A preemptive apology for not having a silvered-forked tongue that can rely on priors and presumptions of oft repeated phrases and frameworks, for not having the time for extensive revisions, nor for painting with a broader brush than the prompting tweet.
Socialism is a term that is oft abused and which can mean different things to different people. Ironically, in the United States, many people take it to mean what the Soviets wanted it to mean, which was specifically the collective ownership of property, a bit more broadly to incorporate Godlessness, and more inaccurately social mores that run contrary to their particular view of Christianity as it pertains to both religious and secular matters.
The Soviets pushed their definition of Communism being the one true socialism in order to get all other non-Communist socialists on board; today, it’s used to insulate non-Communist socialists from the socialist appellation. Ironically enough, much of the Cultural Marxist thinking including Critical Theory, as well as the frameworks and analyses of Gramsci, are being incorporated into what James Lindsay accurately termed the “Post-American Right”, with which the “New Right”, “Alt-Right”, “Common Good Conservatives”, “PostLiberal”, &c. are, if not concomitant with each other, then a highly overlapping Venn diagram—none of these things being anything other than at some fundamental level socialist.
Socialism, as it was more properly and broadly understood wasn’t about government ownership of just property, but collective and centralized, at some level, control over society both socially as it pertains to non-economic issues and economically as well. This is why the European Union is socialist, as is pretty much every single political party in Europe today; this is also why both Italian Fascism and German National Socialism are also indeed socialism.
Italian Fascism under Mussolini is actually a good example of socialism in a non-Communist vein. They conceived the nation as a whole and the people are parts of the nation, and it is from the collective nation that the individual gains meaning in some form. The Fascist state may not directly own the economy, but it does direct it towards a “Common Good” with individual sectors (e.g. labor, capitol, farms, &c.) organized to keep themselves in line and to coordinate with the other sectors to work for the “Common Good” under the watchful and corrective hand of the collective of people as exercised through an enlightened leadership caste.
The subordination of the individual to the collective where the individual can not subordinate the collective is socialism, especially when the purported collective is self-directing. Such thinking is a rejection of Western Civilization and an assault on the common good and increasingly a hallmark of the Post-American “Right”.
The misdirection of the term “ordered liberty” is but an example. An order, be it broad or narrow, as bounded and limited by tradition, past wisdom, &c. within which liberty may be exercised unfettered, is fundamentally different than and ordering of society to create some outcome deemed “liberty”.
This is very much what modern Leftists embrace, and what many on the purported “Right” have increasingly adopted as well, and for which they sell socialism without saying it’s socialism with a soft sell. This more progressive vein has been creeping within the United States for well over a decade, just as it has well and truly ruined Europe beyond true redemption. Indeed, those who are mocked with the derisive “what have conservatives ever conserved” taunt were the only ones who actually dared to stand up to all that. Reading what the Left says, especially on the theoretical side, as well as understanding why they believe it and the rhetorical tactics and strategy they use to push it, can allow one to these tricks used, and the underlying precepts and premises thereof, regardless of the specific policy goals or superficial shape of society that is moulded just as much as those who desire a different “normalcy” using the same methods… as we shall later see herein.
All this stands in stark contrast with the rich American pageant which is our heritage and our fundamental pillars of what makes America exceptional. The Anglo-sphere has been different for ca a millennium nearly, and while much of the rest of the English speaking peoples have strayed from what America, even today, holds true, it remains separate and distinct. And what are some of those elements? In short, much of them stem from a throwing off of the “Norman Yoke.” Many of the earliest examples of this are the Charter of the Forest and the Magna Carta, both of which made it clear that the government (in this case the not-so-devine right of kings) was limited and the people needed to keep it in check, that is, to place the yoke on the state in order to keep it off the people. In contrast socialists presume a certain unity of the two, at least as a possibility of not outright desirous outcome.
In this vein, the people do not direct society via the government because “the people” is not can can not be a singular will like some Rousseau-esque Volonté Générale or “Common Good” to which the individual can be subsumed. Nor is “society” greater than the sum of the individuals that make it up, but there is nothing that “society” can have that did not come from individuals and the free action therebetween under the law and the social mores that arose independent of, and often antecedent to, government itself.
This is not some false dilemma fallacy of collective decision making and total anarchy. It is the difference between a centralized organization of society under a proscriptive idea or ideology and an organic and self-organizing society with a basis encapsulated by a descriptive illuminating idea of what society already is all under the limited confined of the law be those confines broad or narrow.
Far too often people ignore that later of those two and focus on competing visions of the former, or a competition with their vision of the former with some similar system of a ruler or rulers ruling over others; the irony here being that the “society” directing itself as if it were some fictitious god always devolves from the masses to control by an elite few.
More simply, it is the difference between a proscriptive imposition of an idea or ideology and a descriptive idea of a summary of what was already there; that is, it is the difference between imposing an order on individuals who must give way and maintaining a framework of order within which people can be free.
It is a dead give-away which side a person stands on when they talk about how problems all stem from a “system” of oppression that was imposed, and that the only solution is to break down that “system” of oppression and replace it with one that elevates the oppressed. It is the assumption that there always is a “system” and it is only a matter of political will for the good system to replace the bad. And it always comes along with “noticing” the problem with the often not explicitly said ascribing that to some “system” or nefarious plot. In other words, it is people who wake-up from some “false consciousness” and in this stake of being “woke” understand a “critical consciousness” which somehow inevitably leads to a narrow if not manichean solution for which no opposition may be broached.
Such an aforementioned “soft sell” was attempted by one Terry Schilling. Right out the gate in his tweet he talks about noticing problems and the immediately ascribes them to a system of resultant oppression that presumes an active plan to redistribute the wealth of those who are being oppressed which must be “fixed” to favor a more just outcome. A bit of a fisking is in order, but first to avoid the rhetorical assumptions and traps, an honest conservative proposition must be made.
