The Philosophy of the New Left
Writes C. Bradley Thompson: "In 1958 Mike Wallace interviewed the Marxist social theorist, Erich Fromm (author of "The Sane Society"). If you want to understand the philosophy behind the New Left and the world in which we live today, I recommend that you watch it. [...] Watching the Fromm interview helps us to understand why the Dustin Hoffman film, The Graduate, was such a hit in 1967. The culture had been prepared by Fromm, Marcuse, et. al. The famous line uttered by Mr. McGuire to Benjamin is straight out of Fromm: 'I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. . . Are you listening? . . . Plastics.' "Watch the Erich Fromm InterviewVideo: The Doctor Cog in the Obamacare Washington Machine
Health Care Reform: Setting Doctors Free [Livestream]Dr. John David Lewis: Obamacare is a moral assault on free people, and an attack on human life itself.Government medicine treats doctors as cogs in a giant machine, run from Washington, as if treating patients required no independent thought or action. Twenty-eight states have filed suit against Obamacare, claiming it is unconstitutional. But it is much worse than that. It is a moral assault on free people, and an attack on human life itself. John Lewis has a unique perspective on this issue, both as an advocate for individual rights and as a cancer patient. Don't miss this hard-hitting lecture on the deepest evil of government medicine.John David Lewis is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke University, and a senior research scholar in history and classics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University. He has taught at the University of London and Ashland University, and is a fellow of the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship. He has a PhD in classics from the University of Cambridge. He is an outspoken proponent of free market medicine.No Time To Go Galt
Writes Philosopher Onkar Ghate over at CSM:
How, people wondered, could Rand have foreseen all this? Was she a prophet? No, she answered. [Ayn Rand] had simply identified the basic cause of why the country was veering from crisis to new crisis.
Was the solution to “go Galt” and quit society? No, Rand again answered. The solution was simultaneously much easier and much harder. “So long as we have not yet reached the state of censorship of ideas,” she once said, “one does not have to leave a society in the way the characters did in Atlas Shrugged.... But you know what one does have to do? One has to break relationships with the culture.... [D]iscard all the ideas – the entire cultural philosophy which is dominant today.”
Now, if you’ve only seen the movie, the fact that "Atlas Shrugged" is not a political novel might surprise you. But the book’s point is that our plight is caused not by corrupt politicians (who are only a symptom) orsome alleged flaw in human nature. It’s caused by the philosophic ideas and moral ideals most of us embrace. ['Atlas Shrugged': With America on the brink, should you 'go Galt' and strike?]
For more on Rand's philosophy read Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Neoconservatism Sells Fascism as Americanism
C. Bradley Thompson unmasks Neoconservatism over at Cato Unbound:The culmination of the neoconservatives’ political philosophy is their call for a “national-greatness conservatism.” Following Irving Kristol and Leo Strauss, David Brooks, William Kristol, and a new generation of neocons proclaimed the “nation” as the fundamental unit of political reality, “nationalism” as the rallying cry for a new public morality, and the “national interest” as the moral standard of political decisionmaking. This new nationalism, according to Brooks, “marries community goodness with national greatness.”Read the full article at Neoconservatism Unmasked.
The moral purpose of national-greatness conservatism, according to David Brooks, is to energize the American spirit; to fire the imagination with something majestic; to advance a “unifying American creed”; and to inspire Americans to look beyond their narrow self-interest to some larger national mission—to some mystically Hegelian “national destiny.” The new American citizen must be animated by “nationalist virtues” such as “duty, loyalty, honesty, discretion, and self-sacrifice.” The neocons’ basic moral-political principle is clear and simple: the subordination and sacrifice of the individual to the nation-state.
Politically, Brooks’s new nationalism would use the federal government to pursue great “nationalistic public projects” and to build grand monuments in order to unify the nation spiritually and to prevent America’s “slide” into what he calls “nihilistic mediocrity.” It is important that the American people conform, swear allegiance to, and obey some grand central purpose defined for them by the federal government. The ideal American man, he argues, should negate and forgo his individual values and interests and merge his “self” into some mystical union with the collective soul. This is precisely why Brooks has praised the virtues of Chinese collectivism over those of American-style individualism.
In the end, the neocons want to “remoralize” America by creating a new patriotic civil religion around the idea of “Americanism”—an Americanism that will essentially redefine the “American grain.” The neoconservative vision of a good America is one in which ordinary people work hard, read the Bible, go to church, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, practice homespun virtues, sacrifice themselves to the “common good,” obey the commands of the government, fight wars, and die for the state.
[...]
Neoconservatism is a systematic political philosophy. The neocons’ talk about moderation and prudence is really only meant to disarm intellectually their competitors in the conservative-libertarian movement who want to defend the Founders’ principles of individual rights and limited government. The neocons preach moderation as a virtue so that ordinary people will accept compromise as inevitable. But a political philosophy that advocates “moderation” and “prudence” as its defining principles is either dishonestly hiding its true principles, or it represents a transition stage on the way to some more authoritarian regime—or both.
My deepest fear is that the neoconservatives are preparing this nation philosophically for a soft, American-style fascism—a fascism purged of its ugliest features and gussied up for an American audience. This is a serious charge and not one I take lightly. The neocons are not fascists, but I do argue they share some common features with fascism. Consider the evidence... [Neoconservatism Unmasked]