of forcing the majority to accept my beliefs and life choices as the norm – why, because that’s what people try to do when they are unsure of themselves. They try to normalize their choices, to the point where it appears to be the only right choice. True, there are areas where there is only one right choice, but there are many more areas where you have multiple correct paths, any many more ways of getting things wrong. My idea of spiritual evolution doesn’t produce carbon-copied saints, who all made the same choices and ended up in the same place. But, again, that doesn’t mean that all paths and outcomes are valid. There is right and wrong. Also, I’m not always for “be and let be” – sometimes you need to openly fight. So, it’s not that liberalism is necessarily wrong, but when you combine liberalism with nihilism, you get the perfect shitstorm.
Also, when I say I’m a meritocrat, I don’t think people understand how extremely I mean it. I mean it in a way that a perfect manifestation of God needs to have absolute power and authority, and people with no virtues don’t have any rights or authority. It’s not a democracy.
Yes, well, I’m aware of some of your liberal-leaning sentiments 😉 With the emphasize on leaning. The way I see it you’re a right winger who is simply closer to the liberal extreme than to egalitarian (totalitarian) one. That’s where I am on a lot of issues so it’s not that I disagree. I don’t see that as liberalism. You’re not sacrificing other principles for the sake of “liberty”. You say that you don’t care about religious belief as long as the results are good. That’s not liberalism 🙂 It would be liberalism if you tolerated every kind of religious belief no matter what, and said that it’s all the same thing anyway. As for the private lives of other people, I also don’t care what they do, but if that means listening to loud music all night long then I’m all for some quality control. I’m for the sanctity of home and privacy, and don’t agree with stuff such as ‘we have to spy on people in order to prevent terrorism’ because I think there are plenty of right wing (and not so liberal) methods that reduce terrorism to (near) zero (yes, eugenics being one of them). As for beliefs and life choices, it would be too boring for me if everyone had the same lifestyle, and my life preferences wouldn’t work for the majority. But I am not okay with Islamic lifestyle, and I’m not okay with certain lifestyles being too widespread and influential. If there are few communists – who cares. But if you do nothing because liberalism.. and suddenly a critical portion of the population is communists or Muslims or whatever, then you got defeated by your own ideology. Liberalism is not flexible enough to deal with the complexities of real life situations, which is a trait it shares with egalitarianism whose proponents want everyone to live by their book that has few simplistic rules.
Your last paragraph is anti-liberal to the extreme 🙂 Liberalism is not compatible with anything you wrote there. Proper liberal view would be this: American space program was a socialist criminal enterprise. The government stole the money from the people and distributed it to scientists and astronauts. 😉
Btw, I watched that video you liked on YouTube, in which someone tries anarchy in a computer game. It was quite entertaining, but the game doesn’t simulate any of the drawbacks of anarchy, and there was no human factor involved. He should try a sandbox multiplayer game. The video is best summed up with words he said in the beginning: ‘I’ll start on an island..’
I define it as being meritocratic, with my experience of God being my etalon of merit. So basically, I don’t care how someone approaches things or what he does, as long as the results are good. Also, if the results are shit, I also don’t care how he got there: there are supposed yogis who are insane, corrupt and worthless, and I’m certainly not going to defend them just because they supposedly practiced something I generally approve of. Neither am I going to condemn a Muslim who attained enlightenment just because he supposedly practiced something I disprove of in principle. So yes, I’m liberal in a sense that I am generally permissive of many approaches and paths, but I’m also very judgmental about the results, and if they are shit, I will apply fire and brimstone liberally. 🙂
I get that you don’t consider liberalism necessarily wrong when you basically define it as a (more permissive) variant of meritocracy where instead of 5 allowed ways to achieve X, one is allowed 7+ ways. But liberalism is qualitatively different, and that’s my problem with it. As I said before, it’s an ideology that considers liberty to be the foremost principle. Likewise, egalitarianism considers equality to be the foremost principle. To those who are not liberals freedom is a tool. That’s it. Yes, freedom is needed in order to be creative, but it’s not a goal. It’s not possible, by definition, to be both a liberal and a meritocrat.
I’ll list some examples to illustrate the point:
A meritocrat looks at Putin, weighs pro’s and con’s, evaluates his words, actions, results, and reaches a conclusion. A liberal looks at Putin, concludes that he’s authoritarian, calls him derogatory names, and that’s that.
A meritocrat looks at Hong Kong protests, takes a closer look of one side, the other side, reasons behind the protests and how valid they are, the consequences, and so on. A liberal hears that one side is fighting for freedom (despite Hong Kong being top3 in the world according to Human Freedom Index, and having more freedom now than under the UK), that other side is authoritarian, and sides with the freedom fighters. Then these liberals (nomina sunt odiosa) go to HK to make documentaries and YouTube videos in support of the Chinese antifa (a bunch of socialists who feel left behind by HK’s capitalism, who regularly beat everyone who disagrees with them and vandalize their property, traitors to the country they are a part of and which they’re intent on destroying from the inside) despite the fact that these same liberals supposedly have intense hatred for American antifa, violence and what not. “Freedom” and democracy come before any other considerations.
A meritocrat looks at American foreign policy, analyzes it and forms an opinion. A liberal “knows” that America is spreading freedom and democracy around the world, and therefore, exceptions aside (for whatever reason), supports it. In the words of one popular liberal YouTuber (nomina sunt odiosa): “I don’t see anything wrong with American foreign policy”.
