How the Left Sees Us

When I look into the eyes of a child, I see a unique individual blessed with a special set of gifts. A little person adventuring out into the world, someone who is irreplacable and precious. I want him to do the most with his life that he can, well-provided with opportunities to learn and grow, with the maximum amount of personal challenge and support to develop into an intelligent and capable adult.

The leftists see a child as yet another dependent, someone to be molded and created in their own image, to be brought up to be yet another member of a group: the "community," the "tribe," even "the nation." All children equal, none individual, none struggling to be excellent and therefore none superior or inferior. Faceless, nameless people to be managed from a centralized government far away.

Each individual is his own person. Each is a universe of emotions, thoughts, biology, and experience unto himself. Each is a miracle who will not be replicated in the history of the universe. Joy, love, sadness, and even anger, all are legitimate emotions that each person possesses. Each person has a psyche, which is the Greek term for both a mind and a soul.

The more centralized and bureacratized the government, the more abstract the individual becomes. He becomes an instrument of the elites to perpetuate their own power and advance their political causes. His will, his self-interest, becomes pitted in a zero-sum game with the ruling class, with ever-creeping coercion stealing away more and more of the individual's right to self-rule.

Collectivism and individualism are the most fundamental dueling ideologies of our age. Whether it be nationalism, socialism, or any other form of collectivism on one side, and a Constitutional government sanctifying the individual's right to life, liberty, and property on the other, the dilemma is the same: Who decides the course of the individual's life?

Democracy, the great political watchword of the West, is a form of majority rule that suppresses the minority, especially whom Ayn Rand called the greatest "minority" - the individual. When combined with increasing social engineering in the public forum, through state-run education, proxy "non-profit" agencies, and influence over media dissemination of ideas, "democracy" becomes transformed over time not into an expression of collective will, but a slavish extension of the rulers' will, over individuals.

As the collectivist government seeks to impose its will on a people, it insists that all individuals are rigidly members of "groups," and attempts to isolate and alienate those who do not desire to conform. The individual who expresses himself and endeavors to live his life in pursuit of truth and excellence, regardless of group esteem, eventually becomes ostracized, if not socially, then legally. Those who challenge the group or the government are termed "radicals" or "extremists" for wanting to live their own lives without interference. Autonomy is something the group cannot tolerate. The individual belongs to the group and its enforcement arm - the state.

The country's turn to collectivism has profound consequences, as we see with the socialized healthcare bill recently passed. The individual becomes but a tool of society to advance the goals set by the leaders. Over time, his behavior can "justifiably" be micromanaged in any way the ruling class sees fit; whether or not he smokes, what he eats, what car he drives, and what kinds of lightbulbs he uses. For the individual in a collectivist society, there is no legitimate objection to manipulation by the government. Indeed, in the ultimate, inevitable totalitarian form of collectivism, the government controls whether you are allowed to live or die. Socialized healthcare is a step closer to that dreadful reality.

The absolutely crucial, indispensable point for the majority to remember is that ascending to majority status in a culture does not grant it the right to utilize accrued power to engage in its own form of social engineering. Freedom is the ideal America was founded on, and that means removing government controls over the individual. This is an extremely difficult sell to those looking for revenge against political opposition, or who desire resources to engage in their own brand of political warfare against the other side, or who simply enjoy power for its own sake. It is very difficult to find self-interested individuals to send to political office who are rational enough to realize that it is in the long-term interest of themselves and the country they live in to uphold individual rights and to defend freedom from the government itself.

As citizens of this nation, the most effective way to deflate the drive toward collectivism in an ongoing way is to remove all bases of its ideological support in the public arena. Altruism, nationalism (which is not the same as American patriotism), any form of racism put forth by any individual, socialism, and any other form of collectivism should be directly opposed and contrasted with individualism. Private property, free speech, freedom of religion, gun rights, and free market capitalism should be directly and forcefully articulated as the rightful antitheses of collectivism. Do not concede to the collectivist on any point, even in the so-called interest of being "reasonable" or "civil." The leftists prey on people's social weaknesses as an inherent means to their destructive ends.

Political war is intrinsically an ideological war. Do not ever waver. Make clear your ideas and ideals, including your political concepts. Persuade people in stark terms what the fundamental choices are for our Constitutional republic. The leftists make their case, in both implicit and explicit ways, by indoctrinating each American for decades. We must dash their ideas on the rocks of history and philosophy at every opportunity, as clearly and as indisuptably as possible.