| | Ryan,
In answer to your question, yes, we may need to experience the full folly of socialism before beginning back in the other direction. Before politics change, the culture has to change. Before the culture changes, intellectuals (i.e., Edmund Burke's "good men") have to produce something of spiritual value.
In her book, "For the New Intellectual", Rand spoke of two kinds of Producers of value: the businessman (material producer) and the intellectual (spiritual producer). Here are good quotes from Rand describing how American intellectuals have basically dropped the ball, and how experiencing the full folly of socialism -- before beginning back in the other direction -- is likely how things will have to pan out (considering our country's current culture):
The intellectual carries the application of philosophical principles to every field of human endeavor. He sets a society’s course by transmitting ideas from the “ivory tower” of the philosopher to the university professor—to the writer—to the artist—to the newspaperman—to the politician—to the movie maker—to the night-club singer—to the man in the street. The intellectual’s specific professions are in the field of the sciences that study man, the so-called “humanities,” but for that very reason his influence extends to all other professions. Those who deal with the sciences studying nature have to rely on the intellectual for philosophical guidance and information: for moral values, for social theories, for political premises, for psychological tenets and, above all, for the principles of epistemology, that crucial branch of philosophy which studies man’s means of knowledge and makes all other sciences possible.
[The intellectuals] are a group that holds a unique prerogative: the potential of being either the most productive or the most parasitical of all social groups.
The intellectuals serve as guides, as trend-setters, as the transmission belts or middlemen between philosophy and the culture. ...
From the early nineteenth century on, American intellectuals—with very rare exceptions—were the humbly obedient followers of European philosophy, which had entered its age of decadence. Accepting its fundamentals, they were unable to deal with or even to grasp the nature of this country.
... prior to the birth of capitalism, the men of the intellect—the philosophers, the teachers, the writers, the early scientists—were men without a profession, that is: without a socially recognized position, without a market, without a means of earning a livelihood. Intellectual pursuits had to depend on the accident of inherited wealth or on the favor and financial support of some wealthy protector. And wealth was not earned on an open market, either; wealth was acquired by conquest, by force, by political power, or by the favor of those who held political power. Tradesmen were more vulnerably and precariously dependent on favor than the intellectuals.
The professional businessman and the professional intellectual came into existence together, as brothers born of the industrial revolution. Both are the sons of capitalism—and if they perish, they will perish together. The tragic irony will be that they will have destroyed each other; and the major share of the guilt will belong to the intellectual.
--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/intellectuals.html
Ed
p.s. As you may well know, Jeff (one intellectual) has taken up a personal project of the Atlas Shrugged Book Campaign in order to try to prevent this from happening to our country.
I (another intellectual) have taken up a personal project of debunking the foundational part of The Communist Manifesto (the first 12 pages of Ch. 1) in order to try and stop this from happening to our country.
A large part of the problem is that Ivory Tower liberals feel morally justified in advancing socialism. A large part of that moral justification that they feel -- and a large part of what they draw on when they cunningly trick the public into socialistic mindsets -- stems from the faulty reasoning found in The Communist Manifesto; specifically the first 12 pages of Chapter 1: "Bourgeois and Proletarians"
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/31, 9:26am)
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