A Look at the True Collectivist, Socialist and Communist Nature of Today’s Conservatives

Column by Scott Lazarowitz.

Exclusive to STR

Many of today’s conservatives speak of traditional moral values and free-market capitalism, and say they are “against collectivism, socialism and communism.” But an examination of the actual policies they support and the way they want to implement their “values” shows that many conservatives are really the collectivist, socialist and communist pots calling the kettle black.

An honest look at actual traditional moral values shows that such values naturally coincide with private property rights, self-ownership, freedom of association and freedom of contract. Many of today’s conservatives, however, support government policies in which the individual and one’s property are really owned by the community, and by the State. They also support an always-growing centralized federal government to impose the will of elite special interests onto foreigners.
 
In my view, socialism is public ownership of the means of production (that includes the people, thus a collective ownership of the individual), and includes central government control and confiscation and distribution of wealth.
 
And to me, communism is the cumulative result of the always expanding power and control by the central government over the people, industry and wealth, in which the State is the total owner of all property and the people. (See here, here and here.)
 
The reason I am constantly referring to the United States of America as “USSA” is because America today is a Soviet-like, police-state dictatorship, in which the central government in Washington owns and controls all the property and wealth within the territory.
 
In America now, the federal government has a de facto ownership of all the people, who are slaves of professional politicians and bureaucrats, their hired guns the police and military, lobbyists and lawyers, and big corporations and banks.
So it is the statist conservatives, from their support for State control in domestic social areas to their support for grandiose overseas democratization projects through wars and violence, in which they are true socialists and communists. Here are a few examples:
 
Marriage and Children: Political columnist Ann Coulter is quite representative of statist conservatives in general. She remarked, in her criticism of Ron Paul’s views on separating marriage and State, “If state governments stop officially registering marriages, then who gets to adopt? How are child support and child custody issues determined if the government doesn’t recognize marriage?” And conservatives in general are also in favor of using the government to prevent homosexuals from marrying one another.
 
These views show that Coulter et al. believe that individuals and their relationships and contracts are ultimately owned by the State, and that individuals must therefore get the State’s permission to marry, and to sign on to a mutually beneficial and voluntary contract, even though it is none of the State’s business who the parties are and what the terms of the contract are. This is an example of State ownership of the people, their associations and contracts.
 
On the child adoption issue, a free-market system would not only be more honest, but better for the children involved. Private, competitive agencies in adoption and foster-care would be based on word-of-mouth, proven competence and so on. Giving the State the authority to approve or disapprove of these situations, means the State owns the people and their children. The State-employed social workers’ loyalty has been to the State, certainly not to children. (See here, here, here, here and here, for examples.)
 
Immigration and Zoning Laws: Statist conservatives get very emotional on the immigration issue. They are not rational. That is because these conservatives are collectivists who view the entire territory as being collectively owned. These conservatives align themselves with the Almighty State that owns all the territory, all businesses and all the people. Because the State owns your business, it has the right to dictate to you whom you may or may not hire at your business, regardless of whether or not you believe that a particular job applicant would be better – better for your business and better for your customers – than the other applicants.
 
In contrast, with free-market, private property ownership, the businessperson is sole owner of one’s own business, and has a right to hire and fire whomever one wants, for whatever reason. For example, a Mexican sees a job opening posted for a restaurant business located in Arizona. Unless you really want to say that the State owns this individual’s life, then, otherwise he has a right to travel freely to that restaurant (as long as he doesn’t trespass on private property, of course) and interview for the job. And the business owner has a right to hire the Mexican if the owner foresees that his business will prosper with more pleased and better-served customers, which will result in higher wages for the workers there and probably, ultimately, lower prices for the customers. The competition across the street will be outperformed, and perhaps become a laundromat.
Statist conservatives believe in socialist central planning in immigration, even though central planning has screwed up immigration in America for decades. (See here, here, here, and here.)
 
The statists oppose the right of all individuals to own one’s own life and have the freedom to trade one’s labor or wealth with others in a voluntary contract. When these conservatives say, “You can’t come into our country,” they not only assert a belief in collective ownership of all property within the territory, but they want the State to control labor and production.
Also, many conservatives, independents and progressives become emotional regarding the concept of citizenship. To me, to be a citizen of a country means you belong to that country, which means the country – really, the government, or the community as a collective – owns the individual within the territory. Citizenship cancels out self-ownership as well as any notion of private property ownership. One of your most important aspects of private property is your own life. The individual’s most important private property is one’s own person, labor and what one honestly acquires through voluntary trade. But what the statist conservatives want, and what most people seem to want, unfortunately, is for the collective of the territory to seize ownership and control of the entire territory and all property, capital and resources within it. That includes the people themselves. If the inhabitants of a territory gather together as a collective and assert that an “outsider” must get the collective’s (or government’s) permission to travel within the territory in order to voluntarily trade one’s labor, wealth or property with others already within the territory, then they are asserting a collective ownership of those already within the territory.
 
