We’re told, over and over again, that ideology is a bad thing.
Yet most of us want liberty and freedom — or at least what we consider liberty and freedom.
Some people define liberty and freedom as a limited government to protect you from force or fraud. Count me unequivocally on that side.
Others define liberty and freedom as not having to pay for big-ticket goods and services such as health care, college, or anything else desirable and therefore expensive.
Regardless, we want liberty and freedom. Yet liberty and freedom are a form of ideology. You cannot escape ideology, because it’s implicit in every action we take, and — with respect to government — it’s implicit in every candidate you support or oppose.
Your emotions contain an ideology, whether your conscious mind cares to know it or not. Your opinions are based on rational or irrational ideas, or sometimes a mixture of the two. Not just with politics, but with anything. “Ideas” are what ideology refers to; to brag you possess no ideology is to confess you have no ideas.
That’s why I sigh internally (and sometimes externally) whenever anyone says, “I hate ideology. I want nonideological candidates.”
The interesting thing about today? Ideology is on the rise. Unfortunately, it’s strongest on the left. The left is now for outright socialism. Listen to what the winning candidates on the Democratic side are saying. “Free health care. No copayments, no deductibles. Why should anyone have deductibles? Free college. Student loans? Forget it. It should all be free.”
Eventually, everything will be free. Cars, clothing, food — why not? It’s all free in Venezuela. Why not in America?
I could not disagree with the socialists more. But I like the turn to ideology. Why? Because sooner or later, we had to have these ideological arguments.
We have to stop fighting about Trump, and start fighting over the questions that really matter.
For example:
Is a human individual’s life an end itself — or not? Does your life belong to you, or to the state?
The Democrats’ answer is clear: The government comes first. The government decides your priorities, takes care of your needs, and decides who shall pay how much.
We need an opposing ideological side that says: “Wrong, Democrats. Wrong, socialists. A human individual’s life belongs to him or herself. We are all sovereign over our lives. If you believe in God, fine. If you don’t, it’s still true. Either way, YOU have rights because you have them, and NOT because the government gives them to you.”
Socialists — whether in Nazi Germany (the National Socialists), in Communist countries or in the American socialist Democratic Party today — have no problem stating and implying that you operate at the consent of the government, rather than the other way around. This is the idea conservatives, libertarians and other dissidents must challenge. Otherwise, we’re all toast.
Ideas matter. Everything you do or feel is based on your ideas. Everything a government does FOR you or TO you is based on ideas. Your fate depends on whether those ideas are based on Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Adam Smith and Ayn Rand — or Karl Marx, B.F. Skinner and Adolf Hitler.
The Democrats are out of the closet with their socialism. My only response is, “What took you so long?”
At first, socialism always means free stuff, and lots of it, paid for by others.
The dark side of socialism always comes after — quite soon after, as we’ll find if any of these new socialistic Democrats get to impose on America what brought stagnation, starvation and despair everywhere else their ideas were tried.
You might not like the idea of a battle for ideas. But we’re in one, like it or not. And it was always coming.
Are you ready, Republicans and others who don’t agree with the unwavering, unbending socialists on the other side? You better be ready. Because if you’re not prepared to defend your sovereign right to your own life on ideological principle, these socialists will quite literally run over you. As you already know, they have no scruples or ethics. Since Donald Trump’s election, they have shown just how rude, nasty and even outright violent they are.
We live in interesting times, and they’re only going to get more interesting. Whether “interesting” in a good way or a bad way will depend solely on who wins the ideological debate. Remember that.
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