To Achieve Utopia Is To Achieve Serfdom

As a Christian, I remember having my first conversation with a Jehovah's Witness. We talked for about an hour. We talked about God, Jesus, how one receives salvation and all of the things a good christian would talk about. The strange thing was that after much agreement with everything I had to say, I was left sitting there wondering what was wrong. How could a Jehovah's Witness agree with everything I had said about the Person and work of Jesus Christ? While I was sitting there scratching my head, it was the Jehovah's Witness who began to explain to me the problem I was having. He said, "When you said Jesus is God, you meant the Trinitarian God...right?"

To which I responded, "Of course." I mean seriously, what else is there? There's only one God. Jesus is God. The Father is God. The Holy Spirit is God. It seemed to me a no brainer. But then he began to explain to me that the Jehovah's witness believes in radically different definitions but uses the exact same terminology.

The second chapter of Hayek's Road To Serfdom, The Great Utopia, also scales the language barrier. Some time back on my other blog I was informed about my ignorance that communism and socialism and Nazism are all very different systems, and that I was a fool for assuming they were all linked together somehow. But as Hayek observes,

Lest this be doubted by people misled by official propaganda from either side, let me quote one more statement from an authority that ought not to be suspect. In an article under the significant title of "The Rediscovery of Liberalism," Professor Eduard Heimann, one of the leaders of German religious socialism, writes: "Hitlerism proclaims itslef as both true democracy and true socialism, and the terrible truth is that there is a grain of truth for such claims--an infinitesimal grain, to be sure, but at any rate enough to serve as a basis for such fantastic distortions."

It becomes clear in this chapter that the supposed intellectual elite are so blinded by their desires for a Utopia on earth, that they miss the very consequences of their actions. In fact, the chapter starts by quoting Holderlin.

What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.

One of the first steps Hayek notes is that democracy and socialism both contend to be about equality. He quotes Alexis de Tocqueville,

"Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom," he said in 1848; "socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socilaism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

The more I read this book, the more relevant it is for Americans today. If there is any word that is bandied about in our society, it is "equality". Not only does the term "equality" suffer equivocation, but "freedom" suffers as well. He states a couple of paragraphs later,

The subtle change in meaning to which the word "freedom" was subjected in order that this argument should sound plausible is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached.

Now notice the change.

The new freedom promised, however, was to be freedom from necessity, release from compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than for others. Before man could be truly free, the "despotism of physical want" had to be broken, the "restraints of the economic system" relaxed.

But this deceptive propaganda of using terms in such a way led Hayek to see that,

"this would only heighten the tragedy if it should prove that what was promised to us as the Road To Freedom was in fact the high Road To Servitude."

Hayek then goes on to demonstrate that although communism and Marxism and Nazism and socialism are all different theories, their common bond is so strong the links between them can not easily be overlooked. As Hayek refers to F.A. Voigt,

Similarly a British writer after many years of close observation of developments in Europe as a foreign correspondent, concludes that "Marxism has led to Fascism and National Socialism, because, in all essentials, it is Fascism and National Socialism."

And he states a historical observation.

And what is true of leaders is even more true of the rank and file of the movement. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was generally known in Germany, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties.

And we most certainly see this today in our own colleges and universities when it comes to skulls full of mush buying this garbage.

Many a university teacher during the 1930s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they hated Western liberal civilization.

So the one great enemy they all have in common is [classical] liberalism.

To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common and whom they could not hope to convince, is the liberal of the old type.

In conclusion, it should be obvious that much of our public school system supports the radical Left. How many of our kids go off to college and return with the "blame America" mentality. How the evils of capitalism [which is really cronyism] and liberty have caused the evils of this world. Never is the Marxist seen as the radical. Never is the propaganda of the Left seen for what it is.

May we as a nation see the true issues at hand. We are on a road. Although many claim it is the road to freedom. History is clear. Utopias cannot be achieved. While standing and proclaiming "equality and freedom!", Serfdom is at hand.