My friend Adam Adkins shared with me a conversation he had with someone; I don't know who, but it may well have been any of millions of 19- or 20-year-old college students. His friend's arguments are interesting because:
(a) They are the same arguments you hear supporters of Big Government make every day. And when I say 'the same arguments' I don't mean merely that they're similar; I mean that almost every sentence contains at least one phrase that is repeated verbatim everywhere. Most of these people reflect perfectly, like a mirror, what they're told. And
(b) This is important because they aren't thinking about it. The use of language, and especially whole phrases, that you see in print or hear on television all the time is a sure symbol that the speaker is repeating what he has heard, not really caring what he is saying except so far as it is disagreeing as loudly as possible with whoever he is arguing against. This is exactly what Orwell was talking about in Politics and the English Language.
I will present the text as it was written, with comments in between.
If racism is not the whole of the Tea Party, it is in its heart, along with blind hatred, a total disinterest in the welfare of others, and a full-flowered, self-rationalizing refusal to accept the outcomes of elections, or the reality of Democracy, or of the narrowness of their minds and the equal narrowness of their public support.
This entire paragraph is made of flowery language and clichéd phrases that don't mean anything--certainly the writer is not concerned with what it means.
'Blind hatred'? Of whom? By whom? The writer ascribes 'blind hatred'--a very grievous charge to lay against any fellow man--to everyone involved with the Tea Party, and substantiates it not at all. This is the spirit of the 'hate speech' legislation that is ever being pushed by the left in the face of the First Amendment: the presumption that all dissent constitutes hate. Indeed, the word hate is losing its meaning; reading most leftist doctrine, hate may be used interchangeably with dissent. That is notable because when a person advocates punishing people--almost always conservatives--for 'hate speech', what he means is dissenting speech.
Now observe the phrase total disinterest in the welfare of others. In what way is the speaker positioned to make such a judgment on another person, knowing only that he opposes socialism?
The speaker does not know, and very likely does not care, the implications of what he is saying. He is implying that (a) Big Government is the only way to care for others, (b) that any person who opposes Big Government is selfish and unfeeling, and (c) that it is right and proper for government take by force the property of selfish people and redistribute it however it wants. That leads, actually, to implication (d), that government is automatically and by definition both selfless and efficient; or at any rate, more efficient than an individual can be.
Next, observe the reality of Democracy. That phrase asserts that the minority must submit to the majority's will, and the majority is by right empowered to force such submission, even if the majority says, for instance, you will teach your children this or that, or we will forcibly take them from you.
That sounds more like thuggery than proper or caring government. And should an individual take upon himself to do such a thing, we call it kidnapping.
Next, the narrowness of their minds. That should read their narrow minds, but the 'the ___ of ____' construction is very common in the political arena, probably because of its close kindred to the law arena, where wordiness and density is for some reason equated with intelligence.
Particularly, the narrowness of their minds, or narrow-mindedness, is a common stock phrase people say without thinking about what it means; ironically, usually the person using the phrase is himself narrow-minded, unwilling to tolerate anyone believing differently from himself. Such is exactly the underpinning of socialism, or even the quasi-socialism now prevalent in the United States: intolerance of dissent, which leads, once again, to applying force to hamper a dissenter's ability to teach his children, or any children, his inconvenient beliefs.
As an aside, this line also appeared in the conversation:
What's wrong with Socialism? Why is it bad?
Many who claim to oppose socialism seem to struggle to answer this question, so I will share the answer: It is bad because it violates the unalienable human right to liberty.
Okay, Socialism is nothing like what is happening in America today, nothing. Government control is necessary in today's world. Yeah, it would be great if no control worked. No one wants laws and police and regulation in their lives. But, it has to happen.
The speaker asserts 'government control is necessary in today's world' but never explains why. That is likely because she does not know why; she just approves of government control because at some point someone she trusted told her it was a Good Thing. The entire phrase, is necessary in today's world, you will see often; but you will almost never see it explained further, except sometimes by an anecdote or two.
Was government control not necessary in, say, 1925, or 1850, or 200 B.C.? What's different about today? I don't know; neither does the speaker.
The speaker similarly asserts 'Socialism is nothing like what is happening in America today' with no further qualification. She doesn't understand the concept of socialism; but she is betting her hearer doesn't, either, and will usually win her bet.
If the government didn't control the education system, parents wouldn't have to send the kids... See More to school, leaving those kids uneducated and that just doesn't cut it.
Many of the best educated children and young adults in the United States never set foot inside an institutionalized school. Home-schooled students consistently score nearly an order of magnitude higher than government-schooled students on any objective test you would care to use to measure. On subjective matters like belief-system programming--usually called by antiseptic names like social awareness--the government students score better, of course. If you think about the differences between government schools and being taught at home, it is easy to understand why these things are.
The line in the sand between education and indoctrination has been kicked nearly into invisibility. That is a subject for a different essay.
