The State Cannot Teach Men Virtue

A reader with the somewhat calculating name (perhaps expressing when the number of distinct single-digit numbers in a counting system equals the change in time of nothing, or perhaps expressing a Naval station at the mouth of a river containing many marshy streams [but see footnote]) of Base Delta Zero, writes in and asks:

Leaving aside the fact that the American Republican Party just went all-out to turn back the clock to the 1880s, isn’t that pretty much the definition of a conservative? A conservative, by definition, is someone who works to maintain (or ‘conserve’) the existing order.

I have two comments. First, let me mention the definition here, so that no one is mislead by typical linguistic distractions.

The Progressives want to change the world.

Some (the soft sell) just want to change the world peacefully and incrementally to promote what they call greater social justice, by which they mean total control of all aspects of life by the state, that is, totalitarianism.

Others (the hard sell) want to change it violently and suddenly to usher in socialist utopia, that is totalitarianism.

The basic difference is that the soft sells would let you keep private property in name only, provided you used to as the state directs, whereas the hard sells would expropriate your property.

Both agree that the world is a ruthless Darwinian competition between oppressors and the oppressed, and one must side with the oppressed, no matter the merits of the case.

The hard sells identify the oppressed as the workingman, and the oppressor as Rich Uncle Pennybags from the Monopoly Game.

The soft sells identify the oppressed as a random collection of mascots (women, youths, certain sexual perverts but not others, Blacks, illegal aliens, Muslims, American Indians) and the oppressors as White Christian Males. Irish Catholics and Jews used to be members of the oppressed mascots, but now are oppressors. Orientals are oppressed except when they want to study hard and go to college, in which case they are oppressors. Or something like that.

So in the Progressive worldview, historical forces are always moving society in the direction of totalitarianism, that is, social justice, and anyone who opposes the forces of history is called a ‘reactionary’ or a ‘conservative’, that is, someone who wants the status quo of today maintained, or a return to the conditions of yesterday.

The implication is that there is no rational reason to prefer the past to the present, merely an inertia, or timidity, lack of imagination, or a desire of the evil exploiters to maintain the current injustices of the world for their own benefit, or a foolishness on the part of the exploited not to see their own degradation.

You see how flattering this conception is to the Progressive.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.