The anti-immigration people are true socialists in their opposition to the right of all individuals to property transfer. Someone who lives in, say, Texas, and owns a home, has a God-given right to sell the property to whomever one wants, including to someone who has arrived from Mexico, and the Mexican has the same right to make that purchase and live in the home. Now, if you want to assert that the other neighbors may prevent that from occurring, then you believe in the socialism of the neighbors sharing in ownership of that property. If you believe that the State shares in the ownership of that property, then really the State is the true owner.
 
Besides immigration, another example of statist conservatives’ belief in collective- and government-ownership of all property is their love for zoning laws. The anti-Muslim conservatives’ opposition to the “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York was a perfect example of that. Many people wanted to use the armed force of government to prevent the Islamic community center from being built there, even though it is privately owned property.
 
Private property is not collectively owned by the other people in the neighborhood. You don’t share in ownership of your neighbor’s property. If your neighbor has something within his property that you don’t like, and if it bothers you, then you have the choice of communicating your thoughts and feelings to the neighbor and hoping that he’ll make changes to suit your needs, you can offer to buy the property, or you can move.
 
Local Police: The statist conservatives’ authoritarian love for police has shown its sickening face in their widespread support of cops committing acts of violence against peaceful protesters. This is an outcome of local governments’ communist ownership of the means of production in community policing and security. The statist conservatives support this communism, in which private production of security in competition to or as an alternative to the government-monopolized police is forbidden. In such a monopoly, in which the government police are armed but the civilians are not, the monopolists are not accountable. These conservatives’ support for this lawless scheme shows that they can’t possibly believe in the rule of law, the right to free speech and the right to protest your government. That is because they believe the government owns the people as its property, and its monopolized police have a right to physically keep the people subjugated (and imprisoned).
 
In contrast, in a free-market society of voluntary groups and competitive policing and security firms, anyone engaged in policing activities would be held accountable under the rule of law. The “bad apples” would truly be ostracized or put out of business, or jailed. One would think that conservatives would support this moral, free-market alternative. But the truth is, most of today’s conservatives are authoritarians and do not believe in individual liberty, voluntary exchange and the rule of law.
 
National Security and Wars vs. The Rule of Law and the Truth:
Statist conservatives are devoted to central planning in national security, regardless how flawed, failed, counter-productive and destructive such a grandiose, socialistic scheme has been. Giving a centralized government the monopoly of protecting an entire population from foreign aggressors in a territory spanning thousands of square miles is an impossible task. Not surprisingly, given human nature, and the fact that men are not angels, such empowerment of central planners has only encouraged them to provoke foreigners to act against the people.
 
The purpose of the government’s monopoly in national security had long ago become to expand the government’s power and its reach territorially, particularly overseas. It is not freedom to be protected, but government to be expanded. That is what the Nazis and the Soviet communists did. They centralized their governments and expanded their reach. The U.S. government has expanded itself into foreign lands for decades, in the name of “American Exceptionalism,” the euphemism for moral relativism.
 
While the war conservatives have been chanting about “Christian moral values” (“Do unto others what one would want others to do unto you” and “Don’t do unto others what one would not want others to do unto you.”), they have utterly abandoned such values.
 
While calling it “American Exceptionalism,” the war conservatives and other war supporters have been defending and promoting government’s criminality, pure and simple: coveting other people’s lands and resources, terrorizing and tormenting whole foreign populations, and murdering countless innocents.
 
Since 9/11 and the Bush era, many conservatives have passively bent over backwards to allow Bush and Cheney, and now Obama, to commit criminal acts of aggression overseas, even more provocations of foreigners than were committed prior to 9/11, and Soviet-like abuses of due process domestically.
 
But Americans have been numbed by decades of TV-viewing, by government-controlled schools that indoctrinate the people to obediently love the State and never question the word of government.
 
And now, the Senate has treasonously passed more tyrannical legislation in which agents of the State may – at the agents’ own personal discretion – designate any American a “terrorist,” apprehend someone from one’s home and detain and even torture him, hold him or her indefinitely without charges, without trial or any due process. As I noted here, such crimes against the people immediately violate the individual’s inalienable rights to life and liberty, which include the right to presumption of innocence and due process. Someone who grabs you out of your home and holds you indefinitely without charges is a criminal, regardless of his being employed by the government, military or police. Our own government is now treasonously very Nazi-like in its threats against innocent American civilians.
 
