Corporate Power: Capitalist and Socialist

Posted on June 26, 2003 in Liberty

I keep thinking back, as I see our freedoms eroded, to what Blaz observed about America last fall. The resounding screams of conservatives about his words didn’t surprise me. Like the Catholic-hating fundamentalist who whined when I told him that he’d substituted the name of Jesus for that of Great Diana of Ephesus, the local Roman national goddess, they accused me of making arguments which were “ad hominem” — in their definition, mere name-calling. I rebutted that “ad hominem” means “to the person” (a fact which leading Internet pundits and guides don’t seem to fathom): by analogy, I was underlining their absurdity, their greed, and their meanness.

They hate the truth. Blaz wrote:

I haven’t heard anything about things going on outside the US, except when Bush was talking about “weapons of mass destruction” and that was it. It almost seemed like the USSR in the old days – you only see what you’re supposed to see.

When the USSR was extant, I used to call it a giant corporation that owned everything. Conservatives whimpered: we had capitalism, we were free, it was different.

I still think the analogy holds, especially as laws preventing monopolies erode for the sake of a new oligarchy. Expect skilled engineers who blow the whistle to be forced to find jobs as janitors, just like the brain surgeon who wouldn’t recant his part in the Czech uprising in The Unbearable Lightness of Being ended up first as a carpenter and then as a country farmer. With the consolidation of health care, expect doctors to be next.

Centralized power, whether accumulated by revolution or acquisition is the greatest enemy to personal liberty a human can face. Both try to make her think that she’s alone in her views. And that’s how they succeed.

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I wish that more political bloggers, instead of regurgitating the news, would look around their neighborhoods and inside their relationships to see how their lives have been changed and harmed by Bush. Most of us don’t think we’re that interesting, that it takes a court trial or a disappearance to mark the evil. I say look to your jobs, your home, your family, your favorite shopping places, your debts, and your friends. Speak about what manacles you. Then others will realize that they, too, are prisoners of the New Industrial State and that they are not alone in feeling bound.