KEY QUESTION: From where does this incessant need to create new ideologies -- and effect social re-engineering -- originate? Especially via "Big Picture" programs -- and smaller aspects via the regulatory estate?
On possible explanation -- and discussed by an old Communist uncle -- is the alternate filling of the human brain's "god hole" (lower case "god" here, means any deity will do). Filing this "god hole" with alternate ideologies can be a source of intellectual creativity -- and mischief.
Some alternate history: Implied in the first two chapters of this 2009 book:
Book: "Liberal Fascism" by J. Goldberg
The European intelligentsia became:
(a) Bored and tired of God, the Western Judeo-Christian traditions and the Catholic church -- sometime before -- and certainly during and after the French Revolution. After the French Revolution -- every intellectual of any stripe felt a need to create -- and to create a new vision for society around them -- fixing, tuning, adjusting and destroying any real or perceived ill and inefficiency of human societies and the human condition. And often without regard to cost or consequences. The intellectual parade is almost endless: Robespierre, Engels, Marx, Lenin, Mussolini, Gramsci, Lukacs, etc.
(b) Idea producers, coupled with the printing press. An intellectual is not an intellectual unless they produce and publish a stream of ideas (publish or perish) -- sometimes small technical shavings off old ideas into smaller new ideas. And sometimes -- to be the primo explorer -- the Big Bwana of ideas -- the intellectual must question whole sweeps of human history, tradition and culture. Questioning is not the problem. The real problems begin with specific social re-engineering that is based on wishful thinking and Utopian dreams -- and not real experience humans and their natures.
Since the 16th and 17th century -- and especially after the late 18th century French Revolution -- Europeans have boiled over with new ideologies -- new, radical "isms" -- for over-turning and socially re-engineering Western traditions. One perspective and epistemological trek is in Linda Kimball's 2007 discussion from the American Thinker.
Many of these radical "-isms" have been -- or are being imported -- into the American experience. The regulatory estate and plantation is no exception -- having been drawn from Bismarckian tenets for "good government."
The upshot is -- during the 20th century -- a parade of European "-isms" and political movements -- which captured the power of the state -- often with religious zeal -- re-engineered many European countries -- often with catastrophic results.
An American Immune Twist?
America has produced it fair share of intellectuals cranking out ideologies of every stripe -- radical and otherwise -- however the popular need for absorption of these new ideologies has been different. Why? How? Perhaps what I call the "Evangelical Relief Valve" and "Smarter Shopping" of ideas.
Consider -- the core European experience for the past 2000 years has been more-or-less Church and State speaking as one. Even today -- in some countries -- and this is almost impossible for Americans to understand -- the local church is so tightly coupled to the local state, the church "shares" in the tax revenue -- tax revenue collected with all the police powers of the state. To an American way of thinking -- this coupling of church and state can only generate annoyance and resentment -- especially if your personal belief system differs from the official orthodoxy.
In America this annoyance and resentment is explicitly allowed to vent -- and be explored -- via the US Constitution's first amendment and religious freedom. Anyone in American -- at any time -- can create a new ideology -- religious or not -- and begin promotion and "sales" of the idea. This was true even before the American revolution -- and this has contributed to two American twists:
(1) Any frustrated intellectual and/or self appointed social re-engineering "expert" can write a book -- yell from a street soap-box -- run a radio or TV show -- start a church, etc -- go on an Evangelical and advertising bender -- and vent his or her viewpoint to the world -- and "test" the population's sympathy -- and potential "buy in" of the intellectual's "great new idea."
(2) Because so many of these ideological ventings are manifest in America -- the American population is drowned in ideas & ideologies (especially commercial ads). This produces an accidental degree of mental "hardening" and ad hoc "smarter shopping" of new ideas and ideologies. This is often expressed via the satirical aphorism "Opinions [ideas] are like assholes, everybody has one."
SUMMARY: Will the American Evangelical relief valve continue to "protect" America from the radical "isms" of the 20th century European experience?
Hard to predict -- as regulatory and judicial systems appear to be doing and "end-run" of this evangelical relief valve: The Regulatory Estate and Judicial circles are rife with social re-engineering ideologies -- big and small -- that masquerade under such "good sounding" and "politically correct" labels as "good for the environment" -- "protecting health" -- "promoting safety" -- "helping the poor" -- "for the children" -- etc.
And more and more -- each of these good sounding "intentions" are backed by police powers of the US Federal government -- and many state and local jurisdictions. As recent examples such as the Oregon baker's fine or the case of Kim Davis for failure to issue a marriage license have shown. These cases manifest a much larger trend of using the regulatory and judicial powers of the state to overcome any and all religious liberty -- and plug up the evangelical relief valve.
The open question becomes: Will the regulatory estate become the new theocracy in America? With regulators and judges as the new priesthood? Are we there, yet? Seems corruption and evils of the Ancien Régime -- so detested during the French Revolution -- are being rebuilt -- in America -- via the Regulatory plantation -- and yet to be defined estates of the realm.
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