I have often thought to myself that truly evil people could never thrive for long. The reason is that evil, by its very nature, it not only destructive but also auto-destructive and so any group of people tied together by a common belief in such destruction only end up destroying themselves. In general, the evil that we see in the world is not pure, at least not in groups of people. Evil as we know it in the world comes from purely evil individuals who last long enough to convince others that some truly horrible act or system is actually good. Hence we have the homicidal dictators of the world: Castro, Kim Jong Il, Stalin, etc. In American politics, I characterize the modern Left’s ideas as well-intentioned offspring of evils (or stupidities) that started many, many years ago. The modern Left has taken the justifications offered up by evil people and turned them into a political platform. Specifically, I refer to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism (Marx was more “mistaken,” Lenin was more “evil"), the ideas of police states, and the ideas of command economies, these were all ideas set up to benefit a single tyrant or a single party, but in America they are passed off as being ideas that help “the people.” Contrary to what the “dreamers,” “hopers,” and “changers” would have you believe, these ideas are inherently evil not merely because they were thought of by evil individuals (or mistaken individuals), but because they were created for the express purpose of subjecting entire populations to the whims of a supreme leader. So when a person says “let’s provide free health care for all” these people are proposing an evil policy (no matter how “nice” it sounds) because there is no such thing as “free” and because they, in the name of some ideal, wish to cause an injustice to someone else (in this case, by making some people pay for other people against their will). Only when people realize that certain nice-sounding policies actually have terrible costs and try to reach some sort of equilibrium between one’s goals and costs can a policy not be evil (liberals, there is hope!)… in other words, people should read Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and come away understanding that extremism, whether for good reasons or not, destroys virtue.

The idealist Plato discussing with Aristotle

A clear example of this is that a free man should voluntary surrender his freedom (somewhat) in the service of one’s fellow man, this is called having a job or giving to charity, for a “completely” free man would only end up destroying himself through having no attachments to the world. My treatment of this topic is light and oversimplified (not all collectivist ideas originated from evil people for example), but I hope I have gotten my point across.

This leads me to the master of disaster, the Democrats’ Doctor, the Bishop of Byaaaah!: Howard Dean. Just yesterday I read that Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Times explaining why he would not vote for the health care reform bill as it stands and urging senators to also not vote for it. Yes, that’s right, Howard Dean, the architect of the Democrat Comeback has decided to offer his two cents and help torpedo the Obama administration’s hopes to pass a health care reform bill soon.

This highlights my point about evil: they eat their own. The evil ideas that emerged from Dean and the evil ideas that emerged from Obama have clashed with one another for two reasons, the first is that Dean is more extreme (hence having more vice) than Obama and the second is that Obama, in his quest to get something massively expensive passed, does not care how many big corporations benefit from his plan as long as the government has more control. Their ends are the same, state control of the health industry for the “common good,” but their means diverge. In all truth, I morally prefer Dean’s approach because it is more straightforward and honest, his disdain of private industry is clear and so is his unwillingness to compromise with them. To be clear, I obviously disagree with him. Obama, on the other hand, is more willing to deal with a small number of big insurance companies and ultimately keep them under the control of the state. Dean is straight up command economy, while Obama is more Corporate Socialism (as I have described in previous posts). The end result is the same for Americans, economic power in the hands of state-sponsored enterprises and an end to free competition and choice.

Let us hope that the Democrats do not come to realize that both courses of action lead to the same thing. If clear-thinking voters gain a temporary victory over state encroachment on the free market, we should not squander it nor should we continue to count on the Democrats’ self-destruction. Defeating the collectivists requires exposing these idealistic sounding policies as being ploys to expand the power of the federal government… let’s just hope that the American public actually cares.

-AG