"I wrote last week about evil of totalitarian ideologies such as communism and fascism and pointed out that both antifa and Nazis should be treated with complete disdain and ostracism.
And that led me to find common ground with my left-of-center friends, even though I don’t like many of their policies.
I don’t like redistribution… programs are financed with taxes and that the internal revenue code is enforced by coercion… if you catch me in a cranky mood, I’ll be like the stereotypical libertarian at Thanksgiving dinner and wax poetic about what’s wrong with the system.That being said, I much prefer the coercion found in western democracies compared to the totalitarian versions of coercion found in many other parts of the world. At least we have the rule of law, which limits (however imperfectly) capricious abuse by government officials. …our Constitution still protects many personal liberties, things that can’t be taken for granted in some places. Moreover, there is only a trivially small risk of getting abused by the state in western nations because you have unpopular views. And there’s little danger of persecution by government (at least nowadays) based on factors such as race and religion. This is what makes liberal democracy a good form of government (with “liberal” in this case being a reference to classical liberalism rather than the modern version). Unfortunately, there are some people in America that don’t believe in these principles.
Now let’s look at an aspect of this issue from a left-of-center perspective.
Writing for the New Republic, John Judis analyzes the different types of socialism.
He starts with some personal history of his time as a socialist activist...
Much here, read on!!
...Which is why this image is more accurate.
The bottom line is that Nordic-style big government is misguided, but state-über-alles totalitarianism is irredeemably horrible."