Because “there’s a war going on,” we will now see how an individual’s speaking out against the Regime, criticizing U.S. government foreign policy, or criticizing or satirizing our bumbling, buffoonish and incompetent government officials will be viewed as a “threat.” Such suppression of dissent is typical of corrupt totalitarian governments.
 
Already, when people try to discuss the truth about what our government has been doing, they are shouted down, smeared, slandered and referred to as “un-American” and “unpatriotic.” In the minds of the obedient masses, anyone who challenges the word of those in power is to be silenced. Yet, it has been our government officials whose actions against us, and against foreigners, have been thoroughly un-American.
 
But the “conservatives,” who have been approving of this kind of banana republic society, know what the Wall Street Occupiers want (to use the force of government to covet their neighbors’ wealth and property), the conservatives know what the unions and their gangster henchmen are all about, they know about ACORN, AmeriaCorps, and the “alternative” army that Obama spoke about before being elected President. The “conservatives” and other obedient government supporters have given the Obama-Left carte blanche to arrest and detain those who have criticized the Obama Regime, those who have “anti-government” views, on the radio, in the newspapers, on blogs and comments, Twitter and Facebook, and even those who have Ron Paul bumper stickers.
 
With Homeland Security’s campaign to “say something if you see (or hear) something,” people are encouraged to snitch on their neighbors. An anonymous tip by a disgruntled neighbor who heard that you oppose the Federal Reserve? You don’t think that’s possible?
 
You think your views are safe to express “anonymously” on blogs or in comments to a blog? Try preventing your IP address from being known.
 
“It can’t happen here”?
 
You see, the “conservatives” and other obedient government supporters have paved the way to the tyrannical, communist Total State, USSA, with their support of Bush’s exploitation of post-9/11 fears and paranoia.
 
The “conservatives” – along with the Left – in their merging of their identities with the centralized, authoritarian regime in Washington, have gotten to be just like the communists they thought they opposed and hated. And in their supporting the U.S. government’s terrorizing of Americans for ten years now, they have become just like the terrorists with whom they think they are at “war.”
 
Conclusion
Many of today’s conservatives may talk about “freedom,” “moral values,” “free-market capitalism” and “private property,” but in reality they believe that the people and property are owned by the collective and by the State.
 
And the statist conservatives do not really believe in moral values. If they did, they would either support Ron Paul, or they would be anarchists and support an all-private property society without monopolist rulers.
 
But most of all, many of today’s conservatives just love their central planning! (However, if God carved out Washington, D.C. and let it float out to sea, it wouldn’t bother me too much.)

 

10
Your rating: None Average: 10 (3 votes)
Scott Lazarowitz's picture
Columns on STR: 16

Scott Lazarowitz is a libertarian writer and cartoonist. Website: http://scottlazarowitz.org/blog/

Comments

Mark Davis's picture

Right on target Scott. At least the socialists admit they want to use the state to steal from others to pay for their "needs". Conservatives pretend to be against socialism until their pet "needs" must be funded by others and then they say "of course" the state must provide them. Further proof that conservatives have no real principles.

painkilleraz's picture

Great article, agreed on all counts

WhiteIndian's picture

I look at most -isms much the same. Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism. Even libertarianism or anarcho-capitalism or agorism or syndicalism.

All of them reveal their agricultural city-Statist nature with one question:

Officer, am I free to gambol about plain and forest to live a Non-State society's lifeway?

All of these political flavors of agricultural city-Statism (civilization) have the same answer: NO!

emartin's picture

Where did you get the idea that there would be a "state" or an "officer" to answer to in an anarcho-capitalist environment?
If you were to habitually gambol through and destroy portions of a corn patch, orchard, etc or shit on a lawn that I've nurtured and claimed for my own, I may recommend therapy before I go to the age old remedy of treating you like any other varmint.
Furthermore, don't be masturbating in front of my kids.

WhiteIndian's picture

Empirical data demonstrates that there is always a State in an agricultural city-Statist (civilization) sociopolitical typology.

Show me a society with settlements of roughly 5000+ that doesn't have State level politics, and I might regard your anarcho-capitalist fantasies with a little more respect.

Anarcho-capitalism is just that - an immature fantasy, on the level of the rest of your scatological and infantile discourse.

