Foretelling America's Descent into Totalitarianism
Michael Polanyi was born at a particularly inauspicious place and time: in Budapest, Hungary, in March of 1891, just as central Europe was heading toward two devastating world wars, economic collapse, and a half-century of communist totalitarianism. On top of this, Polanyi was a Jew who most certainly would have been killed had he not fled to England in 1933.
If he had been murdered by the Nazis, the world would have lost one of its great modern polymaths: a scholar who conducted research in chemistry, economics, and ethics and who understood the rise of tyranny better than almost anyone. Among his fourteen books, The Logic of Liberty is one of several that focus on totalitarianism.
Polanyi's defense of freedom and opposition to centralized government were based on close observation of what was happening during his lifetime. Even after he fled Germany, where he was teaching, Polanyi was one of 2,300 persons on the Nazi "kill list" had they been able to conquer Britain. Communism was equally dangerous, as Polanyi realized during a 1936 lectureship in the Soviet Union.
Polanyi spent his life defending free markets and individual choice at a time when centralized planning was spreading across the globe, even in the still democratic countries of Europe and North America. Were he alive today (he died in 1976 at age 84), he would certainly be alarmed at the expansion of government control in the United States under the Obama and Biden administrations.
Polanyi's insights into progressivism (really just a polite word for communism) are striking. He was, in effect, describing woke politics when he wrote of totalitarianism in his day: "A new destructive skepticism is linked here to a new passionate social conscience; an utter disbelief in the spirit of man is coupled with extravagant moral demands" (Liberty 5). What Polanyi had witnessed in Europe was not just an unfortunate "coincidence" of communism and fascism coming about at the same time; it was "a single coherent process" involving both patriotic and humanitarian emotions fueling ruthless and extraordinarily brutal regimes across Europe and across the globe. It was the very promises of equality and free will that seemed to justify the murderous actions of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and so many others in the 20th century, but that sleight of hand is still with us; those same promises are the basis of progressive politics in the 21st century, and no place more so than in America. Just before the debt ceiling agreement was reached, progressives like Biden and Sen. Schumer were suggesting that any cuts in federal spending would kill thousands of children, just as they have in the past.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment