From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed May 28 2003 - 01:59:30 MDT
On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 05:15:27PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> In reading Hayak's "The Road to Serfdom", he stresses what a
> disaster it was for the Americans to lose the terminological
> fight to the socialists, and allow the word "liberal" to be
> adopted as describing socialistic or quasi-socialistic programs.
>
> This, I think, is what some of our foreign correspondents on
> this list have said in so many words; though I am unsure of the
> exact equivalence.
Yes, this is a constant irritation for me. Here in Sweden I'm a liberal,
on the list I'm a libertarian. Of course, by Swedish standards the
american socialists are at most right-wing social democrats.
> He also appears to have a long chapter on the socialist component
> in Nazism. Now of course, "Nazi" stands for German Nationalist
> Socialist workers party, and without yet having got to what Hayek
> has to say, I do note that except for the Nazis, none of the usual
> suspects we associate with the right-wing---from the KKK to the
> militia movements---have anything to do with socialism. Therefore,
> the propriety of placing the Nazis entirely on the right wing may
> be questioned. Admittedly, in their nationalism, elitism, and even
> in their version of eugenics, the Nazis were right-wing; but in
> their collectivism and theory of government, they were clearly
> left-wing.
It becomes confusing when mapped onto a one-dimensional left-right
scale, but think of the Nolan chart, and it becomes rather trivial:
nazism and fascism are simply the result of moving from the "little
economic freedom/social freedom" part of socialism to the authoritarian
corner of no freedom in either direction (also, 30's socialism was
rather low from the start on social freedoms). It should not be any
surprise that both Hitler and Mussolini had a past within left wing
political parties. Also, the move to authoritarianism worked politically
because it could draw on similarities with pre-existing political
sentiments within conservative and authoritarian movements, getting
almost everybody to feel that there was at least some good ideas in that
mess.
This might be relevant for doing preventative memetic gardening of one's
own civil society. I personally think you Americans should take a
serious look at the neo-con program, just as we Europeans better guard
against "national social democracy" and "national liberalism".
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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