AtlasAikido's picture

-The poster you responded to told you what he will do. I have told you what I will and do (more below). What YOU are going to do is up to you...you can continue to beg for permission to run in the forest for all I care...

History's Most Elaborate Ad Hoc Hypothesis By Vahram G. Diehl
http://www.strike-the-root.com/historys-most-elaborate-ad-hoc-hypothesis

-As for the empirical data...Neither it nor statisticians and their spurious patterns can trump what human's do (in spite of being crippled by statism).

The abolitionists of the past did not know of companies like, John Deere, Kubota, or International Harvester. How could they know?

They would never witness the invention of the tractor and all of the wonderful implements that can be attached to them that make life on a farm so much easier. They would never witness the fabulous invention known as the internal combustion engine, or the introduction of hydraulic systems that make all of this technology possible. What empirical data would show such?

They--abolitionists--were not concerned with any of this, they did not care about what would replace the slave; they only fought to end the horrible institution of chattel slavery. This is the root I was trying to strike with my last essay. I only wish to abolish slavery. I see something as wrong, I should not have to devise a working model as an alternative to this wretched practice. Is it not enough to expose the slavery in the system to get my fellow humans to throw off their shackles? Do I have to tempt them with new systems? Chattel slavery, although practiced for many, many centuries, is now seen as a horribly immoral institution. Slave owners of the past were not presented with cost benefit analysis, or return on investment sheets. The moral argument was presented, and it was supported with the fact that man is a self-owner, no matter the color of his skin.

21st Century Abolitionists by Chris Dates
http://zerogov.com/?p=2371

-It is not my job--or anyone else unless they want to--to show you anything....

The truth is no one knows what “we” will do in a completely voluntary society, there is just no way of knowing. Any answer that is given to questions pertaining to the problems that individuals would face in such a society are purely speculation. I cannot tell you what we would do, I can only tell you what I would and already do. I would honor my contracts; I would defend myself; I would choose to help others in need; I would expect no one to support me; and I would plan accordingly. I want to be very clear here, I do not disagree with the theory that is being presented on how the logistics of society would be handled. There is no doubt that these organizations and such would arise and be needed in a voluntary society. I disagree with the fact that these theories are being pushed as answers before addressing the only real and true problem; collectivist thought. *When those who are curious about voluntarism ask the “we” questions, the underlying collectivist philosophy is still there, and this is what needs to be addressed first before any practical questions can or should be answered. Otherwise, you are just trying to get them to abandon their system for your system*.

There is *No We*: Challenge the Premise.
http://zerogov.com/?p=2334

WhiteIndian's picture

I'm not begging. "Officer, am I free to gambol about plain and forest" is a rhetorical tool to show how much daily violence is necessary to maintain the big-government Land enTITLEment program that draws artificial borders to restrict the free movement of people from living a Non-State society lifeway. What you call "private" property is nothing more than the heavy hand of agricultural city-Statist regulation of the home planet's surface.

And do you think you can conjure an animated corpse? Is it "possible" even while empirical data shows it's not? Not only has there never been a city-State without State level politics, we know why. Conjuring a "voluntary city" is going to happen the day after animated corpses walk. Yours is a Zombie socio-economic fundamentalism -- a reaction against the city-State's violence, but with a complete lack of understanding of the nature of the agricultural city-State (civilization) that has invaded and now occupies 99.9% of the home planet's surface.

The truth is, anthropology and ethnology do indeed know what “we” will do in a completely voluntary society. There is is a way of knowing. It's called observation. Humans are Pleistocene band animals.

You're also reacting against agricultural city-Statism's forced mass society, which is quite understandable, with fundamentalist religio-economic gibberish. Humans are social animals, and there is a "we." If you've ever served as part of a tight-knit and efficient crew (or band or tribe,) you'd know the silliness of that statement. No, it's not "collectivism."

Basically, you're talking out of your hat without a basic knowledge of the human animal. The last 50 years of anthropology and archeology have revealed much; it's been as earthshaking as what the theory of evolution was to society.

The "Original Affluent Society" (Sahlins, 1972) is the real, proven, workable Non-State sociopolitical typology to which humans are neuro-biologicially evolved. (Dunbar, 1992) White Indian has learned it, and given up ignorant philosophical fundamentalism that sounded precisely like yours.

It's time to catch up.

AtlasAikido's picture

Re: I'm not begging. "Officer, am I free to gambol about plain and forest" is a rhetorical tool to show how much daily violence is necessary to maintain the big-government Land enTITLEment program that draws artificial borders to restrict the free movement of people from living a Non-State society lifeway. What you call "private" property is nothing more than the heavy hand of agricultural city-Statist regulation of the home planet's surface.

