Social and Political Philosophy – Page 10

What is Cultural Marxism?

Despite the febrile complaints of some leftists, 'cultural Marxism' is a useful term that picks out a genuine cultural phenomenon. It is no myth. Nor is it an anti-Semitic or a racist 'dog whistle.' It is alleged by leftists to be an anti-Semitic conservative slur because the members of the Frankfurt School were mainly Jews, even Adorno. Adorno's original name was not 'Theodor W. Adorno,' but 'Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund.'

But what is cultural Marxism?

For Karl Marx, the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class conflict. In market societies the two main classes in conflict are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which stand to each other as oppressor and oppressed. This is not a conflict that can be mediated: it can be overcome only by the defeat of the oppressors. Herein lies an important difference between (classical) liberalism and Marxist leftism.ⁱ For the latter, politics is war, not a process of bargaining and accommodation on the basis of mutually accepted norms between parties with common interests and a desire to coexist peacefully. Cultural Marxism, retaining both the oppressor-oppressed motif and the belief in the intractability of the conflict, moves beyond classical or economic Marxism by widening the class of the oppressed to include blacks and other 'people of color,' women, male and female homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, Muslims, immigrants legal and illegal, and others deemed to be victims of oppression.

Correspondingly, cultural Marxism widens the class of oppressors to include potentially all whites, males, heterosexuals and religionists, Christians mainly, regardless of their economic status. Thus within the ambit of cultural Marxism, a working-class Southern white male heterosexual Christian ends up among the oppressors. Such are Hillary Clinton's deplorables and irredeemables, and those about whom Barack Obama said, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”ⁱⁱ

^{___________________________}

i cf. Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 17.

ii https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/14/barackobama.uselections2008. Read the sentence carefully. It makes no sense.

Third Parties: Discussion Societies in Political Drag

A so-called 'third party' is any party in U. S. politics other than the Democrats and the Republicans. There are many third parties. My thesis is that third parties are discussion societies in political drag. Corollary to that is my claim that anyone who has anything to do with a third party thereby demonstrates ignorance as to the nature of the political. (Recent possible exception: the Reform Party when it backed Ross Perot.)

Politics is not theoretical; it is practical. There is political theory, of course, and it divides into political science (empirical and non-normative) and political philosophy (normative). But politics is neither of the two. It is praxis, not theoria. The political life is a form of the vita activa, not of the vita contemplativa. Here is a working definition of 'political activity.'

Political activity is human activity in concert with like-minded others in pursuit of governmental power for the purpose of implementing programs and policies contributory to the common worldly good or the worldly good of those the party represents.

Now the vast majority of third parties have no chance of coming to power. It follows that those who vote for third-party candidates are almost in every instance wasting their vote. These voters don't understand the nature of the political as above defined.

Some vote third-party to 'make a statement' or to 'lodge a protest.' But these gestures are futile. No one gives a damn about Joe Blow's 'statement' or 'protest' or would even be aware of them. Consider the American Solidarity Party:

Writing for First Things in July 2016, David McPherson, assistant professor of philosophy at Creighton University, urged voting for the ASP ticket as “a protest vote against a system that presents us with such poor choices.” Moreover, by supporting the ASP, he argued, “‘a man [sets] an example,’ so that the idea of human solidarity, based on the equal dignity of all human beings, may not die away.”

The sentiment is noble, but the proposed course is impractical. Politics is a practical game! It is not about having the right views. That does no good unless one can implement them. And only a fool lets the best become the enemy of the good. Politics is a matter of better or worse, not perfect or imperfect. It is about accomplishing something in the extant suboptimal circumstances.

So what should you do if you are a Libertarian, or rather 'Losertarian'? Do what Ron Paul did: become a Republican and try to push that stodgy bunch in a more libertarian direction. Similarly with ASP members. Stop wasting your time and become Republicans. Try to inject some subsidiarist ideas into the mix.

In 2020, ASP members ought to vote for Trump, and not abstain. It is folly to believe in 'political equivalentism' as between Left and Right in the present constellation of circumstances here in the States.

Don't confuse a discussion society with a political party!

Democratic Socialism?

