Molding people into better citizens
October 12, 2009 12:30 pm
Liberals view human nature as malleable and constantly subject to change due to external influences. Karl Marx, for example, argued that human nature is formed by the totality of social relations. He believed that nature and behavior of proletarians or the bourgeoisie was the product of their respective social relations. Who we are, he argued, is determined by specific social and historical influences. Your environment makes you do the things you do.
Modern liberals have the same belief system. They cling to the belief that all people are born clean slates with equal abilities. Some people do good because they are socialized to do good. Others do evil things because they are so socialized. To the leftist, people are perfectible given the proper social interactions and influences. This boundless optimism regarding the malleability of human nature leads leftists to demand that institutions, especially government, be designed to mold the citizenry into better people.
An example of this character molding is underway in Los Angeles. The government bureaucracy in that city has decided that the nature of the citizenry is being improperly molded into gluttons. The villain, in this case, is convenience stores and the goodies purchased therein.
How to curb such purchases is a top priority for policymakers attempting to reduce the obesity rates in poor communities.
“We need to look at a moratorium on these convenience stores,” said Lark Galloway-Gilliam, executive director of Community Health Councils Inc., a nonprofit health policy and education organization in South Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles City Council is set to consider a proposal that would limit the density of these small food stores in South Los Angeles, said Councilwoman Jan Perry, a proponent of regulations adopted last year establishing a moratorium on new openings of fast-food restaurants whose 9th District includes much of South Los Angeles.
When the leftist looks about and sees fat people, he sees victims of villain who has irresponsibly molded them to become obese for his own profit. The fat citizenry is not to be blamed because they are simply behaving as expected under the social influence of convenience stores. Since people are malleable, removing the convenience stores will cause the obese to become better, thinner citizens.
Of course leftists don’t stop with banning convenience stores. Their desire to improve their fellow man as part of a progressive society is limitless. Naturally, they become frustrated when the proletarians don’t cooperate. It is then the leftists create their vanguard parties.
Lenin, for example, argued that since Marx’s thought was set forth in a sophisticated body of philosophical, economic, and social analysis, a high level of intellectual training was required to comprehend it. Lenin, therefore, created a vanguard party of “professional” activists having no other duties that might interfere with their efforts to promote revolution. These activists decide what social influences are acceptable and not acceptable. “They decide and the shotgun sings its song.”
When some group of leftist planners decides to mold the nature of the populace by outlawing convenience stores thus defining the social environment, it is easy to dismiss it as a simple attempt to improve community health. But when leftists are left to their own devices, this type of social engineering is a just a more gentle version of and likely precursor to its logical outcome: indoctrination, serfdom and the gulag.
Jim :
Date: October 12, 2009
So very true RD. Montesquieu and De Tocqueville both saw what you’ve descibed in essence, as one of the fundamental weaknesses and threats to the individual in a democratic government. What they saw and feared was slow yet unyielding incrementalism of the state against the freedom of the individual.
Paul Rahe, refers to it as ‘Soft Despotism’, in his book “Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift. I highly recommend the book. All of what RD has described was foreseen by Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu and De Tocqueville, even Rousseau.
R.D. Walker :
Date: October 13, 2009
The Leviathan kicks it up a notch…
In Volume II, Book 4, Chapter 6 of Democracy in America, de Tocqueville writes the following about soft despotism: