You libertarians lack empathy and would let the poor and downtroden suffer, ergo you are barbarians. - koan
It's not a lack of empathy, but rather short term love versus long term love. What Socialists do is give the heroin addict more heroin, which ultimately kills him. They say, he's really begging for it, so I love him and will give it to him. Long term love a lot of times is tough love. A Libertarian recognizes the root cause is that the heroin is killing the drug addict and refuses to participate and will not enable the drug addicts self-destructive behavior. Very similarly, Socialists want to intervene in every aspect of people's lives, because Socialists are like the well-meaning grandmother who wants to control everyone in the family, because she believes she knows better what's good for them. This is why Socialism always in the end leads to Totalitarianism. It always starts with well-meaning people imposing their will on others and it always ends in Totalitarian control over others.
So the truth is that Socialists and Libertarians have plenty of empathy, but Libertarians view things on a longer time scale and do what's best in the long run, which is to say, let people have the Freedom to make their own decisions. Freedom has it's up and downs, but it is always superior to the safety and coziness of Totalitarianism.
Germany and Russia, are not perfect examples. They are not examples at all. They were simple dictatorships. Socialism never came into it. Denmark, Sweden and Iceland would be good examples of democratic socialism. And they are some of the best societies on earth - koan
koan, go read your history books. This statement of yours is not malicious, but it is ignorant of the facts of history. Germany was way ahead of everyone in the development of Socialism, which ultimately lead to National Socialism and the Tyranny of Hitler. Marxism is Communism, which is just another collectivist, statist attempt to control the means of production, which is to say another version of Socialism. Marxist Communism lead to the Tyranny of Stalin. The reason socialism turns to tyranny is that the amount of government control has to be ratcheted up substantially to achieve it's economic aims. That prepares the way for Dictators who are less well-meaning than the socialists who created the infrastructure to impose socialism's aims.
W.H. Chamberlin was an American correspondent who spent a decade or more in Russia, Germany, and Italy studying their forms of economics and politics. Here's what he had to say about Socialism:
Socialism is certain to prove, in the beginning at least, the road NOT to freedom, but to dictatorship and counter-dictatorships, to civil war of the fiercest kind. Socialism achieved and maintained by democratic means seems definitely to belong to the world of utopias [by utopia, he meant academic dreams not realizeable without tyrannical outcomes]. - Chamberlin
Alexis de Tocqueville said in 1848:
Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom; socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while Democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. - Tocqueville Even more telling, here's what Max Eastman, an old friend of Lenin's said:
Instead of being better, Stalinism is worse than fascism, more ruthless, barbarous, unjust, immoral, anti-democratic, unredeemed by any hope or scruple...Stalinism is socialism, in the sense of being an inevitable although unforeseen political accompaniment of the nationalization and collectivization which he had relied upon as part of his plan for erecting a classless society. -Max Eastman Socialism is an economic term. Dictatorship is a political term. - koan
As the quotes I've listed above try to show you, economic and political systems are by necessity inextricably linked. Why do you think we've spent generations trying to export free markets to places like China and why we push for free trade agreements around the world? Most in power have long known that free markets require the institutionalization of individual liberty, which inevitably leads to Democratic reforms of the political system. Conversely, in order to impose Socialism, you must create a centrally planned economy. Since central planning by definition means taking away freedom from individuals to choose, you must also create a political system that can take away the means of production of goods and services, so they can be reordered according to some central plan. Taking things away from people against their will, which means loss of freedom, requires an increasingly Totalitarian and Tyrannical state infrastructure. This is why Socialism necessarily evolves towards Totalitarianism. Hayek's words echo down from the time of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini...he wrote this in 1943-4, warning us what Socialism had lead to. His perspective was in watching history unfold, not in the speculation that many of today's generations engage in. We need to learn from history:
While to many who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at close quarters the connection between the two systems has become increasingly obvious, in the democracies the majority of people still believe that socialism and freedom can be combined. There can be no doubt that most socialists here still believe profoundly in the liberal ideal of freedom and that they would recoil if they became convinced that the realization of their program would mean the destruction of freedom. So little is the problem yet seen, so easily do the most irreconcilable ideals still live together, that we can still hear such contradictions in terms...If this is the state of mind that makes us drift into a new world, nothing can be more urgent than that we should seriously examine the real significance of the evolution that has taken place elsewhere...That democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something so utterly different that few of those who now wish it would be prepared to accept the consequences... - Hayek |
