Her Hypocrisy Isn't the Big Problem

Image by infopaul70, via Pixabay, license.

A Hot Air blog post by John Sexton is making the rounds, but for the wrong reason. Of course Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned right around and made a bigoted remark after being compared to a group she disdains: All of "identity" politics is collectivism and bigotry. This is not news. Sexton's identification of the Green New Deal and its author as fundamentally anti-capitalist is much closer to the mark, but even that isn't what I find significant.

Rather, let's look at the following aside, after briefly noting for clarity that our current economic system is not actually capitalist -- which gives her some credibility to many eyes:

She's really not being shy about what she wants here. The current economic system is, in her view, unfair and is taking something from the working and middle class. This is the analysis you would expect from Democratic Socialism. The underlying idea is that the state can and should arrange these things better than private interests are currently doing. It's a very old delusion at this point but one that keeps cropping up every generation. [bold added]

A question that too often goes unasked is this: Why do we have to keep having this conversation every generation, with each being less free -- and so less able to appreciate what is at stake -- than the one before? It is in large part because very few people consistently and on principle question the propriety of the state "arranging things" other than the defense of individual rights. If conservatives want the moral high ground, they must, for example, stop seeking public funding for religious schools, and instead work to privatize all education. Why? Because all such "arrangements" involve the government violating the right to property as a starting point. (This is never the only right that gets violated, but that is almost beside the point.)

It is wrong for the government to take things from one individual and give them to another, and right for the government to let each individual keep and use the fruits of his own labor. We own ourselves and it is the government's job to enforce that ownership -- not to violate us in any way. Until more opponents of the left understand and argue based on this premise, we will keep bickering about what orders the government will execute and with whose money and lives -- while our society continues circling the drain.

-- CAV