Perfect State?

Those of you who know me are familiar with my ramblings and digressions, but I can’t help myself, so here goes.

Long ago, when I was in college and had read “Plato’s Republic”, I liked to contemplate a perfect society.  In my spare time and at night before going to sleep, my mind would take me on a tour of my personal utopia.  After about 5 years, one day when I had a group of 6 or so of my friends together in a room seated around a large round table, I got out a bunch of glasses, some mix, and plopped a bottle of whiskey down and announced that we would drink until my friends were convinced of the merits of my perfect world.

The conversation was amazingly short, maybe 10 minutes … very little whiskey.  What I thought, my friends did not … what I liked, they didn’t.  But … and this is central … what really came out was that I thought that they should participate in my Society and I would be the overseer.  I liked it a lot, but they were appalled by it because I would be calling the shots.  “You have never done anything right yet! … why should you change now?” was the conclusion, “I’ll do it my own way.”  There was a lot more comment, some not repeatable, but suffice it to say I was totally chastised, not only then but right up to this day.  I, like you, can barely control my own life.  What kind of arrogance would make me think that I could control yours or anyone else’s?

I have used this example, for my own benefit of course, to gauge command societies ever since.  You will notice that every socialist envisions a perfect society applying to every one except himself … he/she will not be a participant on the individual level.  They will either be the “leader” or in some manner stand to the side so that they will not have to participate.

Observe … a free man wants to be left alone to forge his own way for himself and family.  He alone will determine what to do for his family and his community.  He will determine with whom to trade and to whom to give.  Conversely, the social meddler, always taking property from others, wants to impose his views on other people and if they are not responsive to those ideas, use the force of the State to compel their cooperation.  The former is responsible to God and God’s Law and latter is a minion of the State and its Man Made Laws.

Our forefathers who founded this country knew of these things far better we today do, because they had lived under totalitarianism.  Americans today do not readily have that personal gauge.  The only way that we, today, can understand what is at stake is to study history.  We have the history of the American Revolution and how Great Men molded their experiences into the greatest government ever.  We can study how those ideals were perverted by slavery, economic trusts (largely promoted by the government) , both in labor and business, monetary meddling,  social engineering and all sorts of other fiat fiddling.  But, most of all, we have the history of the most barbaric Century of human history in terms of man’s inhumanity to man, the 20th Century.  Our study of the 20th Century shows us that most of the inhumanity was caused by large groups (committees if you will) trying to impose their will upon others through the auspices of the State.  SOCIALISM in a word … Nazism, Fascism, Progressivism, even socialistic Imperialism (i.e. Japan, Britain, pre WWI Europe and US) … all one strong group ganging up to force a weaker group to do something that the individual people involved did not want to do.

As I learned at that round table long ago, understanding what is going on is a lifetime quest.  I will explore this in future “Musings” and if you care to comment, maybe we can gain some insights.  After all … that is what the Ephors are for …