The Democrats Are Doomed

Lew Rockwell reports:

the Dems have assembled for this year! What a mess of hucksters, victim-group politicos, and anti-capitalistic wackos. Maybe they would be tamed in office, but they sure are a scary crew otherwise. It can be depressing, to be sure, but let us remember that the root of the problem is not the individuals in question but the ideology that underlies the raison d'être of the modern Democratic Party, at least at the national level.

That ideology is socialism. I know what you are thinking: these guys aren't socialists, for it's been years since any prominent Democrat openly advocated the nationalization of all industry. So triumphant have free markets been that they don't even believe in this stuff anyway.

That's true enough but it sidesteps the reality that there is no economic activity that these people don't favor regulating to the nth degree. They talk of privacy and civil rights, but when it comes to commerce, they recognize no right of privacy and no individual rights. All property is up for grabs to control and meld in the name of national wellbeing.

That's the practice, but what about the underlying theory? Here too, socialism of the old sort is gone. But the socialist theory of society still burns brightly. Their model is that in the state of nature, meaning in a state of freedom, all is conflict and cruelty. Pathology and ugliness are everywhere. The government is necessary to step in at every level of society to resolve these otherwise intractable conflicts and manage our way into the new epoch of human well-being.

Big government is a religion to some.