The Wisdom of Walter E Williams

Long before I dismissed Rush Limbaugh as a political hack interested only in selling books and pimping the Republican party, I became familiar with the musings of Walter E Williams.  Walter occasionally substituted for Rush on his radio show and the difference was like night and day.  Here was an actual conservative, not a Republican.  The link is to an excellent, but short, article by Walter that succinctly describes the problem with the liberal collectivist worship of government as an agent of morality or good.

Racism vs Collectivism

It has been many years now that in the American cultural zeitgeist, individualism or conservatism is racism.  If you espouse a conservative economic opinion such as support for a flat-tax or simply reducing the size of government, the motivation for that opinion is racism.  This is because the political and bureaucratic classes in the U.S. are overwhelmingly populated by collectivists, or those who see government as more important than the individual.  The same can be said for most media outlets.  While this has changed slightly over the last 15 years with the advent of conservative media outlets and pundits, the overwhelming majority of the members of the media are collectivists.  This does not imply an overt conspiracy, however, their bias does not have to be overt and expressed only in the form of news.  Even a casual observation of entertainment media over the last 30 years reveals a steady drumbeat collectivist themes, from one shot comments about the "rich" or "greedy Republicans" to entire episodes of shows devoted to espousing collectivist ideals.  This type of media saturation sinks deeply into a population who can only charitably be said to be economically informed.  Because collectivism relies heavily on invalidating opposing viewpoints rather than arguing against them, those who oppose the collective are labeled as racist, sexist, homophobic or any other of a number of "isms" in order to silence criticism.  In many cases this is easily done as very few individuals care to take on those labels in order to defend their argument with logic.  The political class is well aware of this and that is why they make use of this powerful tactic.  This tactic has become even more potent since the election of a President whose main attraction to voters is his identity or race.  There is only one way that this tactic can be overcome and that is to accept the label you are given.  Own the label just as many of the various protected identity classes that make up the collective own their own slurs such as queer or nigger.  In the end, being a racist or being labeled racist is far less evil than being a collectivist.  A racist is someone who views people as being superior or inferior based on their race.  A collectivist is someone who believes that individuals have rights only as they are allowed by the collective.  Collectivism has, as the very basis of its ideology, the idea that the state has the right to take any portion of your productive efforts it sees fit.  Essentially collectivism advocates legalized theft in the form of taxation.  While it is certain that many racists would and have violated others rights and taken violent action, those actions are not a requirement of the ideology of racism.  So anyone espousing a conservative opinion must ask themselves if they are going to willingly submit to slavery to the collective and allow it to define their moral priorities or if their freedom and right to the results of their productive efforts are worth fighting for.