Those who compel my will lose my heart

This period more than any other has convinced me that I can no longer identify exclusively or primarily with any ideology or party or group. Ideology and ideologues -- communism, socialism, Nazism, fascism as well as liberalism or conservativism and even anarchism or libertarianism; whatever ideology -- that compel conscience are as repugnant as religion that compels conscience.

There is a reason why there is such a absence of ideas in contemporary political and cultural discussions. Because force -- power -- has become an obsession in contemporary democratic politics. It's one of the most ironic and tragic features of early 21st century democratic politics, since the 20th century saw the thankful demise of the most serious threats to freedom and liberty and ideologies and governments premised on force as an organizing idea: communism, Nazism, fascism.

The idea that free and democratic peoples would spend a century opposing, rightly, ideologies premised around force only to turn to force, themselves, to try to govern themselves and to recommit the same mistake of governance that democratic peoples spent the previous century opposing is one of the terrible tragedies of the beginning of the 21st century.

It cannot possibly hold because force is what failed those regimes and what rationalized their abuses. Though, as we learned with communism, force can hold the human imagination for far longer than anyone who loves freedom could think bearable or imagineable.

The fact that Milton Friedman, who spent his life committed to cause of freedom, would die during a period of repression and regression, nevertheless a period of liberal repression, is a serious tragedy of this time.

What else would we refer to as a repressive period or a repressive regime but a time or a government that romanticizes the use of force or turns to force to solve its most pressing problems? There is no other meaningful definition of repression.

And the fact that Milton Friedman had to die during a time when liberals are romanticizing force to cure economic woes that he spent a lifetime arguing powerfully as a medicine worse than the sickness is tragic for Milton and tragic for all of us, really.

He thankfully saw the end of communism as a serious alternative to democracy as an organizing principle for governance. And there is little doubt that Democrats control power temporarily, thankfully, in a democracy, as do Republicans, thankfully. There is little doubt in my mind that force as an organizing principle of democratic governance cannot hold long because its failure and abuses during the 20th century were real and serious.

It's one of the most important bits of wisdom from a serious liberal thinker, Lord Acton, that we have from the 20th century:

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

How terrible that we would spend the early 21st century romanticizing the most terrible legacy of the 20th century.

Democratic peoples romanticizing force look like Russians romanticizing Stalin.

At least under Stalin we ate, reason too many Russians. Which, of course, was not true; some ate, some starved. At least when we were forced to be good, reason democratic peoples, we were not so bad. Which, of course, is not true. As with today, many were good; all were bad.

Repression, in both cases, undermined all aspects of life: moral, material, political, cultural, academic, personal.

Repression is the most seriously tragic legacy of humanity. And that it takes so much time to die in the early 21st century demonstrates just how foolish humanity's commitment to this failed principle remains. Foolishness and stubborness are often synonymous, in my experience. And this example is the most serious of that sad fact of life that our time has to offer.

Those who compel my will lose my heart.

And my heart, my conscience, is not open for compulsion.

My heart, my conscience, is now and forever committed to freedom.

Love,
Ben