Hegel is the true godfather of the nanny state, or welfare state—with Plato standing beside him at the baptismal font. Unemployment insurance, health and safety regulations, minimum wage laws and aid to dependent children, the income tax and federal deposit insurance: All these become justified as the State acting to protect us from ourselves, because the State is our Better and Higher Self. As Hegel wrote, “The Government, regarded as an organic totality,” is the concrete embodiment of “the indwelling Spirit and the history of the Nation.” It is, he concluded, “the Spirit of the People
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