We are all familiar with leftist utopianism.

We overlook utopianism on our own side, especially the ‘free trade’ utopianism.

Both sides are reductionistic now. Both interpret human reality through an economic lens. One side says ‘material equality for all’, one says ‘free trade for all’. Both seem to end in the same place: a small, powerful, wealthy oligarchy planning the economy, with a mass of people who (at best) can look forward to a ‘modest’ existence with no possibility of advancement or outlet for ambition. The only difference between the two is HOW to get there. (Both as utopians, fail to realize that reality will step in. We conservatives know what happens to socialist schemes. The libertarian economic utopians fail to realize that their attempts at utopianism will eventually lead to socialist revolution, as large mobs of unemployed people with no prospects will easily fall prey to class warfare (anti-rich), nationalistic (anti-globalist free trade) and anti-intellectual (anti-technology) rhetoric. The ugly reality of numbers and mob mentality will kick in. )

This reductionism is rooted in aspirituality. Many of the Founders realized that only a moral and religious people can have freedom. No one in the public square seriously discusses that anymore. It’s like a doctor who’s trying to treat an infection and refuses to seriously discuss antibiotics…

the patient will probably die.

At least the with the signification I have in mind, it refers to the ambiguous benefits that are supposed to materialize when we engage in ‘free trade’. New industries being created here while old obsolete ones are sent overseas, replacing jobs lost with better ones. World peace as more markets are opened up. Increased standard of living for everyone involved. Goods becoming ever cheaper. In short, all the benefits thrown out there whenever the free trade evangelists are preaching their gospel.

I didn’t endorse or attack policies. I attack the idea that everyone can benefit from some ideology or policy. The idea is utopianism.

Where did I ‘mistake love of freedom for a reductionist worldview’? You’re a smart guy. Read again what I wrote. I said that both sides interpret human reality through an economic lens. That is reductionistic because we are more than economic. It is as bad to do that as it is to interpret human reality through a behavioral lens or biological one. Any of these filter out some aspect of human reality, which is a much more complicated thing than one of these interpretations would suggest.

But I would argue that history suggests that statesmen engaging in debate beyond the basics made a grab for power from tyrants. I have in mind specifically the great struggle between Parliament and would-be absolutist monarchs in Great Britain and the great struggle between the American Revolutionaries and the despot George. The debates were well beyond the ‘basics’ and had much to do with right and wrong. And the result was MORE freedom.

I see socialism, and fascism as the same thing, as apparently did Hitler and friends: NazionalSOZIALISTISCHE Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. I think such an annihilating collectivist movement is much likelier than gang tribalism, at least in the West.

I merely mentioned you as the source of where I heard about that suggestion. I didn’t mean to impute any judgement to you and I’m sorry if I gave the impression i was doing so.

the idea of space exploration. But those projects included much technology developed on the taxpayer’s dime and large gov’t payouts. I also am very leery of the idea of such technology being available to the highest bidder. I could also see a massive development of private space enterprises as furthering the erosion of national sovereignty. The sharing of such technology through purchase instead of government decisions based on national interest will bring up security issues, and that will necessitate (in some minds for sure) the need for an international body to regulate, blah, blah. blah.

I do believe some things are better handled by gov’t than private industry. Nukes and space are two.

I remember a professor i had, who had these sort of issues as his specialty, teaching us that the political ideologies don’t fall on a linear spectrum, but rather a curve that is nearly a closed ring, with fascism on one end, and communism on the other. Right next to each other, separated by only a small gap.

Different route, same destination.

both are collectivist and annihilate the individual.

did you know that a contemporary of Hitler et al., Heinrich Bruening, referred to Nazis as ‘brown Bolsheviks’? In the book ‘The Bunker’, a Nazi youth leader, Artur Axmann, is quoted mentioning this fact, and saying that Herr Bruenings ‘bourgeois instincts were not wrong’.

Hitler’s own words are quite telling:

‘It is not Germany that will turn Bolshevist, but Bolshevism that will become a sort of National Socialism’. ‘Besides, there is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will.’

- The Voice of Destruction: Conversations with Hitler 1940 Hermann Rauschning.

Not to mention the Soviet Communist Molotov’s comment that ‘fascism is a matter of taste’.

Sure when the Nazis and Soviets made friends with their pact, it threw useful idiots on both sides into fits. But those were sensory idiots, who thought that differing imagery and vocabulary meant different philosophies. Those in power knew better and that’s why quotes such as those above came to be.