Privatization cp ddi 2012 1 Privatization + Coercion 1
Surrendering to the will of the state causing escalating violence
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- Submission to the state quells protest movements and makes war and genocide possible.
Surrendering to the will of the state causing escalating violence.Louis Beres, professor of international law in the department of political science at purdue university, spring 1994, Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, Lexis The State that commits itself to mass butchery does not intend to do evil. Rather, according to Hegel's description in the Philosophy of Right, "the State is the actuality of the ethical Idea." It commits itself to death for the sake of life, prodding killing with conviction and pure heart. A sanctified killer, the State that accepts Realpolitik generates an incessant search for victims. Though mired in blood, the search is tranquil and self-assured, born of the knowledge that the State's deeds are neither infamous nor shameful, but heroic. With Hegel's characterization of the State as "the march of God in the world," John Locke's notion of a Social Contract -- the notion upon which the United States was founded -- is fully disposed of, relegated to the ash heap of history. While the purpose of the State, for Locke, is to provide protection that is otherwise unavailable to individuals -- the "preservation of their lives, liberties and States" -- for Hegel, the State stands above any private interests. It is the spirit of the State, Volksgeist, rather than of individuals, that is the presumed creator of advanced civilization. And it is in war, rather than in peace, that a State is judged to demonstrate its true worth and potential. How easily humankind still gives itself to the new gods. Promised relief from the most terrifying of possibilities -- death and disappearance -- our species regularly surrenders itself to formal structures of power and immunity. Ironically, such surrender brings about an enlargement of the very terrors that created the new gods in the first place, but we surrender nonetheless. In the words of William Reich, we lay waste to ourselves by embracing the "political plague-mongers," a necrophilous partnership that promises purity and vitality through the killing of "outsiders." Submission to the state quells protest movements and makes war and genocide possible.Louis Beres, professor of international law in the department of political science at purdue university, spring 1994, Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, Lexis The State requires its members to be serviceable instruments, suppressing every glimmer of creativity and imagination in the interest of a plastic mediocrity. Even political liberty within particular States does nothing to encourage opposition to war or to genocide in other States. Since "patriotic self-sacrifice" is demanded even of "free" peoples, the expectations of inter-State competition may include war and the mass killing of other peoples. In the final analysis, war and genocide are made possible by the surrender of Self to the State. Given that the claims of international law n35 are rendered [*14] impotent by Realpolitik, this commitment to so-called power politics is itself an expression of control by the herd. Without such control, individuals could discover authentic bases of personal value inside themselves, depriving the State of its capacity to make corpses of others. The herd controls not through the vulgar fingers of politics but by the more subtle hands of Society. Living without any perceptible rewards for innerdirection, most people have discovered the meaning of all their activity in what they seek to exchange for pleasure. Hence, meaning is absorbed into the universal exchange medium, money, and anything that enlarges this medium is treated as good. According to this model, finality of life is not, as Miguel de Unamuno wrote, "to make oneself a soul," n36 but rather to justify one's "success" to the herd. Instead of seeking to structure what Simone Weil, who was strongly influenced by Unamuno, calls "an architecture within the soul," we build life upon the foundations of death. Thus does humankind nurture great misfortune. The Talmud tells us: "The dust from which the first man was made was gathered in all the corners of the world." n37 Seizing this wisdom, people everywhere must begin to move toward generous new visions of planetary identity. Shorn of the dreadful misunderstanding that people can exist only amid the death struggles of competing herds, the residents of Earth could escape from the dark side of national self-determination n38 and recover an overriding cosmopolitanism that brings self-affirmation and safety. Impact - Totalitarianism We have a choice between respecting freedom or allowing regimes like Stalin’s Russia or the Nazis to take over. Big governments have been responsible for the worst suffering in human history.Tom Feeney, republican representative of florida, 05-21-2001, Good Policy Is Good Politics, Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/HL706.cfm But communism is just one subset of collectivism. Professor F. A. Hayek explained to us in The Road to Serfdom that most academics were wrong when they charted on a linear graph the political spectrum, typically with communism on the far left of this scale, moving toward socialism and democracy and free markets in the middle, and ultimately ending up with right-wing totalitarianism in the Nazi style. Professor Hayek demonstrated, for those who would listen, that the real issue is the extent to which centralized government controls resources and decisions on the one hand versus the extent to which individuals can make choices over their own lifestyles, activities, and resources in free markets on the other. Maximizing individual choice leads to the benefits Professor Adam Smith described as the magic of the "invisible hand." Nazism and socialism are not polar opposites but two peas in a pod when reviewed in Hayek's terms. In the first half of the last