Hitler was a big fan of Nietzsche. Nietzsche was an atheist who took Darwin to the next level and said that for Mankind, evolution led to the strong controlling the weak. Since there was no God, there were no rules and therefore, it would be in Mankind's best interests if the strong just got on with the job of controlling as much of the world as possible. Invading other nations and enslaving their populations was a natural application of atheism to the concept of survival of the fittest.
Lenin and his Marxist buddies saw the world heading inevitably in one direction - a classless society. This classless society would be a wondrous thing for all Mankind, so it was best to get there as fast as possible. They were all atheists, so there was no such thing as right and wrong as it applied to rushing to get to that glorious workers' paradise. If shooting the Bourgeoise got you there faster, then by all means, grab the machine guns and dig the mass graves! If a few million peasants died of starvation in the process, that was OK, too.
Whatever their faults, American progressives are not dominated by atheism. Certainly they're the home for the loudest of the atheists, but even with that cohort of God-deniers in their midst, comparisons with the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are simply wrong. Atheism wasn't just a minor feature of those regimes, it was a prerequisite for their behavior.
When KOOK compares American progressives to the Argentinian practitioners of Justicialism - "a fascistic theory of government in Argentina under the Peron administration involving government intervention and economic control to ensure social justice and public welfare; Peronism," he's right on the mark. In the coming months, it's expected that GM will begin to issue shares of stock once more and become partially privatized. That's a terrific Peronist example - the government won't completely own GM as a socialist government would, but it will completely control it through regulation and/or partial ownership for the purposes of helping the "less fortunate." Dittos for the mortgage industry, health care and many others.
Justicialism has indeed failed. Argentina has defaulted and had bank runs and financial panics. That's an analogy you can draw with American progressives and find some excellent evidence and support. When you toss in the Nazis, Communists and to a large extent, the socialists, you open yourself up to all kinds of valid criticsm and your point is wasted.
12 comments:
You cannot believe in the imperfect nature of man as Christianity teaches and believe that man can be perfected or that we can build a perfect society where everyone is taken care of cradle to grave.
I do agree with you that American progressivism is fascism with a little smiley face. Woodrow Wilson was all for eugenics; and he believed it was the christian thing to do.
Prohibitionists were against alcohol largely from a moral and religious basis...
And as far as Peronism; the GM dealership in my town was huge in 2007. It is going out of business now; meanwhile fords lot was bare during the auto bailouts but they stayed off the govt teat and now their lot is full.
No country that has tried socialism has ever achieved the amount of wealth and upward mobility than that achieved by this country using the concepts of limited government and free market capitalism. You cannot raise people up by knocking others down.
But thank you so much for the link love and opportunity to discuss things rationally and without name calling.
I think they may come from the same soil-- Malthus and his "control everything for their own good" stuff, CS Lewis (?) about the "tyranny for your own good," GK Chesterton in dozens of quotes and stories.
That may be why Progressives have a fetish with removing all influence of traditional Christian religions from the public sphere, especially if those expressions aren't useful to their goals.
I have to wonder... did the earlier examples you mention require atheism because they required it, or to counter the power of religion? At what point is functionally agnostic good enough? Might religion not matter except so far as it interferes with the political?
Foxie, consider this counterexample to your statement, "Progressives have a fetish with removing all influence of traditional Christian religions from the public sphere": many Jesuits are progressives. I think it's wrong to lump the economic failures of these various regimes in with the desire to eliminate Christianity and Judaism from the public sphere. It may be true, but it mixes apples and oranges.
In the case of the Nazis (who are not interchangeable with fascists) and the Communists, they required atheism in order to pursue their goals the way they did and achieve the results they did.
Kook - thanks for the visit and the comment! I quite agree with this statement of yours: "No country that has tried socialism has ever achieved the amount of wealth and upward mobility than that achieved by this country using the concepts of limited government and free market capitalism."
However, that is beside the point. American progressives, at least as measured by Obama, Reid and Pelosi, are not socialists. That is, they do not seek to own corporations. Instead, they seek to control them without ownership for the benefit of the poor. That is the heart of Justicialism-Peronism.
