Ideology and Dialectic Continued

The failures on the right are equally obvious, though I think Hayek's analysis here misses the mark.  Fascism is not a variation of the scientists' and engineers' habits of thought.  Although it is easy enough to read the bureaucratic state into the stereotypical German personality, and to see the banality of evil in the likes of a state bureaucrat like Adolf Eichmann, the Fascist state finds its validation, not in the apotheosis of planning, but in the apotheosis of the person. It is worth pointing out that fascism arose, not in response to a strong government, but within a weakened and ineffectual government as did the Napoleanic before it.  The bureaucratic banality of evil in the Nazi state was not ground from which the likes of Hitler sprang, but rather an organizational response to the presence of a overweening personality.   I confess to being essentially a Hobbesian when it comes to unfettered human nature.  One need observe a middle-school playground to know that people are not essentially kind, but are socialized into kindness and maintained within civility through the presence of strong governance, and the adult versions of the middle school playgrounds celebrated in shows like Survivor illustrate the point equally well.  The players in those games may well be sociopathic, but it is easy enough to imagine various Lord of the Flies scenarios that would emerge if the reality show were in fact real and there were no TV host to channel and mitigate their more malign impulses.  

I am suggesting, in brief, that the absence of teachers and TV hosts -- the absence of empowered  government -- allows for the ascent of one or another form of bully whose will (or whose whim, or whose psychosis) becomes the rule of law.  One sees a similar dynamic in contemporary America.  The current complaint against the government is not that it has grown too large, as such, but that it has grown ineffectual in addressing the conditions of basic human dignity.  How it might be strengthened is the question, and we want to believe, along with Hayek, that "so long as dissent is not suppressed, there will always be some who will query the ideas ruling their contemporaries and put new ideas to the test of argument and propoganda."  The best will emerge in the so-called "free market of ideas" just as the best products emerge in the "free market" proper, and to "deprecate the value of intellectual freedom because it will never mean for everybody the same possibility of independent thought is completely to miss the reasons which give intellectual freedom its value."  It is not, however, "the same possibility of independent thought," but rather being heard on a stage large enough to let that "independent thought" hold any sway.  

Civil discourse, not unlike any other form of behavior, demands good governance.  While it might be partially cowardice that causes us pause in speaking up against the bully, particularly when the threat of reprisal is real and immediate, and one need only look to the various forms of police state to see that dynamic at work, but it is not only cowardice.  One need not specifically prohibit dissent to render it ineffectual.  The recent supreme court decision of Citizen's United vs. the Federal Election Commission had two effects that should cause us caution.  First, it weakened government to regulate political discourse.  Prior to the decision, the Federal Election Commission limited the amount an individual could contribute to a PAC to $5,000.  That boundary was removed.  This may in fact seem a positive benefit, insofar as political discourse is protected under our first amendment rights to free speech, and limiting spending on speech limits the amount and the audience of speech.  Second, having said that, however, the same decision has significantly subverted "respect for the individual man qua man" that Hayek wished to preserve, and supplanted it with a notion of the corporation as a person, yet another form of collectivist thought, and often the collectivist thought of the emergent oligarchy, if not playground bullies, the next best thing.  If the right sees the threat of the left, the left sees the threat of the right, and you have Robert Reich asking in his blog, " Have you heard of William Dore, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons, Peter Thiel, or Bruce Kovner?  If not, let me introduce them to you. They’re running for the Republican nomination for president."  These individuals have contributed upwards of 10 million dollars to various PACs, which leads Reich to comment, " I know, I know. You think Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney are running. They are – but only because the people listed in the first paragraph have given them huge sums of money to do so. In a sense, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul, and Romney are the fronts."  And he concludes, "bottom line, whoever emerges as the GOP standard bearer will be deeply indebted to a handful of people, each of whom will expected a good return on their investment."   That William Dore, president of the Dore Energy Corporation, gave one million to Rick Santorum, should not cause us pause on the possible sources of his antipathy to environmental science.  One wants to avoid conspiracy theories, the suggestion that there may be some grounds in the evidence to support a belief that Santorum is in cahoots with the energy companies to create a beautifully concocted scheme to increase the profits of Dore Energy Corporation.  One wants to believe that Santorum himself is sincere, but that he has a wide audience for his views, that he is in the running for President where he might effectuate those views, seems well backed by interests other than interests in "truth," where the "individual conscience" is the "sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those claiming it) warrants a belief."