Who shall we trample next? Socialism allows majority voting blocs to use government as a weapon against minorities. (Image: Public Domain Pictures)
More than ever before, people gleefully identify with and join “the herd.” I believe a lust for power in an age when individuals feel helpless drives this rapacious enthusiasm for joining the “majority.” Socialism is the major contributing factor here. When socialist democracies (and all Western nations are socialist democracies) espouse the idea that any majority has the right to control the property, money, and behaviour of any minority, it inevitably elevates herd thinking and values to the status of duly enacted law. The herd votes to clobber the rich, the one percent, the conservatives, Wall Street, the bankers, or big oil. Even smokers take it on the chin, as does anyone else who has unluckily aroused the herd’s anger or acquired a negative image in the leftist-dominated media. This observable fact makes participation in the herd a way to control others through the government. The aim is to restore, albeit ultimately at one’s own expense, one’s sense of personal empowerment.
It is ironic that socialism, with its endless intrusions into virtually every aspect of our lives, was the system that robbed these meddlesome folks of their sense of personal empowerment in the first place!
This business of one group using the government to control another invalidates the entire socialist philosophy. If we really believed in the rights of the individual, socialism would be unconstitutional and governments everywhere would work hard to ensure it stayed that way. Only in this manner, by getting the majority to mind their own business — as they should — can there be any freedom for anyone. As long as we allow the government to be the weapon of choice for numerically-superior voting blocs we are all at risk of falling victim to the whims of one or another majority.
Thomas Cotterill 