The following is the rough Chapter 1 to my upcoming book, Conservative Collectivism: How the American Right is Feeding the Federal Beast (and Why We Must Stop!)  In the weeks to come I will be posting this work in progress and I welcome your input.  If it were not for the readers of this site (as well as its predecessor TheFoundersAlliance.org) and the thousands of Patriots who comprise the East Texas Tea Party there would have been no first book and surely no second.  All of you have been part of this journey and I could think of no more qualified crowd of critics.  Thank you – Jessica Hughes

Read Introduction 

Read Ch.2: The Indispensable Nature of the Individual

“Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.” – Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev

“This is the mantra of the left, which is “I have a right to do what I want to do.”  And that is not the kind of freedom that our founders envisioned; it is not the kind of freedom that makes up a society that is devoted – as the subtitle of [my] book says – to the Common Good.”  – Senator Rick Santorum

The Austrian Economist and defender of liberty Ludwig von Mises, once stated unequivocally, “Either Capitalism or Socialism, there exists no middle way.”  Looking back we recognize that Socialism has many close relations: Fascism, Communism, Nazism, Corporatism, and even those doctrines named for their murderous implementers: Maoism, Stalinism and so on.  They differ on some salient points such as who should be exterminated in order to eradicate dissent but they all share one overarching concern – one scapegoat for their atrocities, one end to justify their means – advancing the Common Good.  Much like your average piece of Congressional legislation, this is a doctrine with an innocuous, even beneficent sounding name, which disguises the terrible consequences of its implementation.

To understand how something that sounds so good can be so evil, we need to recognize that it was not the method of pursuing the Common Good, or the people involved in the pursuit, that brought about the wholesale slaughter witnessed in regime after regime since the French Revolution.  It is not the case that advancing the Common Good is an admirable and noble pursuit that was distorted by those who happened to be in power at the time.  On the contrary, advancing such a doctrine necessarily lends itself to tyrannical abuse of power and therefore attracts abusive tyrants to its vanguard.

We can see this process of ‘self-selection’ at work all around us.  For example, while there is no rule requiring that used car salesmen be outgoing, chatty and slick, the nature of the job will attract such people and reward those who possess such traits with greater success.  So what are the traits that will attract and ensure success in the ‘job’ of ensuring the common good?

Arrogance

By definition, the common good is that which benefits either every single person or the people in a given society considered by those in power to be most important to that society’s healthy continuity.  It is what is best for you even if you don’t know it.  Imagine the conceit of a man who looks within himself and sees the power and wisdom to determine what that is.  I don’t know about you, but I frequently find myself questioning even the decisions I make for my immediate family and myself: “Is this a good enough homeschool program for my children?”  “Should we buy the better snow tires or save that money?”  “Am I setting the right example?” The list could go on forever!  But not so for those who would implement a program of betterment for the entire nation; these people question nothing and perceive themselves as a better judge than you of what will be best for you and yours.

Callousness 

Because a society of any size is sure to have various individuals with various beliefs about what, exactly, is good for them there is no one definition of the common good that enforces any law above and beyond Natural Law (a truth I will expand on later).  For any one man to define the common good, to lay out a blow by blow list of those things that you must do to be acceptable requires that he deny any sympathy to those who disagree.  And further, he not only must ignore the wishes of those who want their own blueprint imposed on the entire society, he must also ignore the wishes of those who ask only to be left alone to follow their own plans for their own life.  It takes an absolute lack of empathy toward anyone who does not agree with his strategy; a dehumanization and vilification of those who wish to live their lives for themselves and their family rather than for the society envisioned by this Great Architect.

Cunning

The one who would take millions of people born as individuals – who wake up each day to tend to their individual lives with their individual struggles and their individual triumphs – and convince them to abandon themselves to the collective, placing the interests of some arbitrarily defined ‘society’ above those of themselves and their loved ones, cannot simply come out and state this as his plan.  He needs a carefully crafted narrative that convinces a majority of individuals they are better off abandoning self to The Cause.  Ironically this lie is usually packaged to appeal to the individual.  It advertises that the individual person will be better off as part of this powerful collective; the collective can better provide for, protect, or promote the interests of each person than they can for themselves.  But underneath this is the truth that the real endgame of any collective is – and must be – to stamp out dissent by whatever means necessary.

