I am reading a book about Hume: an intellectual biography by James Harris…
and one quote just leaped out at me… I think this quote sums up
the entire conservative mantra…
“What matters in government is stability, order and the protection of rights
of property”
that sums up the entire conservative mantra and point about
government… but what if it is wrong…
what if… the point of goverenment is not just about stability or order or
the protection of property… notice that the quote doesn’t mention
values like freedom or justice or equality or hope… no, the entire
point of government is to maintain the order of society even if that
order is wrong… for example, it is 1935 and the legally elected goverment
of Germany is Hitler’s Nazi party… under the conservative mantra, we must,
must obey the governement because it is creating stability and order
and protects property… of course it did this at the expense of the
Jews and other “undesirables” like homosexuals and communist…
creating order by eliminating dissent and “disorder”…
basically anyone who opposes the Nazi’s… you have stability
and order and the protection of the rights of property by
removing anyone who opposes you… this is a method favored
by conservatives today… who have called for “libtards” to be shot
or removed from this country forcibly without any recourse to
legal protection… because personal rights are just not important
compared to the protection of property…
so is government just about stability, order and the protection of
the rights of property or does government have a far greater role…
in the promotion of freedom or of justice for example…or equality…
it is not enough to want a form of government that only has very limited
scope like maintaining stability or order or the protection of the rights of
property… we need, must have a government is engaged in the expansion
of such rights as freedom and justice and equality for all it citizens…
it is not enough to promote stability or order… we must have a government
that promotes values that benefit all its citizens, not just the ones
who want their property protected…
“we the people in order to form a more perfect union”
we the people, not we the people with property who want police
protection and government that only protects my property and maintains
my safety and my security…
once again it is about the values chosen… not just the value
of security or safety… but the values of freedom and justice
and equality and hope and love and peace and charity…
for not just the instinctual values of safety and security…
higher values like love and hope and charity…
this is the question… what values are we going to choose, not
only personally but collectively… together… which values are
the values in which we are going to live our life, individually and collectively…
what choices are we going to make in regards to such issues as the reach
of government and how are we to interact with each other…
do we act and interact with love and peace and justice and
tolerance or are we going to act and interact with hate, anger, greed,
lust, violence… the instinctual values that we cannot control because
they are instincts… the value we inherited with the animals of the earth…
are we really going to act with and become one with the instinct of animals?
I hope not… I want to choose higher, more human values… values that
represent me as a human being… values of…you know …
Kropotkin