The label smacks of an oxymoron. Essential to socialism is collective ownership of the means of production. Democratic socialists will presumably want to distinguish socialism from statism, which may be defined as state control of the economy, where the state control is not in turn democratically controlled. Historically, however, the tendency is for supposedly collective, democratic control to transmogrify into control by an elite group of central planners who, exulting in their power, will use all the means at their disposal to hold on to it and expand it — and 'the people' be damned.

The tendency, then, is for socialism to terminate in statism and totalitarianism. Power to the people? Hardly. 'The people' end up among the socially planned and not among the social planners. Either that or they end up in a gulag.

Addendum 8/31. London Ed comments:

Good post, and the seed of an answer to the ‘No true Marxist’ argument. As you say, collective ownership of the means of production is essential to socialism, not just a mere accident.

The next step in the proof would be to show that it is essential, not just accidental, to collective ownership that supposedly collective, democratic control will inevitably transmogrify into ‘control by an elite group of central planners who, exulting in their power, will use all the means at their disposal to hold on to it and expand it’. Hence, the bad history of Marxism is not a mere accident, despite what its supporters claim.

This would be the next step in the proof if a proof in the strict sense could be had. Here socialists enjoy some 'wiggle room.' A strict proof is not available. My first point above is non-negotiable since it is merely a consequence of the definition of 'socialism.' But how do we prove that collective ownership necessarily and inevitably issues in statism and totalitarianism? Of course, repeated failure is a good inductive argument for an ideal's being unrealizable. But induction is not demonstration. Without a demonstration, we cannot deny the socialist his 'wiggle room.'

The Chesterton Move

The true-believing socialist will most likely make what I will call the 'Chesterton move.' G. K. C. famously asserted, or at least implied, that Christianity hasn't failed; it's never been tried. "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. (G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (1910), ch. 1.5)

The idea here is that Christianity is a realizable ideal, but that we simply haven't realized it. Now if an ideal is realizable, then its never having been realized is no apodictic proof of its not being a genuine ideal, one that we ought to try to realize. Our democratic socialist can say something similar. Insufficient attempts have been made properly to implement the socialist ideal; the fact that it has never been achieved is no knock-down argument against the ideal. We have to organize and make a concerted effort and suppress the evil capitalist greed-heads who stand in our way.

The Chesterton Move and the 'No True Marxist' Fallacy

Now if our democratic socialist has available to him the Chesterton Move, then he is in a position to deny that 'No True Marxist' is a fallacy. He can say that true Marxism, or rather true socialism, will not lead to totalitarian tyranny. If it does, then it was not true socialism!

A Deeper Issue

Can we know from experience the natures of things and thus what is possible and impossible? Can we know a posteriori that socialism without totalitarian tyranny is impossible?

The conservative will presumably answer this question in the affirmative, but he won't be able to prove that he is right. Or so say I.

The Aporetics of the Situation

1) An ideal that has never been realized, despite repeated attempts to realize it, cannot be realized.

2) An ideal that cannot be realized is no (genuine) ideal at all

3) Democratic socialism is a genuine ideal.

The above is known in the trade as an antilogism or an inconsistent triad. The limbs of the triad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.

If you are not willing to accept that the triad is a genuine aporia or insolubilium, then you must reject/modify one of the constituent propositions. I don't believe that (2), an analog of the 'Ought implies Can' principle, can be reasonably rejected. So we either reject (1) or (3). I reject (3). The democratic socialist would have to reject (1).

Can I refute him? No. Can he refute me? No. And yet we must act. So I battle socialism and stand with Donald Trump:

America will never be a socialist country!

Watch the video and check out the expression on Bernie Sanders' face. And how about the tribal females all in white?

We are Bothered by Different Things

Brian Kennedy, A Passion to Oppose: John Anderson, Philosopher, Melbourne University Press, 1995, p. 141:

Melbourne intellectuals came to regard [John] Anderson 'as the man who had betrayed the Left, a man who had gone over to the other side. Melburnians wanted Anderson to answer a simple question: was he or was he not interested in the fact that some were very rich and some were very poor?' To this question Anderson replied that 'we are all bothered by different things. That finished him with the Melburnians'. [Kennedy quotes Manning Clark, The Quest for Grace, Melbourne, 1991, p. 193]

"We are all bothered by different things." And even when we are bothered by the same things, we prioritize the objects of botherment differently. Now suppose you and I are bothered by exactly the same things in exactly the same order. There is still room for disagreement and possibly even bitter contention: we are bothered to different degrees by the things that bother us.

