To Communitarians of All Colors

There are many things you don't like about life. And there are more things that you hate about America. That's too bad, and I truly feel for you, mainly because I feel for me. You see, I fear what you'll do when you and your friends gain power, the only power you think matters in life: government. In a way you're right. Government is the one universal thing among us; it is the one evil we all submit to, because we have to. Despite the staggering grotesqueness of every government in history, even the good ones, the idea that government shall be our earthly god seems to pervade everywhere of late, especially among you socialists. Why you think this I'll never know. This belief in the supreme worth of government and statism comes to be your uniform, as pervasive and universal as government itself. Like the punk movement that ridiculed everyone else for wearing their corporate uniforms, and yet was (and still is) characterised by a more stringent uniformity than existed in almost any other social group, you communitarians, who hate this government, would have the total state.

This won't work, because it can't. Not for humans. But for less-than-humans it might. And the one good thing about the total state, as seen from the perspective of the total statist, is that the total state creates less-than-humans. But some people, no matter how invasive a "wellfare" state might become, will always have a human element that will fight against collectivism. However soft the coercion is at first, it shall end brutally hard. But the ruined men and women of your total regime won't quickly build a new and better one, if ever they do. Indeed, what you'll have is a recurring cycle of dependency and depredation, now this false idol now this populist general.

One thing to consider: the United States has been steadily moving toward the statist end of whatever a mixed economy is. It has managed so far to maintain such a high level of wealth and well-being, truly accessible to more people here than anywhere else in the world, that the demands for well- and wealth-fare have been steadily answered, year after year, decade after decade, since the implementation of the New Deal. This is as close to workable socialism as you'll ever get. And trust me, since your thinking now of Canada and France and Britain and the Scandinavian states, the grass isn't greener my friend. But if you disagree I heartily invite you to vote with your feet. But certainly you aren't thinking of China or the Soviet Union. You may as well wish for a return of the socialist German state. Certainly these could never be idealized! And yet, the idea of a total state is so beguiling for so many. Intellectuals and laymen alike fantasize for that concretization of what has been impossible until recently: a true Big Brother.

I hope that in time your hate for what you think capitalism is may infect what you confuse in the chimera of communism. Otherwise, we'll all get what you have coming for us.

Looking forward to tomorrow.
Looking forward to nothing forever.