Rigidity

No matter how compelling the evidence or how well crafted the argument, the ideologue will never be convinced of the wrong-headedness of his pursuits.  The very narcissism that has convinced him he holds the answers to all of society’s ills acts as a buffer against logic.  In arriving at the conclusion that he is the ‘Chosen One’ to carry the banner of complete societal rehabilitation he has inoculated himself to the very concept that he might be wrong.  Certainly he may defer to generals or advisors on small things such as the day-to-day management of his utopian pursuits, but the basic platform of his beliefs will suffer no challenge.  This is why the leaders of collectives like the Soviet Union and China forged ahead with the Master Plan even after their citizens were resorting to cannibalism for the lack of food.  The degree of obstinacy required to succeed in the ‘job’ of crafting the common good necessarily negates the critical thought and self-examination that most of us experience as we mature.

Jingoism

There is a difference between a healthy pride in your country and its ideals, and the blind obedience of Jingoism.  Jingoism involves a measure of aggression toward – and demonization – of the perceived ‘enemy.’  While the term is used for aggressive policies toward foreign nations the thought process involved works just as well domestically, and is an essential tool of the tyrant.  The Great Architect comes into the ‘job’ already callous, but the people he must turn to his purposes are – for the most part – average human beings with average human emotions like sympathy, empathy, insecurity and compassion for their fellow man.  Reasonable people may agree to disagree and this is intolerable in a society that is to be transformed from millions of individuals to a well-oiled machine promoting the common good.  Those who disagree with the goals of the Great Architect must be transformed in the eyes of the society and made enemies of the ‘pure’ and ‘selfless’ ambitions of the collective.

Charisma

Whoever will lead the people into sacrificing their autonomy, abandoning their reason, and denying their humanity – all prerequisites for successfully establishing a utopian collective – must be embraced and trusted.  He will say all the right things and radiate confidence.  People from the outside may look at him and wonder what on earth anyone sees in this loon, but for his target audience he will be spot on.  Those who will make up his eventual collective will believe him and believe in him.  They will invest themselves so deeply that they will be unable to countenance any criticism of him.  They will become selectively biased toward those favorable to him and see enemies in those who question him.  They will eventually be able to excuse shockingly evil acts committed by him or at his behest because their faith in his vision becomes the foundation of their conclusions.  Rather than judging the morality of his actions based on the timeless internal knowledge of right and wrong they once embraced, they will judge the morality of those acted upon by the compass of his perceived goodness.  The end is the Common Good, the means is whatever the Great Architect says it shall be, and therefore any who oppose him are evil.

These are six traits that make for a successful leader in pursuit of the common good.  While charisma can be harmless, the remaining tendencies read like a list of the very things mothers hope to avoid fostering in their children.  Who wants their son to be voted “Most Cunning” or their daughter “Most Callous?”  But these are the very characteristics embodied by those who successfully implement collective philosophies.  The reason for this is simple: These are evil qualities and collectivism is an evil philosophy.  It defies logic, it defies human nature, and it goes against the very foundation of Judeo-Christian faith, which says God created us with free will and therefore as individuals.  One of the core beliefs regarding Christ’s sacrifice is that he paved the way for each man, woman or child to choose or reject a personal, one-on-one relationship to the Creator of the Universe.

And for those who are not Christians, how lacking in humility must be the man who supposes to impose upon them the very beliefs and behaviors that God himself chose to leave to the individual discretion!

There is no common good to be found this side of eternity.  We on the Right know that the collectivism of the Left is evil: intent upon theft and redistribution and the elevation of the Nanny-State as Lord and Savior.  It is time we recognize that the collectivism of the Right is also evil.  Intent upon evermore intrusive regulation of personal behavior, Conservative Collectivism subsidizes lazy parenting, excuses lukewarm pastoring and passes the responsibility for imbuing morality from the family and flock to the faceless bureaucracy that we confess can’t manage the Post Office yet somehow expect to manage our human failings.

It is time for those who believe in the supremacy of God to echo Mises in stating unequivocally: “Either  Individualism or Collectivism, there exists no middle way.”