Utopianism, Leftism, and Dictatorship

Bruce Heiden correctly observes that

the Left (whom [he’d] rather call Utopians) won’t take up arms against evil enemies, or even raise a fist; nor will they allow others to do it on their behalf. But the reason isn’t usually that they harbor sympathy for the evil (although a minority, the ideological Marxists, sometimes do). It’s that they consider the world’s conflicts to be in themselves a greater evil for which they, as Utopians, bear no responsibility and by which they wish to remain uncontaminated. What disturbs them about guns—including toy guns—is not that they are unsafe and perhaps need to be made safer, but that they are impurities forbidden to Utopian hands and minds, and thus entirely beyond the scope of a dialogue with moral inferiors about mere practicalities.

The same kind of thinking pervades the many other issues on which leftists lavish religious fervor. Leftism never sleeps. A leftist is always armed and ready for a new cause du jour, be it eugenics, prohibition, repeal of prohibition, peace through unilateral disarmament, overpopulation, global cooling, peak oil, global warming, carbon footprints, recycling, income inequality, unconscious racism, white privilege, forced integration, forced segregation (if blacks want it), coeducation, mixed-sexed dorms, single-sex schools, any reference to or image of a firearm, keeping score, winning, cultural appropriation, diversity, globalization, free speech (not), homophobia, same-sex “marriage”, smoking, gender “assignment” at birth, “free” college for all, “settled science”, collective guilt (but only of straight, white, conservative males of European descent, and Germans in 1933-1945), racial profiling and stereotyping (except when leftists do it), etc., etc., etc.

This depressing litany amply illustrates leftists’ sharply honed ability to spot imperfection (except where leftism is the source). The ability is sharply honed because utopian perfection is leftism’s religion: a spiritual philosophy with tenets meant to describe the nature of reality and form a vision of the good life in the context of that reality.

Leftists then reflexively turn to government for perfection, just as believers in eschatological religions turn to God for salvation. But it is government with the emphasis on govern, not the kind of limited, checked, and balanced central government bequeathed by the Framers of the Constitution. That kind of government is imperfect, too, because it doesn’t produce the results sought by leftists. The power of the central government is too limited, and too subject to checks and balances (though far less so than it was before the New Deal Court began to undo the limitations on power, cede legislative and judicial power to the executive, and use the Commerce Clause to annihilate State sovereignty).

What leftists really want is dictatorship, as long as the dictator is someone like FDR, LBJ, or Barack Obama, who will bend the Constitution until it breaks. The dictator needn’t openly dictate (though Obama did in several notable instances, including but not limited to illegal immigration). But he will cynically use political power to push government action in the “right” direction. And he will — above all — create and sustain a bureaucracy that unilaterally makes law, executes it, and penalizes transgressions of it. This bureaucracy — the administrative state — operates mostly below the radar and goes about its dictatorial duties while the media pay attention to the sideshows in the Capitol, White House, and Supreme Court Building.

Ironically, administrative dictatorship was the program of Woodrow Wilson. (I say ironically because Wilson is no longer persona grata among leftists because of his notorious racism.) Wilson, the only American president with an earned doctorate, embraced the administrative state long before he became president, and proceeded to expand it (with gusto) after he ascended to the presidency.

In any event, leftism’s utopian agenda has a chance of success only if everyone is forced to hew to its dictates. There’s no room in utopia for dissent or learning by trial and error — the kind of learning that fuels economic progress and yields stabilizing social norms.

The fact that a dictated utopian agenda really has no chance of success is beyond the imagining of a leftist. We have already seen what such an agenda does to economic progress, social comity, and liberty in places like the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, and Venezuela.

It is no coincidence that American leftists have always been quick to rationalize, dismiss, and cover up the brutal consequences of the regimes in those places. They have had exactly the kind of governance that leftists seek to bring to the United States as a whole, and have almost succeeded in imposing on many large cities and not a few Blue States.

Leftists are utopians, driven by impossible dreams and hooked on the nirvana fallacy. They are therefore immune to facts, and doomed to repeat the harsh lessons of history. Which would be fine if leftists governed only their ilk, but they are intent on making their fellow citizens suffer along with them — and they have succeeded far too well.

Politics and Prosperity

“Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.”

Utopianism, Leftism, and Dictatorship

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