My biggest political heresy might be this: I don’t believe that fascists are more evil than socialists.

Epistle [rough draft]

And so, my leftist friends, comes the reason you are uncomfortable when I talk politics: I don’t believe that because you SAY you have your heart in the right place and want to help ”the poor” or “the workers” or “the marginalized,” that means that you DO have your heart in the right place. Wanting to help A and B and C does not absolve you of your willingness to marginalize, exploit or even kill D and E and F. A modern “democratic socialist” is pretty much in the same camp as a fascist or Nazi in this regard. They just have different groups to back and different groups to attack.

Furthermore, intentions don’t matter as much as everybody seems to think. You may embrace Ideology X at time T1 or T2. And you think you do so for good reasons. But ideologies do not work out as planned. At times T3, T4 . . . Tn the plans and procedures take a turn. We know how socialisms of all stripes work, now. We know where greater government — total State — goes.

It doesn’t go to sweetness and light. 

Besides, it is a myth that Nazis and fascists had malign intent all around and socialists had (and have) benign intent all around. Do you think that fascists thought of themselves as “bad people” in the heyday of Mussolini’s brand-spanking new alternative to liberalism, or that the Nazis thought they were against civilization? No. They thought themselves good people just like anybody else does. Further, I have never met a socialist who did not want to dispossess the ”wealthy” (defined somehow) and thought that this should be done by decreasing state power. So no matter who socialists say they want to help, they quickly and quite vindictively begin their expropriation agenda when they get power. And when their programs inevitably fail to live up to predictions, then decisions must be made: double down on socialism or move back from socialism. It’s “liquidation of the Kulaks” or its a retreat to some muddier, more limited system like multi-party “democracy.”

So, my leftist friends, what reason do we have to trust that you will give up power? The moment Donald Trump got elected, the talk switched to impeachment. There has been an impeachment movement from before he took the oath of office.

I am not saying this to defend Trump, or even say he’s not a fascist (though I think that’s absurd — but I could be wrong). I’m saying you NeverTrumpers and impeachment-from-the-getgo folks have tipped your hand. You will not accept defeat from your utopian dreams, you will not accept the republican form of governance. When you say things like “Trump will not step down if he loses the next election, you seem to be projecting your own itch for never-e ding power onto someone you do not like, who offends your sensibilities.

This makes you evil.

Sure, you can repent. But you cannot do that while you support impeachment for silly, murky or partisan reasons. You can choose not to be evil. But you have to give up a commitment to ever-growing state power.

That is, you can choose NOT to act like socialists and fascists. You can relinquish your one-party rule hankerings.

But I don’t think you will. And if you don’t, that makes you no better than a brownshirt or a blackshirt.

I am not one of those anti-leftist theorists who think that the moral particularism that fascists and some right-wingers wear on sleeve is any better than your fake universalism.

And it it fake. That’s the key. I have spent much of my adult life thinking about just how fake it is.

I suppose I should write books about this, but the fake universalists who call themselves “socialists” won’t read such books. I mean, there have been very persuasive books in this vein already, by folks such as Herbert Spencer, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Thomas Sowell, et al. And most leftists have never opened masterworks like The Man versus the State (“too confrontational!”) and A Plea for Liberty (“what? who?”) and Socialism (“too long”) and The Road to Serfdom (“debunked!”) and The Fatal Conceit (“we’re still here, so it can’t be fatal!”) — or hundreds of others with titles like The Vision of the Anointed (“Tom’s an ‘Uncle Tom’ ha ha!”).

So, yes: I do not believe that fascists are worse than socialists, racists worse than communists. I suspect that the latter ideologues of these two pairs might be worse than the former. One reason is that socialism and communism are inherently dishonest, and in The Lie is the foundation of evil.

Which is why leftists these days concentrate on “hate” more than dishonesty. For it distracts us from where all ‘socialisms’ go wrong: in the unfolding of plans for concentrated control, and their inevitable end (if not abandoned) misery and death.

twv