On “collapse,” I’m back and forth on seeing the same thing – I have my good days and my bad ones. I do remain convinced, however, that it is at least *possible* to fight an intellectual battle to change the culture and, with it, the political scene.

Madmax,

Ayaan Hirsi Ali put it best on the topic of Islam. To paraphrase, Islam is totalitarian by its nature and any reformation would be so radical that the result could no longer properly be called Islam at all. She is certainly in a position to know that, first-hand. If you must make a distinction, I think John Lewis put it best with Islamism, or State Islam, to distinguish the political wing.

For politicians, I think that in this context, Fascism is probably the closest identifier – or perhaps more specifically, Socialism on the German model (as Mises put it). I’ve used “Socialist” to refer to Obama, however, because he was an actual real-live Marxist professor. He’s gone on the record, however, as saying he’ll be more than willing to water down what he wants to get it pushed through into law.

Rob,

I’m in full agreement. The Republicans, for example, lost my vote in the recent election, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

C.T.,

That *is* a good way of putting it!

The best illustration of this point I’ve seen is a piece written by Neal Boortz a few years ago, though I’ve little doubt he’s not the first to illustrate it this way. Briefly, and completely paraphrased:

A woman goes into a gov’t welfare office and applies for assistance. She sits down with a gov’t agent for an interview. She explains her situation, answers the man’s questions, and after a while he says, “Okay, you’re approved for gov’t assistance. Here you go,” and he slides a handgun across the table to her.

She looks wide-eyed at the gun and asks the man, “What’s that for?” He replies, “You’re approved for welfare assistance. You now have the gov’t's approval to take money from other people in order to support yourself.”

She says, “That’s insane! I’m not going to ROB people! I want YOU to GIVE me the money!”

The man says, “Well, where do you think I would get the money to give to you?”

“But I don’t want to rob anyone!”

The man responds, “But you’ll let me do it FOR you?”
____________________

Not a bad way to make the point, I think.

This is one of the reasons why I dislike terms such as “Islamo-fascism” or “Islamic Totalitarianism”. The latter which is constantly used by ARI. Islam is fascist and totalitarian by its very nature. The qualifiers are redundant and dangerously as they lead one to believe that it is only the radical branches of Islam that are dangerous and not the whole religion.

“Most Americans are not Communists. Nevertheless, America did passively allow such men as Franklin D Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and now George W Bush to implement and then massively grow a welfare state…”

This gets to the question of whether men like Bush and Obama can be called “socialists” or “communists”. In one sense they are not, as you point out. But in another sense they are because that is the end of the road for their ideas as you also illustrate. I’m thinking of calling all of these people (Bush, Obama, Clinton(s), Paulson, Bernake, Greenspan, etc) Welfare-State Fascists. That term links the welfare state with fascism, something most people today, especially liberals, consistently deny.

“We will have to learn its sources and its workings, and present an opposition to Pragmatism…”

Binswanger recently said it is the absence of a proper defense of reason that is killing the West. He commented that it is the inability to connect concepts to perceptual concretes, to defend the hierarchical progression of concepts, and to argue that knowledge is essentially inductive which is responsible for the rise of Pragmatism. In short, Objectivism has to defeat skepticism, empiricism and relativism which are the dominant philosophical themes of our era, especially among secularists.

As I see it the ultimate battle is epistemological and the ultimate victory will be attained when Rand’s epistemology dominates the universities. After that, politics will fall in line.

This was particularly well put:

“The same man who voted for the politician who platformed on the expansion of welfare might never break into the house of his neighbor and take his money at gunpoint. But it is, of course, the same thing: both morally and in results. Men of principle know this because they can see it. Concrete-bound Pragmatists, however, can fail or refuse to see it.”

The notion of ‘seeing’ the future using principles as opposed to being ‘blind’ without them ought to be a staple mention throughout ‘our’ part of the blogosphere.

What I see is widespread social disorder, economic collapse and/or world war in my lifetime – I’m 29. But I’m also trying to see something better, but it isn’t so clear.

The rest will be led straight to hell if you walk them slowly enough. Without realizing the essential unity of “moderate” and “extreme” (today, the latter is merely a dysphemism for consistent) irrationalism, regarding them instead as fundamentally different, you will be powerless to resist either.

A is A. The same cause, in the same context, will always lead to the same consequences. I urge anyone who accepts a little tyranny in government to test their premises by employing the ample analogy of eating a pound of sandwhich with an ounce of ricin.

I have also given a good amount of thought to the proxy of violence that the government supplies. All those dressed up politicians sitting in their neat offices, launching death through police officers with guns. I bet it’s warm and cozy in there. And I’m not talking about the tax-paid offices.