Free market without constraints destructive
Ms. Moen’s continued defence of her erroneous conclusions about the wonders of the free market, evil socialism, and social conscience need to be rebuked. Especially as she compounds her blarney by saying that conscience is apolitical.
So, when social conservatives exercise their “social conscience” and deny others their human rights, they aren’t showing a political biases? Are not their actions the opposite of what an apolitical conscience would entail?
Obviously, Ms. Moen is distorting her reality to fit a political agenda so loved by the far-right. The same agenda that has produced vast income inequality, the loss of political and social achievements so hard fought for by previous generations, especially in the U.S.
It doesn’t take a socialist to understand how ultimately destructive it is for the well being of any society when the free market takes over from government oversight as you wish for. They just need to understand the lessons from history as to why civilizations collapse from the inside, such as Czarist Russia or the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI. Those bloody revolutions happened for a reason. They happened, in part, from wildly excessive income inequality and the resulting political inequalities that go with it.
Government, for the people and by the people, with its oversights and law making abilities is what keeps us safe from the anarchy and greed of the free market which exists solely to promote a return to feudal economies where the lord of the manor hoards the wealth and power of life and death over the peasants like you and I.
In Ms. Moen’s idea of utopia, selfishness and individualism would create the ultimate Darwinian survival of the fittest. By the way, Charles Darwin never advanced that thought for humanity and rejected it. A half-cousin coined it and it has nothing to do with Darwin’s great achievement in explaining evolution. But I digress, as is my habit of doing.
Individualism is something that I largely support, as my writings show that I march to my own drummer. But carried too far and we lose what we gain through cooperation and empathy for others. Our natural tendencies towards altruism which have ensured our survival since the caveman days is denied by those addicted to individualism above all. Social conservatism among the right see no hypocrisy in championing individualism even while being a conformist force fighting against change and human advancement.
My brand of thinking individualism allows plenty of room for the common good which horrifies the far right. I just need to watch the news footage of the covidiots who are demonstrating against the restrictions which are designed to keep us safe in this pandemic to see how ludicrous their calls for individual rights over medical science is. Fortunately for all of us, most of the population doesn’t think like them.
Robert T. Rock
Mission City