"It angers me that that doesn't anger you!" "It angers me that you are insufficiently angered by what angers both of us."

Here then is one root of political disagreement. It is a deep root, perhaps ineradicable. And it is a root of other sorts of disagreement as well. We are bothered by different things.

Are conservatives bothered by gun violence? Yes, of course. But the Americans among them are bothered more by the violation of the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. Liberals, even if they are slightly bothered by the violation of these rights, assuming they admit them in the first place, are much more bothered by gun violence. Now there are factual questions here concerning which agreement is in principle possible, though exceedingly unlikely. For example there is the question whether more guns in the hands of citizens leads to less crime. That is a factual question, but one that is not going to be resolved to the satisfaction of all. Conservatives and liberals disagree about the facts. Each side sees the other as having its own 'facts.'

But deeper than facts lie values. Here the problem becomes truly intractable. We are bothered by different things because we differ about values and their ordering. American conservatives and presumably most liberals value self-reliance but conservatives locate it much higher up in the axiological hierarchy. This probably explains why liberals are more inclined to rely on professional law enforcement for protection against the criminal element even while they bash cops as a bunch of racists eager to hunt down and murder "unarmed black teenagers" such as Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri fame. (Brown was unarmed, but tried to arm himself with the cop's gun. This is an important detail conveniently left out of the biased mainstream media accounts.)

As for what finished Anderson with the Melburnians, he was apparently not sufficiently exercised by (material) inequality for the tastes of the latter despite his being a man of the Left, though not reliably so due to his iconoclasm.

Does it bother conservatives that there is wealth inequality? To some extent. But for a(n American) conservative, liberty trumps equality in the scale of values. With liberals it is the other way around. Liberals of course cherish their brand of rights and liberties and will go to absurd extremes in defending them even when the right to free expression, a big deal with them, spills over into incitement to violence and includes the pollution of the culture with pornography. Of course, this extremism in defense of free expression bangs up against the liberals' own self-imposed limit of political correctness. The trashers of Christianity suddenly become cowards when it comes to the trashing of Islam. That takes more courage than they command. And they are easily cowed by events such as the 7 January 2015 terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Liberals are also absurdly eager to spread the right to vote even at the expense of making the polling places safe for voter fraud. How else do you explain their mindless opposition to photo ID? But not a peep from liberals about 'real' liberties and rights such as gun rights, the right to private property, and the right to freedom from excessive and punitive taxation.

Is material inequality a problem? Not as such. Why should it be?

As I recall John Rawls' Difference Principle, the gist of it is this: Social and economic inequality is justified ONLY IF the inequality makes the worse off better than they would have been without the inequality. Why exactly? If I'm smarter than you, work harder, practice the ancient virtues, avoid the vices, while you are a slacker and a screw-up who nevertheless has what he needs, why is my having more justified ONLY IF it makes you better off than you would have been without the inequality? (Yes, I know all about the Original Position and the Veil of Ignorance, but I don't consider that an argument.)

At the root of our differences are value differences and those, at bottom, are irreconcilable.

On that cheery note, I punch the clock. Have a pleasant weekend.

Too Many Lawyers in Government, not Enough Doctors

(Written 10 September 2012)

Negatively, physicians are not lawyers. Positively, they are scientifically trained without being mere theoreticians: they diagnose, they cut, they sew. They are the plumbers and the auto mechanics of the mortal coil. They grapple at close quarters with recalcitrant matter. They do so fearlessly while lawyers watch, ready to pounce. They don't just talk, write, and argue. Not that the latter aren't important; they are. But balance is also important.

We need more doctors, engineers, and businessmen in government — and fewer lawyers. And a few working stiffs, too. There are truck drivers and pipe fitters who could do the job. How can a government top-heavy with lawyers be representative of the folks?

Lawyers are especially over-represented in the Democrat Party as Michael Medved observes:

By re-nominating Obama and Biden, the Democrats have selected only attorneys for all six of the most recent places on national tickets, cementing their status as the party of lawyers. Meanwhile, none of the last 8 Republicans nominated for president or vice president has been a practicing attorney.