-I live in a state of mobility. Quick little fish in a slow trawling net...If you think I am not private property then think what you want. But there will be consequences....LOL

Re: And do you think you can conjure an animated corpse? Is it "possible" even while empirical data shows it's not? Not only has there never been a city-State without State level politics, we know why. Conjuring a "voluntary city" is going to happen the day after animated corpses walk. Yours is a Zombie socio-economic fundamentalism -- a reaction against the city-State's violence, but with a complete lack of understanding of the nature of the agricultural city-State (civilization) that has invaded and now occupies 99.9% of the home planet's surface.

-Animated corpse? If it occupies your hand then move your body...Yes most started off flooded with statism. If you let it get hold of your neck and you loose your head then how is that different than living in the jungle? I have met men who mentally disarm themselves when they would never do such in the forest...So carry your forest equipment equivalents in your head. Some wear their kilts whilst observably trousered...Some carry their moral code locked and loaded....

Re: The truth is, anthropology and ethnology do indeed know what “we” will do in a completely voluntary society. There is is a way of knowing. It's called observation. Humans are Pleistocene band animals.

-Your observation seems to have made you band dependent and individual weak. Or perhaps not. So be it. Yet I also am not proposing auto-self-sufficiency....

Re: You're also reacting against agricultural city-Statism's forced mass society, which is quite understandable, with fundamentalist religio-economic gibberish. Humans are social animals, and there is a "we." If you've ever served as part of a tight-knit and efficient crew (or band or tribe,) you'd know the silliness of that statement. No, it's not "collectivism."

-You have others who are compatible with your mind set. But is it possible that I would too? Hmmm. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed so say you. Perhaps being "understood" as an individual first, in order to be useful to oneself and perhaps attract others of like mind. If one goes to the right places...

Re: Basically, you're talking out of your hat without a basic knowledge of the human animal. The last 50 years of anthropology and archeology have revealed much; it's been as earthshaking as what the theory of evolution was to society.

-I am talking to myself and for myself and into my hat perhaps but not dropping context where I am talking...Perhaps there are other compatibles for you and me?

Re: The "Original Affluent Society" (Sahlins, 1972) is the real, proven, workable Non-State sociopolitical typology to which humans are neuro-biologicially evolved. (Dunbar, 1992) White Indian has learned it, and given up ignorant philosophical fundamentalism that sounded precisely like yours.

-Interestingly enough I am a hybrid like yourself. And went Indian much like Jim Walker and not like the imprudent Jed Smith. See Westering Man by Bil Gilbert. If you step back for a second, I do not have a problem with what you believe. You are welcome to it. **Where in the Covenant of Unanimous Consent do you have a issue?** It is personal. I am interested in that. Not observations I and you apparently share regarding cancers posing as cures....That's why Harry Browne called them assumptions, so called philosophical truisms or Traps.

Re: It's time to catch up.

-Becoming free whilst living in the matrix is not impossible. A prequel of that world I already live in: An opening couplet...
"I don't believe in predestined fate The future is what we [I] choose to create."
Anthem for the Ama-Gi (a tribe or band of well oiled individual and separate cogs that come and go).
http://www.indomitus.net/anthem.html

If ones' own moral code is important enough to state--for one to know explicitly and improve on; and for others to know oneself--without binding them down--then an inter-relationship Covenant could have much valuable application. How the Covenant of Unanimous Consent fulfills the promise of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. It pertains to relationships without the state....
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2006/tle381-20060820-04.html

Again: **Where in the Covenant of Unanimous Consent do you have a issue?** It is personal. I am interested in that. Not observations I and you apparently share regarding cancers posing as cures....That's why Harry Browne called them assumptions, so called philosophical truisms or Traps.

Paul's picture

The word "conservative" has become as meaningless and self-contradictory as the word "liberal", so I refrain from using it any more, unadorned with double quotes. And this applies from the top of the ruling class to the bottom.

WhiteIndian's picture

A good TED talk on the differences between liberals and conservatives follows:

Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

Within a group of humans respecting their neurobiological social limits, known as Dunbar's Number, left and right are like legs that help each other out. Neither personality styles are more morally right or wrong, they just are, and both have great strengths.

Only in the mass society of the agricultural city-State must we endure standing on one leg, or the other, for extended periods of time, until we get tired of it, and revolt to the other leg.

Humans are Pleistocene band animals, and we just aren't adapted to mass society, any more than dolphins would be if dolphins had a massive industrial hierarchy, instead of having fun in small pods.