It often seems to me that the schooling I got, which taught us to value intellectual coherence, principled reasoning, and a concern for actually accomplishing stated ends, was anachronistic, and that carefully disguised lunatics and unfunny clowns have infiltrated our halls of education, and created a primrose path, decked in flowers and balloons–and with a parade to boot–to hell.
The author in the previous post–I need to memorize his name, but not in the middle of the night, or first thing in the morning after that night–argues for some form of elitism. I take the opposite path: I think our goal should be a genuine democratization of virtue. A good society is a stable, robust, prosperous society, and my idea of government is simple: push power out to the fringes as far as it will go, to the cities, even communities, even blocks. Decent people possessed of common sense can work out differences peacefully, which reduces greatly the need for laws.
Only mediocre people create bad societies. It is a conservative truism that people are not perfectable, that they cannot be improved, that some depravity is inherent. I reject this argument. I simply do not believe that the government–as a simple linear system, and as such profoundly DISordered and truly chaotic–is the proper agent. I feel that the intersection of moral values and principles can be integrated into a Hayekian Extended Order, as indeed has happened in America for much of her history, through the social utility of a generalized Christianity and following behavioral norms among most of the populace.
Indeed, it is only by a cultivated and calculated abuse of Christian charity and an innate cultural generosity that Soviet propaganda has become so powerful in this country.