Though Romney won a law degree in a joint program along with his Harvard MBA, he never joined the legal profession. All told, 14 of the last 18 places on Democratic national tickets since 1980 have gone to attorneys, and if Al Gore had finished law school at Vanderbilt before running for Congress, that would have been 17 of 18. The domination of the party by lawyers clearly connects to its propensity to address every problem with legal solutions—legislation, regulations, and law suits—rather than private sector, business initiatives.

None of the above is lawyer bashing. We need lawyers if we are to have a legal system and the rule of law. (And to defend ourselves against lawyers.) But lawyers, like liberals, have given themselves a bad name by their bad behavior. They are too often the sophists of the modern world. Remember the sophists of the ancient world? They knew how to make the weaker argument appear the stronger.

Martin Luther once vented his misology via "Reason is a whore." But nowadays, when whores are sex workers, the Lutheran pronunciamento has lost its sting much as the oldest profession has lost its opprobrium.

Perhaps in its stead we should put: "Reason is a lawyer."

Integralism in Three Sentences

Here:

Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.

The crucial proposition is the first. By 'end of human life' is meant the ultimate or final goal or purpose of human life, not its cessation or stoppage. It is presupposed that all human lives share the same final purpose. And what might that be? For a traditional Catholic, the Baltimore Catechism gives the answer:

LESSON FIRST
ON THE END OF MAN
1. Q. Who made the world?
A. God made the world.
2. Q. Who is God?
A. God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things.
3. Q. What is man?
A. Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image
and likeness of God.
6. Q. Why did God make you?
A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world,
and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

The Catholic integralist is making the following claims. First, every human life has an ultimate purpose. Second, the purpose is not different for different people: all, regardless of race, sex, or any other difference, share the same purpose. Third, the final common purpose is known and not open to doubt or debate: it is not a matter of conjecture or speculation or private opinion. Fourth, the final common purpose is to know, love, and serve God in this world, and to be happy with him in the next. And of course the Catholic integralist is committed to the presuppositions of these claims, e.g., that there is a God, that he created everything distinct from himself, that man has a destiny that transcends this life, and so on.

Suppose all of the above is true. Then the political order here below must subserve the divinely ordained eternal order. The temporal power, the State, must be subordinated to, and therefore cannot be separated from, the true church, the Roman Catholic Church. If so, classical liberalism is an erroneous and pernicious political philosophy.

One consequence of this view seems to be that state power can be justifiably used to coerce dissidents. Some of them hold that human life has no purpose at all. Others hold that it has a purpose but one that is determined by the individual. Still others think that there is a common ultimate purpose but that it is secular and humanistic and therefore atheistic.

And then there are the classically liberal theists who hold that when it comes to the final purpose of human life and how to attain it, there is reasonable belief, but no knowledge. If there is no knowledge in this area then coercion of atheists, agnostics, and non-Catholics could not be justified. Finally, there are those who, while holding that there is knowledge in this area, knowledge that justifies the coercion of dissidents, reject the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Some Protestants for example, or Islamists.

My view is that we ought not stray too far from the classically liberal view of the Founders. We do not KNOW that the Catechism worldview is true. ONLY IF it were known to be true could it be justifiably imposed via the awesome power of the State. In a well-ordered Republic, the dissent of secular humanists, atheists, and non-Catholic theists ought to be tolerated. At the same time, State power must never be used to violate the consciences of Catholics by, say, forcing them to support the grave moral evil of abortion on demand with their tax dollars.

Government by ts very nature is coercive. I stand for limited government and limited coercion.

So that's my initial take on Catholic integralism. It is a non-starter.

Should Felons Have the Right to Vote?

Bernie Sanders thinks that felons should have the right to vote even while incarcerated. That is a foolish and irresponsible view.

1) Felons have shown by their destructive behavior that they cannot productively order their own lives. Why then should they have any say in the ordering of society? Why should the thoughtful vote of a decent, law-abiding citizen be canceled out by the vote of an armed robber, a rapist, a drug dealer, a terrorist, or any other miscreant? That could make sense only to someone who substituted feeling for thought.