KT, thanks for the link.
I think the true believers, though athiests, were very much into religion.
Moses Hess: "The Christian imagines the better future of the human species in the image of heavenly joy. We, on the other hand, will have this heaven on earth."
I know a lot of liberal Catholics agree with removing religious symbols from the public areas, though. My liberal Catholic family members are some of those most likely to pull the "separation of church and state" mis-interpretation thing.
KT,
Well said, well argued, but istill disagree withyou and The Economist. Tooday's progressives use the tactics and poicies of Peronism, but it is only a way station on the Road to Serfdom.
I offer two counter examples. Chavez in Venezuela started with a Peronist agenda of controlling the oil companies for the benefit of the people. Few would doubt that he is not moving towards full socialism. Second, the economic incentives built into obamacare will eventually destroy the health insurance industry and result in full nationalization.
B-Daddy, if Obama was a socialist, he would be moving towards government ownership of the hospitals. Instead, he is moving towards government control of them through payments and regulations. Control is Peronism-fascism, ownership is Socialism.
You can't call "Socialism!" on someone without evidence. Further, Communism and Nazism are inseparable from mass slaughter since both see the individual as subordinate to the State. Obama cares deeply for his fellow man, no matter how incompetent he may be at economics. Comparisons with the Soviet Union or its client states and with Nazi Germany are doomed to failure.
One point I'd like to bring up regarding religion and Communists and/or Nazis:
It looks to me that the anti-religion was mainly because the Communism and Nazism were themselves religions[1], and Hitler/Stalin/Mussolini/Pol Pot/Kim Il Sung/etc. were working very hard to set themselves up as tin-pot gods. They were opposed to other religions primarily because they were trying to squelch the competition.
Personally, I thing that is the big danger in trying to universally apply atheism: While some folks do just fine without believing in a god, a lot of other people really want to believe in *something*. If you take away their religion from them by force, they will create (or fall into) a new one. And the new one is likely to not be very nice[2].
[1] This is hardly original with me, George Orwell pointed it out in _1984_, for starters. I think it still bears remembering, though.
[2] See Eric Hoffer, _The_True_Believer_
Ah...I think I didn't explain myself quite right.
Basically, the left is similar in that their politics goes for power-- all power.
The politics IS the religion, ideals and morality, over even their stated religion, ideals and morality.
For example, look at how middle eastern Muslim women are treated. American feminists, who if Christian should object to the women's rape and murder, and as feminists should object to the second-class status, instead object to efforts to help those women who want to leave.
Look at abortion escort nuns, for love of little green apples.
That matches with the leftward belief that We Are Worst.
Largely, when it comes down to anything else and the political, the political will win, and pointing out that will result in sheer fury. Sometimes incoherence, although I hesitate to group that in since my RL examples may be tainted and online it's hard to see their nose flaring as they shriek at you.
(compare that to, say, my response a few weeks back to the "why do conservatives love the military and hate the government?" Since I am Catholic, that's a rather unpleasant accusation....)
Love the debate here, wish more people would do this.
I fail to see the difference between controlling everything and actaully owning it. functionally it is the same.
Also, Obama saying he doesnt want to own GM, Chrysler, and all the banks really doesnt matter...the fact is we have nationalized them and will nationalize hospitals too before it is all over with unless they are stopped.
I dont suppose it is strictly necessary to be an atheist or anti-christian to be a progressive, but it helps if you can get the masses to have more faith in men and government than in a higher power.
No matter what..to them, then ends justify the means.
You don't like the word socialist, so perhaps statist or collectivist is more to your liking...to me tyranny is tyranny.
I can see a distinction, I just don't think it makes a difference.
That said, it is semantics, and thus important-- words have meaning and we can't just be all humpty-dumpty and change them to suit ourselves.
I do still think that religion is viewed as a threat to the power of the state. Thus, either must be destroyed or converted into a supporter of the state's goals. (Planned Parenthood's notion of getting black preachers to talk their folks into reducing the "unwanted" ones, for example.)
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