Progressivism​ ​and​ ​Conservatism​ ​and Their​ ​Approach​ ​to​ ​Power​ ​in​ ​Society​

[Originally published in the Front Range Voluntaryist, article by Non Facies Furtum]

The fundamental difference between progressives and conservatives is their interpretation of the origin and best solutions to most of the problems in society, government, and human organization in general. They both realize that humans make mistakes, and are corruptible. However, they come to very different conclusions on how to solve this problem.

Progressives are of the idea that the best way to organize society and to prevent people in power making bad decisions is to perfectly engineer the system, and create one that is fair, active in shaping society, and is able to do what seems best for people. They focus on getting “the right people” into power, and finding incorruptible angels who would never be tempted to abuse their power at the expense of their subjects. They try their best to design a system of bureaucracy and centralized, multi-tiered government which can guide society paternalistically, and they will always make sure to tweak (and expand) the state so it is as effective as it can be.

Conservatives take a wholly different approach. They have noticed that every worldly institution has failed, and been destroyed, and those that are around currently are subject to corruption, and oppress the people they claim to protect. The conservative approach to organization of society is to neutralize the potential power that any bad actors in places of power could attain, by designing a weaker, less centralized system. The logic is that if power is difficult to attain, to exert, and difficult to centralize, and especially, difficult to maintain, then it will be much more difficult for evil people to abuse those powers. Certainly, this has been proven true in many circumstances.

For example, in the early history of the United States, power was more decentralized than it had been in many places for a long time, and the power that did exist was well-limited. This meant that individuals had the greatest autonomy in a society, and the idea of the government was to essentially prevent infringements of rights and to provide a system of adjudication in the case thereof. This was in contrast to many other conceptions of government, where the state was to be honored on merit of its existence, and was the central organizing pillar in the lives of all in the nation, in a way that it is to many nowadays. This limited government idea was not to solve everything with the state, but, to the highest degree possible, to solve everything outside of it, and to limit the powers of the government.

The greatest flaw with this solution to the abuse of power by the wicked is the fact that power always attracts the worst people possible, and that they will not stop at anything to increase their power. A constitution, for instance, may set a course for a government for a while, and create convictions in the minds of citizenry, but the devilishly smart people behind the wheel of the state apparatus will find ways to change it, avert it, and use slimy sophistry to convince the public that their violations of the document were justified all along, and beneficial.

The fact is the least intrusive state in the world created its most vibrant economy, and this fact is what led to its current position as one of the biggest states in the world. Every possible justification for state expansion was feverishly seized upon by the psychopathic statist addicts who craved only more power. If they needed to start a war to institute some “temporary” (read: permanent) war-time powers, they’d do it. If they needed to import low IQ, unskilled immigrants from lands with backward cultures to buy votes, they’d do it. If they’d promise welfare for the poor, which in reality enslaved them, and guilted those who knew it was a bad idea into supporting it, they’d do it. If they needed to suspend a centuries old right for those arrested (read about Habeas Corpus and the Assize of Clarendon), they’d do it.

And they have done these things, all of them, and much more. Even the most beloved figures in American history have done it, and this is the country which more than any other in history was committed to the ideas of small government, decentralization, and individual liberty.

Nowadays the US Federal government employs more than 4 million people, records 67 million people receiving some sort of government welfare, and spends some one-trillion dollars every year on a military which acts like a global police force, killing and displacing millions in wars, creating enemies, and making its citizenry less safe. This is what happens even to a government based on conservative ideals. What happens when “Progressive” ideals found a government? Well, those governments kill over 260,000,000 of their own people in less than a century.

So what is the solution? Well, the situation seems to be that it doesn’t matter how much power a state starts out with. It doesn’t matter how one tries to prevent the evil people from gaining power, and even the good people seem to get corrupted by it. The problem isn’t really the people, but the problem is the power itself. Yes, there are psychopaths among us, and the majority of them fit into normal life without too much trouble. It is the access to power that rots a human soul, and exposes the real evil man is capable of. Remove the power of other individuals, and you have gone a long way to solving violence and evil in the world. When people must interact as individuals, voluntarily making contracts with one another and peacefully interacting, there is no way for the kinds of tragedies that history is littered with to occur. Power destroys the humanity of the individual, which then leads to the destruction of a great deal of other.