century, those of us who stood on the side of individual freedom versus the coercion of collectivism looked as if we were losing very badly. But while the political-economic trends seemed to be going badly for liberty lovers, there were even more challenging problems on the technology front. If the 20th century stands for any lesson in science and technology, it is that those fields are morally neutral. The Moral Neutrality of Science Many of the technological advances have been wonderful. In the field of biomedicine, for example, life expectancies have expanded dramatically, and the quality of life during our visit on Earth improves with every new medical and pharmaceutical discovery (which I note collaterally is somehow not a sufficient experience to relieve liberals of the obligation to bash drug companies for making profits). But the wonderful advances in technology have also enabled evil people to participate in horrors, including genocide, to an extent previously unimaginable. And make no mistake about it: One of the dangers of big government is that the largest atrocities in human history, from the execution of Christ to the Nazi holocaust of Jews and others they considered undesirable, have been perpetrated and organized by big government. Nazis have not been alone, nor in terms of sheer numbers have they been the largest perpetrator of genocide in the last century. Zbigniew Brzezinski reminded us in his book, Communism, the Grand Failure, that the 20th century communist governments led by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China have accounted for the murder and willful starvation of over 150 million of their own citizens. And, of course, that's putting aside war-related casualties from communist aggression. It is a remarkable statement about a philosophy that you can kill 150 million of your own people in order to improve their life. The Fundamental Issue: Individual Freedom In light of those observations, it seems rather remarkable to me that in every major election in advanced democracies such as Britain and the United States, to the extent that candidates can intelligently articulate fundamental issues, elections are fought over one simple underlining question: the relationship of free men and women to their government. Stated differently, to what extent is an individual free to exert personal choices over one's actions and resources without fear of interference or punishment from government? Our country was torn apart over the issue of slavery; but looking at this philosophically, America stood from its inception, through Founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, for the principle that human beings were free. Once it was acknowledged that African-Americans were not property but human beings, the political result in the land of the free was inevitable. Unfortunately, it took a bloody civil war to deliver that result. Another way to state the political question concerning the relationship of an individual to his government is whether it is prudent to advance propositions that appear to deliver security at the expense of an enlarged government sphere of influence and control over individual choices. Churchill left the Conservative Party for the Liberal Party when the Conservatives failed to acknowledge the lesson taught by Adam Smith concerning the merits of free trade. Promising protection from competition is one method by which politicians purchase votes by promising security. Lady Thatcher, as early as 1968, talked about the problem of modern politics. In her speech to the Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool in October of 1968, she described the modern election strategies by saying: All too often one is now asked, "What are you going to do for me?" implying that the program is a series of promises in return for votes. All this has led to a curious relationship between elector and elected. If the elector suspects the politician of making promises simply to get his vote he despises him, but if the promises are not forthcoming he may reject him. Thatcher continued: "I believe that parties and elections are about more than rivalries of miscellaneous promises—indeed, if they were not, democracy would scarcely be worth preserving." Democracy as Process Great point: Remember that democracy is a process. It guarantees no political policy results. While the Constitution protects certain liberties such as the freedom of speech, the press, and worship, for example, democracy unrestrained by a constitution has no guaranteed result. It was certainly a democratic response in Germany that empowered Hitler after the country had endured serious frustrations and economic crises in the aftermath of World War I. One can imagine, in a perfectly "democratic" process without constitutional restraint, that you could have gone to some towns in certain places in the United States a hundred years ago—or sadly, perhaps 30—and gotten the majority of voters to vote for a proposition that essentially said that if a white woman accused a black man of assault, the accused would be sentenced first and tried afterwards, if at all. These might be perfectly "democratic" results, but our goal is not democracy alone; it is to advance liberty. Fortunately, the Framers understood this 230 years ago. In this constant battle of freedom versus security at all costs, it is useful to remember that, as Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Ronald Reagan, in the tradition of Lincoln, Churchill, and Thatcher, reminded us, as he entered the political stage formally in 1964 in his speech for Barry Goldwater, that the academics who viewed the political spectrum on a yardstick from communism to fascism had it all wrong. He endorsed Hayek's view. Remember the great lines with which he finished his famous address: You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down—up to man's age-old dream—the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order—or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course. 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