[A] community always faces the double and related threat of egalitarianism and cultural relativism. Egalitarianism, in every shape and form, is incompatible with the idea of private property. Private property implies exclusivity, inequality, and difference. And cultural relativism is incompatible with the fundamental - indeed foundational - fact of families and intergenerational kinship relations. Families and kinship relations imply cultural absolutism. As a matter of socio-phychological fact, both egalitarian and relativistic sentiments find steady support among newer generations of adolescents... Adolescence is marked by regular (and for this stage normal) outbreaks of rebellion by the young against the discipline imposed on them by family life and parental authority. Cultural relativism and multiculturalism provide the ideological instrument of emancipating oneself from these constraints. And egalitarianism - based on the infantile view that property is "given" (and thus distributed arbitrarily) rather than individually appropriated and produced (and hence, distributed justly, i.e., in accordance with personal productivity) - provides the intellectual means by which the rebellious youths can lay claim to the economic resources necessary for a life free of and outside the disciplinary framework of families.
[...]
[S]o long as the threat of moral relativism and egalitarianism is restricted to a small proportion of juveniles and young adults for only a brief period in life (until they settle back into family-constrained adulthood), it may well be sufficient to do nothing at all. The proponents of cultural relativism and egalitarianism would represent little more than temporary embarassments or irritations... A small dose of ridicule and contempt may be all that is needed to contain the... threat. The situation is very different, however, and rather more drastic measures might be required, once the spirit of moral relativism and egalitarianism has taken hold among adult members of society: among mothers, fathers, and heads of households and firms.
As soon as mature members of society habitually express acceptance or even advocate egalitarian sentiments, whether in the form of democracy (majority rule) or of communism, it becomes essential that other members, and in particular the natural social elites, be prepared to act decisively and, in the case of nonconformity, exclude and ultimately expel these members from society.
~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe,
Democracy - The God That Failed, pp. 217-218
No comments:
Post a Comment