By the way, the regulation of the financial system you are talking about? There isn't any and that has been the reason of the recession today. The Wall Street Bankers were making bets on bets on bets and it was bound to fail. There still hasn't been any regulation put on these people, so hold tight, we'll be in this boat again.
The word bet is grossly misused by Junior Economists on practically every television channel. The entire phrase 'The Wall Street Bankers were making bets on bets on bets' is itself clichéd and parroted, and the speaker cannot be troubled to look up bet in a dictionary and see what it means. The financial system was not bound to fail not because of anyone betting on anything--a bet is always made between two parties, and when one party loses another wins, and it makes no difference to the currency being bet.
The United States' financial system is near ruination because far too many people, then businesses, and finally government, have lived and operated far beyond their means, year after year spending more money than they earn. That always catches up; when you're floating on an ever-expanding bubble, the bubble will inevitably burst. When it does, the damage will be catastrophic. This is a fundamental precept of economics; it could be explained to an eight year old.
The biggest reason for foreclosure in this country is medical bills, there is a foreclosure filing every 7.5 seconds, and a home is actually foreclosed every 17 seconds. So no government control wouldn't make sense.
Again the speaker is repeating some data she at some point heard, but cannot be troubled to think about what it means or how to apply it. The biggest reason for foreclosure--it is not far wrong to say the only reason for foreclosure--is that a person has bought something, on credit, he cannot afford. He is living paycheck to paycheck, with no margin in his budget for unexpected expenses. The first time a large unexpected expense hits him, he is bankrupt.
One might assert that medical bills are the most common unexpected major expense that causes bankruptcy, and one would likely be correct. That the speaker does not acknowledges this betrays either her ignorance or her unconcern for her subject matter.
Then the speaker leaps from her data to a conclusion--no government control wouldn't make sense--that is in no apparent way connected to the data, and she offers no reason for the association. In fact, an important reason why 'Wall Street Bankers' have played fast and loose with lending is because government has offered them a safety net.
These people are in dire need of help and no ... corporation, private company, would ever even think of helping any of them.
Here is bad argument in its basest form, an opinion presented as fact, where it is obviously false. It is patently false, so false it should be laughed to scorn, that no private company thinks of helping people. Private companies donate massively to nonprofit charities even today, and community organizations--largely churches, in the United States, which is why so many hospitals are still named X Presbyterian or Y Lutheran or Saint Z's--have always, back to long before Big Government got involved, cared for those in dire need of help. Relative to the medical standards of their time, poor Americans in 1850 were medically cared for at least as well as they are today, quite probably better--and for a fraction of the cost.
The language the speaker is now using signifies her drift away from argument and toward personally charged rant.
The government is by the people, for the people. It is not here to hurt anyone.
Here is another assertion founded in neither logic nor evidence; it is nothing more than a personal belief. If I assert that the United States government as it exists today is by big money and for big money, and will hurt anyone and everyone if it advances big money's interests--that is, on its own merits, no more or less true a belief than the speaker's. It is merely a statement of opinion; and I think that nearly everything the United States government has done for the past fifty years supports my theory above the speaker's.
At any rate, the speaker is now trying to persuade you to believe the government loves you and cares for you; she is now removed from any logical or factual defense of socialism.
The Socialist things that you hate so much are fantastic and I hope to see more of them. I hope there are more and more libraries, sidewalks, parks, and schools.
Observe that once again the speaker uses hate when she plainly means dissent with. She also is either unaware of uncaring that libraries, sidewalks, parks and schools existed long before socialism came along. I am a radical Libertarian indeed, but I too am in favor of libraries, sidewalks, parks and schools, and I am even in favor of government collecting taxes to pay for the sidewalks and parks--but this has nothing to do with whether socialism is a good thing.
Being someone who has been poor, been on Welfare, received Social Security, I have nothing but great things to say about these programs. They helped me in my time of need and without them, I'd be begging for change on the street.
Again note the disconnect between the anecdote and the conclusion; the speaker strings together clichéd phrases (helped me in my time of need, begging for change on the street) to create the presumption that all poor or troubled people need Big Government to survive, and repeating an earlier argument, that one who opposes Big Government therefore must hate poor people.
I don't know the speaker's predicament, of course, but in most cases, without Big Govnerment, you wouldn't be 'begging for change on the street'. You would be working at McDonald's, sleeping in a warm room, and eating. You would not have a cell phone or satellite TV, but these are not unalienable human rights, and working at McDonald's is not beneath you.
There are some people in truly bad straits--crippled, unable to work, who need help to survive. The vast majority of individuals will do what they can to help these people in a heartbeat, and do not need Big Government's assistance, much less force, to do so. The vast majority of individuals will not observe an able-bodied person unwilling to work at McDonald's or live without a 28 inch television and be inclined at all to help him. The majority of those Big Government confiscates property to 'help' fall in that latter category.
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