Criminals have no interest in the common good; their concern is solely with their own gratification. They do not, as a group, contribute to society; they are, as a group, a drag on society. So I ask again: why should they be allowed to vote? And how many of them would even want to vote if they weren't given incentives by leftist activists?

I concede the following. Some 'felons' have been wrongly convicted. Some felonies should be misdemeanors. There are different classes of felonies. Some felons reform themselves and become productive members of society. But none of these concessions affects the main point, namely, that it is foolish and irresponsible to maintain that felons as a group should have the right to vote even while incarcerated.

2) Sanders:

. . . the right to vote is an inalienable and universal principle that applies to all American citizens 18 years and older. Period. As American citizens all of us are entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and all the other freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights.

By this logic, felons have the right to keep and bear arms even while incarcerated. After all, Second Amendment rights are "enshrined in our Bill of Rights." And they are "inalienable and universal." But of course, there are excellent reasons to deny felons the right to buy and own guns, and in particular the 'right' to pack heat while in prison! You would have to be insane to to think that an armed robber's right, qua citizen, to keep and bear arms is in no way affected by his history of armed robbery. Rights can be lost, limited, and forfeited. Rights cannot be coherently thought of as absolute and unexceptionable.

The right to free speech does not give a person the right to say absolutely anything in any context. There is no right to freedom of religion if your 'religion' involves human sacrifice. The right to freedom of assembly is limited by property rights. You have no right to assemble on my property without my permission. There is no right to block public thoroughfares or destroy public property. Individual property rights are limited by legitimate eminent domain considerations. Eminent domain laws have been misused, but that is no argument against them in principle.

But doesn't capital punishment violate the right to life? Capital punishment does not involve a violation of a citizen's right to life: the murderer or anyone who commits a capital crime forfeits his right to life by committing a capital crime. If I use deadly force against you in a self-defense situation in which you threaten my life, and in so doing cause your death, I have done something both morally and legally permissible. It follows that I haven't violated your right to life. Rights violations are by definition impermissible. By your action, you have forfeited your right to life.

Sanders tells us that the right to vote is a "universal principle that applies to all American citizens 18 years and older." But if it were truly universal, then children should allowed to vote. Why the restriction to 18 years and older? Nancy Pelosi recently maintained that the voting age should be lowered to 16 so as to involve young people in politics. But why 16 and not 14? Think of how many more young people would be involved in politics if the voting age were reduced to 10. The stupidity of this is obvious and the motive behind it is transparent.

3) Sanders on voter suppression:

Indeed, our present-day crisis of mass incarceration has become a tool of voter suppression. Today, over 4.5 million Americans — disproportionately people of color — have lost their right to vote because they have served time in jail or prison for a felony conviction.It goes without saying that someone who commits a serious crime must pay his or her debt to society. But punishment for a crime, or keeping dangerous people behind bars, does not cause people to lose their rights to citizenship. It should not cause them to lose their right to vote.

It is true that a person who is justly incarcerated does not cease to be a citizen. But it hardly follows that he retains every right of a citizen. To underscore the obvious, the prisoner is not free to come and go as he pleases. He is not immune to searches and seizures. Etc. Limitation and suspension of rights is part of the punishment.

And then we have the obfuscatory leftist talk of 'voter suppression' and 'mass incarceration.' One does not suppress the vote of illegal aliens; they have no right to vote in the first place. Similarly, one does not suppress the vote of felons; they have no right to vote.

Sanders apparently thinks that 'people of color' are the victims of voter suppression because they are disproportionately represented among the prison population. The suggestion is that they are incarcerated to keep them from voting. Nonsense. They are disproportionately incarcerated because they are disproportionately involved in criminal behavior.

The Central Dividing Line in American Politics

The central dividing line, according to Samuel Huntington, is between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. The former comes in two unpalatable flavors, neo-conservatism and cultural Marxism.

The neocon mistake was to imagine that our superior system of government could be imposed by force on peoples riven by tribal hatreds who do not share our values and are depressed by an inferior religion. The folly of that should now be evident. One cannot bomb the benighted into Enlightenment. Besides, our moral stock is at an all-time low. Given our decadence and immorality how can we presume to teach Muslims how to live?