A meritocrat looks at how well governments manage countries. A liberal looks at whether certain country is democratic or not, and if it is democratic whether it serves the interests of the US or not.
These examples are political but it would be the same in other areas. Rick Wiles rejected liberalism with one sentence: “We are Christians, not liberals.” That’s it. There’s nothing in Christianity that’s compatible with liberalism. But atheism is compatible. If I wanted to go further I would say that the devil was the first liberal, and liberalism has the same role as the first stage of Islam. If you need a permission to create some messed up world you have to first sell liberalism, because it sure as hell isn’t going to pass any kind of quality control. Liberalism is also possibly the best non-lethal way to neutralize your enemies, as once you turn them into liberals they will chant about tolerance and freedom so you can do whatever you want and they will be ineffective in opposing you. As such liberalism is ideal in neutralizing the more sophisticated and benevolent part of the population. The rest are sold egalitarianism and they participate in “the second stage of Islam”.
And when I say “the first stage of Islam” I mean exactly that. Liberalism is the ideology of the weak, who conveniently metamorphose once they have power. They have a very convenient excuse for explaining this phenomenon, which is that “power corrupts”. Everyone else calls it hypocrisy. If Alex Jones was suddenly given power, he would fire nukes and start WWIII faster than Hillary. In the name of freedom, of course. Since he doesn’t have much power he is limited to complaining about censorship, while at the same time he preaches censoring entire countries and all their inhabitants. Permanently. Other popular liberals/libertarians whom I observed in both a position of weakness and a position of power act in a similar manner.
Liberalism is an ideology that rejects God by definition, and whose adherents don’t care about justice, beauty, or the truth. Christians are taught that the truth will set them free. Liberals are taught that they have the right to freedom of speech, and that if such speech is used for lies and slander then it should be allowed even more so because it proves that there is indeed freedom of speech, which according to them is a great thing. A meritocrat on the other hand doesn’t think that freedom of speech is great. A meritocrat thinks that great speech is great.
And finally, let’s look at the role models liberals/libertarians have. The one that I hear about the most often is Ayn Rand. I don’t know enough about her to go in-depth (nor do I care) but I disagree with almost everything I hear she stands for. When I went to watch her on YouTube (that first interview from 1959) my first reaction right off the bat was that she’s a soulless witch. Five minutes in and I can’t say I changed my mind. Now, I am not saying I’m 100% correct on this in some absolute sense, it’s merely my view, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her, let alone have her as a role model.
Right, well, I sound like a fanboy of a certain communist and atheist country 😉 so I obviously don’t have much of a problem with a Muslim label on someone who is actually a Sufi.
I refuse to be defined by the mutually exclusive ideologies that were created by inferior minds. My thinking is much more layered, complex and tolerant to apparent contradictions. For instance, while I’m primarily individualistic, I understand that an individual is limited to a pool of possible choices, for instance a caveman couldn’t choose to be a computer programmer or an aircraft pilot, so choices necessary for a full manifestation of individuality are created by the environment, or the civilisation. This, then, makes me concede that the collective has great value and one has to deal with its importance while considering the individual. From there also follows the value of order, of having generally beneficial rules. While conceding that, I am also tolerant of the exceptions that do not disturb the statistically beneficial direction, and which make possible for the individuals to manifest their choices that lie outside the accepted norm. Also, while advocating for the freedom of religious choice, I oppose certain religions as false and harmful, not because they are different, but because they are bad. On the other hand, I will support religions I don’t personally practice or even agree with, as long as I see them as generally beneficial. You can say that I’m a meritocratic pragmatist who deals with issues by attempting to understand general statistical patterns and formulate generally beneficial rules, while acknowledging that exceptions will always exist and need to be handled sensitively. If that doesn’t really look like a rule-based system, that’s because it isn’t.
Ok. I don’t disagree with any of that nor do I find it contradictory, and I’m actually glad that you covered the individual/collective aspect as well because I was curious what’s your view on that. These days there’s a fierce competition in the West between the far leftists who are pushing as much as they can in one extreme, and the cult of Grizzly Adams who is pushing in the other extreme.
I’m opposed to those extremist worldviews that try to distill a philosophy that is a complete antithesis of the other side, and social media seems to exacerbate this kind of tribalism. For instance, the state is either the best thing ever or the greatest evil, abortion is either wonderful or evil, either you are a liberal or a Nazi. I don’t think such hysterical dichotomies can lead to anything good or even useful. Everything has a downside in a certain frame of reference. Individualism is great until you’re having some sort of an accident and you depend on the community for help; the state is terrible until a fire or a flood needs to be taken care of, and then you suddenly love the military squadron of Canadair fire planes, or when there’s a hurricane or an earthquake and then Chinese method of handling that turns out to be the best. Socialism is great when you’re poor, but capitalism is great when you’re competent and you want to make your own IT company that can succeed on free market terms.
In many occasions state socialism saved entire cities from natural disasters, while American type of capitalism completely failed in similar circumstances. Also, in matters of scientific research I distrust capitalism, because it is proven that research can be bought and science can be faked if there’s a financial interest. Also, I distrust capitalism in medical care, because to capitalism it is much more profitable to treat your symptoms and get you addicted to expensive drugs and treatment, than to make a simple cure that will solve your problem.
And that’s from someone who profoundly dislikes both socialism and the state. Free market extremists like Ayn Rand simply don’t know what they are talking about, because they take an idea that is perfectly valid within a certain range of conditions and try to generalise it, thus producing a monstrously dysfunctional and blatantly false system.