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Only Conservatives are Against Government? | |
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One of the most bizarre conceits of governmentisgood.com is the belief that conservatives represent the bulk of opposition against government. This is pure propaganda. The truth of the matter is that anti-government writers and advocates come from a wide spectrum of political ideologies: liberal, conservative, libertarian, communist, social-democrat, and of course anarchist. In my own experience, people who are engaged in political activism, left-wing or right-wing, come to detest government because they understand the nature of government as a monopoly of force which prevents meaningful change. Let's take a look at some well-known writers who were opposed to government, as well as their political ideologies: World-famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy was not only a strong anti-government advocate, but also a renowned pacifist who influenced people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is the first self-professed anarchist in Western history, and as such an important figure in criticism of government. But he was also a self-professed socialist, preached extensively against capitalism and was influenced by Karl Marx. Frederic Bastiat is one of the most well-known economist in anti-government circles. He was also a famous classical liberal theorist. As an economist, he argued strongly and clearly that government can only destroy the resources of a society through force-based economic policies. Gustave de Molinari, an early anti-government advocate, was also a classical liberal. You probably don't know John Dalberg-Acton, but you may have seen his famous quote "absolute power corrupts absolutely." He also said, "[t]he danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern, every class is unfit to govern." He was an ardent liberal. Franz Oppenheimer wrote a famous sociological book, simply called The State, which exposed the immoral origins of government. He was also a socialist. People who call themselves "left-libertarian" are strongly against government. Left-wing people in general strongly dislike government because of its use of war, police powers and constant attacks on the downtrodden in favour of corporate profits. Karl Hess, a former Republican speechwriter turned anti-government advocate, expressed his vision of the left-right spectrum (a vision shared by most in left-libertarian circles) in Dear America as following : My own notion of politics is that it follows a straight line rather than a circle. The straight line stretches from the far right where (historically) we find monarchy, absolute dictatorships, and other forms of absolutely authoritarian rule. On the far right, law and order means the law of the ruler and the order that serves the interest of that ruler, usually the orderliness of drone workers, submissive students, elders either totally cowed into loyalty or totally indoctrinated and trained into that loyalty. Both Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler operated right-wing regimes, politically, despite the trappings of socialism with which both adorned their regimes...Go home. |
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