Thursday, January 24, 2008

The March Toward.....What?

Garet Garrett examined the question back in 1950, and his words are just as relevant today. Whatever totalitarian scheme we are marching toward, it is always driven by an insatiable lust for power. An excerpt from Garrett's article that answers the question:

If you say it is toward socialism you leave out the possibility that it may turn into something else. Much more than that, if you say it is toward socialism you fill the view with smoke and may fail to see clearly what it already has in common with every kind of totalitarian government we know anything about, namely, insatiability. There is no way to sate its appetite for more power. Fascist government was insatiable, Nazi government was insatiable, Marxian government in Soviet Russia and Labor government in Great Britain are insatiable — all with one lust, which is the lust for power; all alike resolved to control the people's way of living according to a plan, and all alike creating a dependent society.

The passion in every case is to act upon people by compulsion, always of course for their own good. Differences of ideology may be less important than we think. It may be the idea of conquest, the idea of equality, the idea of a classless society, the idea of a welfare state or the idea of complete security for every citizen. Let it be the government that imposes it, give that government the power to command acquiescence by fear or bribery, by any system of rewards and punishment, and the result in every case will be the same. The ancient pattern will be restored. The authority of government will rise and the people will become subservient. And where people are still marching, as in this country, that is what they are marching toward.

Read the entire article

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