The mistake of the multi-culti cultural Marxists is to imagine that comity is possible without commonality, that wildly diverse sorts of people can live together in peace and harmony. Or at least that is one mistake of the politically correct multi-cultis.

Along comes Trump. Whatever you think of the man and his ostentation, self-absorption, slovenly speech, occasional feel-ups of members of the distaff contingent, and all the rest, he is a powerful vehicle of a necessary correction away from both forms of cosmopolitanism/globalism toward a saner view, a nationalist view. And, contrary to leftist slanders, there is nothing white or white supremacist about it.

Donald J. Trump is the somewhat unlikely vehicle of a necessary correction. Without course correction the cliff is up ahead to be approached either by Donkey Express (Hillary and her ilk) or more slowly but just as surely by Elephant (Jeb! and colleagues). We should be grateful to Trump for having destroyed both the Clinton and Bush dynasties.

So how does the Left respond? In their usual vile and thoughtless way by the hurling of such epithets as sexist, Islamophobic, xenophobic, racist, fascist . . . you know the litany. According to Chris Mathews of MSNBC, Trump's inaugural speech was "Hitlerian."

The alacrity with which these leftist bums reach for the Hitler comparison shows the poverty of their 'thought.'

What’s Wrong with Economic Inequality?

We are naturally unequal with respect to empirical attributes, both as individuals and as groups, and this inequality results in economic inequality. Is this inequality evil? Why should it be? Is economic inequality as such morally wrong? I have a right to what I have acquired by my honest hard work, deferral of gratification, and practice of the ancient virtues. It is therefore to be expected that I will end up with a higher net worth than that of people who lack my abilities and virtues. It seems to follow that there is nothing morally wrong with economic inequality as such.

The economy is not a zero-sum game. If I "mix my labour" (Locke) with the soil and grow tomatoes, I have caused new food to come into existence; I haven't taken from an existing stock of tomatoes with the result that others must get fewer. If my lazy neighbor demands some of my tomatoes, I will tell him to go to hell; but if he asks me in a nice way, then I will give him some. In this way, he benefits from my labor without doing anything. Some of my tomatoes 'trickle down' to him. To mix some metaphors, a rising tide lifts all boats. Lefties hate this conservative boilerplate which is why I repeat it. It's true and it works. When was the last time a poor man gave anyone a job? When was the last time a poor man gave anyone a loan? When was the last time a poor man made a contribution to a charity? Who pays taxes?

I deserve what I acquire by the virtuous exercise of my abilities. But do I deserve my abilities? No, but I have a right to them. I have a right to things I don't deserve. Nature gave me binocular vision but only monaural hearing. Do I deserve my two good eyes? No, but I have a right to them. Therefore, I am under no moral obligation to give one of my eyes to a sightless person. (If memory serves, R. Nozick makes a similar point in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.)

At this point someone might object that it is just not fair that some of us are better placed and better endowed than others, and that therefore it is a legitimate function of government to redistribute wealth to offset the resultant economic inequality. But never forget that government is coercive by its very nature and run by people who are intellectually and morally no better, and often worse, than the rest of us. Their power corrupts them and you can be sure they will do all they can to preserve their power, pelf, and privileges all the while professing to be democrats and egalitarians.

The levellers are not on the same level as us, and they are often 'not on the level.' You catch my drift, no doubt.

The equalizers have vastly unequal power compared to us. So there is a bit of a paradox here, to put it mildly. One would have to be quite the utopian to imagine that the socialist-communist Leviathan will "wither away" in the fullness of time, as Lenin and Lennon 'imagined.'

And surely it is the silly liberal who imagines that we are the government or that the government is us. That is mendacity that approximates unto the Orwellian.

The evil of massive, omni-intrusive government is far worse than economic equality is good. Besides, lack of money is rooted in lack of virtue, and government cannot teach people to be virtuous. If Bill Gates' billions were stripped from him and given to the the bums of San Francisco, in ten year's time Gates would be back on top and the bums would be back in the gutters.

Perhaps we can say that economic inequality, though axiologically suboptimal, is nonetheless not morally evil given the way the world actually works with people having the sorts of incentives that they actually have, etc. There is nothing wrong with economic inequality as long as every citizen has the bare minimum. But illegal aliens have no right to any government handouts.