Modernity’s gift has been the ability and determination to sharply delineate private and public spheres, with the private being the zone of individual sovereignty. It is the realm of the household, the family, and the work that sustains both. This is the basis of the proposition that the Constitution of the first consciously modern nation, the United States, protects the sovereignty of private individuals, not the sovereignty of a public collective, “the majority.”
-George Will (writer, speaker, TV commentary)
On commenting on the above (as always, emphasis mine both above and below):
This distinction between society and state is essential to freedom, to prosperity, and to what we today consider to be civilization.
The former – society – is the complex order that emerges unplanned (“spontaneously”) from the expectations and countless, multifaceted acts of individuals. The latter – the state – even at its best is force consciously deployed in attempts to achieve certain ends that, depending on the structure of the decision-making apparatuses that invest authority in those individuals who at any moment actually wield power, hopefully reflect some reasonable consensus among members of the polity.
Progressives are all pre-modern, for they do not understand the reality (or the full extent) of emergent social orders. Their policy proposals all reflect their fallacious belief either that there is no emergent social order, or that any emergent social order that might exist is typically so ‘imperfect’ that this order must – and is always so simple that this order can – be improved by the conscious application of force by the state. (Progressives always envision state officials eagerly, faithfully, and expertly following the advice offered by Progressives.)
Most adherents to this mythology adhere to it sincerely. They really believe that society is the product of the state. Liberalism – classical liberalism – is the great antidote to this mythology.
This Progressive mythology is very convenient for those many persons who, drenched with arrogance or venality or both, itch to order their fellow human beings about.
-Prof. Don Boudreaux
To Progressives, there is no difference between State and Society (their statement of “Government is the one thing we all belong to” is illustrative of this belief). This is their Collectivism and why they are so adamant that any govt program cannot be criticized because it is an attack on their belief system – an overbearing version of “one for all and all for one”; the problem is that they don’t care much for that second clause at all.
We’ve often said that Progressives are really REgressive because for all their talk of “progress” and “moving us forward”, their actions are to replace what was the radical idea of individual sovereignty and the separation between society and govt with….just government. Think of neo-feudalism, effectively, and that is the future-from-the-past that the Socialists wish to return us to (with the true believers being the aristocracy and the rest of us mere serfs).
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
