[MD] A Place for the Principled Person

[Platt Holden]

Hi Ham, 

[Ham}
> I'm flabbergasted that anyone could think we are trending in the
> direction of individualism.  I guess this just goes to prove that, given
> sufficient indoctrination, people can believe almost anything.  Not
> since Barry Goldwater's "Conscience of the Conservative" and Ayn Rand's
> "Atlas Shrugged" have I seen anyone of prominence promoting the virtues
> of individualism. Quite the contrary -- except for a handful of radio
> talk show hosts -- ministers, CEOs, educators, social engineers,
> politicians, philosophers, artists, journalists, and celebrities have
> all renounced individualism as self-serving, greedy, even
> "undemocratic".

You're right, Ham.
 
> When I started what used to be called "grammer" school in 1938, my uncle
> gave me a book called "Little People who became Great" which simply told
> the story of humble people like Abe Lincoln, Tom Edison, and G. W.
> Carver who rose to prominence by their personal achievements.  A year
> later America entered WWII with its citizens showing their support by
> purchasing war bonds, collecting foil and fat, and contending with food
> rationing.  Some time after our victorious soldiers returned home in the
> years following 1949, we began to lose our patriotism and the value of
> our individuality.

Yes, the individual achiever is constantly put down by today's aging hippies,.
as many posts on this site testify. All forward progress is attributed 
to unnamed ghosts of the past.   

> American industry, which had risen to the challenge of defeating an
> overseas enemy for six years, now had to confront "organized labor" at
> home.  We began to hear of the tyranny of capitalist power from
> socialists like Norman Thomas.  Other political contenders were
> preaching "One Worldism", an ideology fostered by Woodrow Wilson who had
> been influenced by a Marxist adviser in the 1920s.  At the same time we
> were facing a new threat from a communist dictator who had many U.S.
> sympathizers.  America's resolve was weakening under the spread of
> collectivism.

Right. Just recently I asked how many here would be willing to die in 
defense of their way of life. The silence was deafening.
 
> The noted economist Friedrich Hayek, a member of the Chicago School that
> included Milton Friedman, warned of the perils of collectivist "planned
> economies" in his "Road to Serfdom" back in 1944:

Permit me to interject another passage from that great book by Hayek:

"The intensity of the moral emotions behind a movement like that of 
National Socialism or communism can probably be compared only to those 
of the great religious movements of history. Once you admit that the 
individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity 
called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarian 
regimes which horrify us follow of necessity. From the collectivist 
standpoint intolerance and brutal suppression of dissent, the complete 
disregards of the life and happiness of the individual, are essential 
and unavoidable consequences of this basic premise, and the 
collectivist can admit this and at the same time claim that his system 
is superior to one in which the 'selfish' interests of the individual 
are allowed to obstruct the full realization of the ends the community 
pursues."

Ham continues with quotes from Hayek:

> "We are rapidly abandoning not the viewsa of Cobden and Bright, of Adam
> Smith and Hume, or even of Locke and Milton, but one of the salient
> characteristics of Western civilization as it has grown from the
> foundations laid by Christianity and the Greeks and Romans.  Not merely
> nineteenth- and eighteenth-century liberalism, but the basic
> individualism inherited by us from Erasmus and Montigue, from Cicero and
> Tacitus, Pericles and Thucydides, is progressively relinquished.
> 
> "...Individualism has a bad name today, and the term has come to be
> connnected with egotism and selfishness.  But the individualism of which
> we speak in contrast to socialism and all other forms of collectivism
> has no necessary connection with these.  ...But the essential features
> of that individualism which, from elements provided by Christianity and
> the philosophy of classical antiquity, was first fully developed during
> the Renaissance, and has since grown and spread into what we  know as
> Western civilization -- are the respect for the individual man _qua_
> man, that is, the recognition of his own views and tastes as supreme in
> his own sphere, however narrowly that may be circumscribed, and the
> belief that it is desirable that men shouild develop their woen gifts
> and bents. ...
> 
> "Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one
> single purpose to which the whole of society is permanently
> subordinated. To a limited extent we ourselves experience this fact in
> wartime, when subordination of almost everything to the immediate and
> pressing need is the price at which we preserve our freedom in the long
> run.  The fashionable phrases about doing for the purposes of peace what
> we have learned.to do for the purposes of war are completely misleading,
> for it is sensible temporarily to sacrifice freedom in order to make it
> more secure in the future, but it is quite a different thing to
> sacrifice liberty permanently in the interests of a planned economy. .
> 
> "To those who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at
> close quarters, the connection between the two systems is obvious.  The
> realization of the socialist program means the destruction of freedom.
> Democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is
> simply not achievable."
>                         --[F.A. Hayek: "Road to Serfdom"]

The great battles of the 20th century between collectivism and 
individualism are still being fought today with the U.S. and its 
sometimes allies pitted against the current axis of evil -- Iran, North 
Korea and the former Iraq, or more broadly, communism and Islamic 
fundamentalism. Since survival of Western civilization depends on the 
outcome of this titanic struggle, it is incumbent for the MOQ, a 
philosophy based on moral order, to harmonize with this battle by 
renaming the two top levels in its moral hierarchy the "collective" and 
the "individual" with the individual given top moral billing. Not that 
it will make much difference. I have little hope of any change in the 
moral mush now endemic throughout a cowardly, appeasing West. 

Best regards,
Platt