The larger the state grows, the more it invades the peaceful areas of our lives. <\/span><\/span>Here, for the most part, people get along. No one is gouging each other\u2019s eyes out or calling people enemies of the nation or race. Strangers find ways to cooperate. You are served in a friendly way by people you don\u2019t know, even people from all over the world. The food you eat, the drinks you drink, the clothes you wear are all produced for you by people you have never met. They are strangers, yet they work for you and you work for them.<\/span><\/p>\n No one in riot gear is needed to prevent violence and chaos. Somehow everyone manages to find ways to value each other and respect each other\u2019s rights. People are smiling. For the most part, people are polite to each other. There is rarely evidence of invidious discrimination or fundamental acrimony.<\/span><\/p>\n The Struggle Is Real<\/strong><\/p>\n On the other hand, perhaps you attended a political event this year, where you see something very different. Or maybe you argued politics with a family member or a friend. Or maybe you read the papers or dig around social media. Here is where you see evidence of what David Brooks writes<\/a> about in the New York Times:<\/p>\n \u201cSociologically, this campaign has been an education in how societies come apart. The Trump campaign has been like a flash flood that sweeps away the topsoil and both reveals and widens the chasms, crevices and cracks below. We are a far more divided society than we realized.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Or we might look at it another way. Perhaps politics is not revealing but actually exacerbating or even <\/span>creating<\/span> chasms. You create a huge state and invite people to struggle for control over it. You extract trillions in revenue and have a contest for who gets the cash and on what terms. You create a gigantic regulatory machine that micromanages lives and suggest some use it against others, depending on their preferences. You create a war machine and look around for ways to use it.<\/span><\/p>\n That seems like a great plan to divide society. When the horror show ends, you announce that everyone should be happy with the results because, after all, we are at least united in love of the process itself.<\/span><\/p>\n And this is the way it is supposed to work in modern America. The Saturday Night Live <\/span>spoof<\/span><\/a> of the final Clinton-Trump debate, the actors playing the candidates embrace each other, reach out to disaffected voters, unite everyone in a circle, and agree at the end that it\u2019s all about participation in the election as its own reward. All the acrimony and division, we are encouraged to believe, is just part of the process, and this process always ends well: united in conviction that, for all the problems, we are doing it the right way.<\/span><\/p>\n It creates division where none should exist and then proposes more of itself in order to fix the problems it creates.<\/span><\/span>Seems like wishful thinking this time. This was not a normal election cycle, and the wishes for the country as pushed by the candidates were deeply harmful to anything like community feeling. We\u2019ve lost friends. We\u2019ve been horrified about the strange opinions of family members and neighbors. We are probably unhappy about the outcome and live with a certain fear that the other tribe will pillage us and lord it over us in ways that are designed to ruin everything we love.<\/span><\/p>\n When you build a gigantic state, and invite factions to struggle to battle it in real-life \u201cHunger Games,\u201d there are going to be problems. One group wins and one group loses. Despite the election outcome, resentments persist. Acts of vengeance are already in the making.<\/span><\/p>\n And yet, let\u2019s keep something important in mind. All this division is pretty much limited to politics.<\/span><\/p>\n This Is Not Togetherness<\/strong><\/p>\n A few years ago, it became fashionable for defenders of a gigantic and intrusive state to say, with Barney Frank, that \u201cGovernment is simply a word for the things we decide to do together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Nonsense. Government is simply a word for a thing that tears us apart. It fosters \u2013 nay, lives on \u2013 hate and the longing for the destruction of people with whom you disagree. If you support the politics of state intrusion into people\u2019s lives, you are contributing to the problem. And it is a serious problem. <\/span><\/p>\n The larger the state grows, the more it invades the peaceful areas of our lives. It creates division where none should exist and then proposes more of itself in order to fix the problems it creates.<\/span><\/p>\n Harmony or Conflict?<\/strong><\/p>\n Philosophers from the late Middle Ages on observed the beauty of society unencumbered by political struggles and came up with a theory about it. That theory was known as liberalism: people can work together toward the good if they are given freedom and their rights are respected. For centuries, great thinkers (Hume, Locke, Smith, Paine, Jefferson, Kant, Goethe, Thoreau, Mises, Hayek) celebrated the cause. It is a philosophical position that longs for peace, prosperity, and dignity for all.<\/span><\/p>\n The choice you make not only identifies your ideological loyalties; it contributes to the kind of society in which we will live in the future. <\/span><\/span>In recent days, this site has published two extraordinary articles on 20th-century minds dedicated to the anti-liberal cause. The <\/span>first<\/span><\/a> on Martin Heidegger reveals him as a proponent of collectivism and an enemy of individualism. The <\/span>second<\/span><\/a> on Carl Schmitt shows him as a proponent of conflict and an enemy of harmony.<\/span><\/p>\n As our tour guide Tom Palmer writes, Schmitt regarded the harmony we see in a normal lives as \u201ca world of unseriousness, of mere entertainment.\u201d Far better are \u201cstruggles, conflicts, wars, great causes pitting titanic forces against each other; all worthier, higher, and nobler than the life of entertainment, business, trade, family, and love, all of which were unserious compared to the political.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Their ideas created the mess we\u2019ve seen on display this year in American politics, and not by accident. The conflict that is so much in evidence is something longed for by philosophers who find our bars, shopping centers, and neighborhood cookouts \u2013 the bourgeois life in general \u2013 as terribly tedious and pointless. What they find meaningful are cold and hot wars, both domestically and internationally, in which individuals become part of great collectives \u2013 defined by class, income, race, intelligence, religion, ability, gender \u2013 that move history in the right direction.<\/span><\/p>\n You Can Choose<\/strong><\/p>\n So in our times, you live in two worlds, one of conflict and one of harmony. Which do you believe in? Which do you long for?<\/span><\/p>\n Do you embrace and celebrate the h<\/span>armony of interests that is in evidence in our everyday lives? Or do you long for the conflict we\u2019ve seen on display in the great political struggles of our times?<\/span><\/p>\n The choice you make not only identifies your ideological loyalties; it contributes to the kind of society in which we will live in the future. If you choose harmony over conflict, there is no getting around the problem that politics has created. Something has to give. The institution that is causing the chasms, crevices, and cranks must recede and the institutions of liberty that permit us to build a more harmonious world must rise to take its place. <\/span><\/p>\n Jeffrey Tucker<\/strong> is Director of Content for the <\/span>Foundation for Economic Education<\/a> and CLO of the startup Liberty.me<\/a>. Author of five books, and many thousands of articles, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World<\/em><\/a>. Follow<\/a> on Twitter and Like<\/a> on Facebook. Email<\/a>. Tweets by @jeffreyatucker<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
![\"Jeffrey](\"http:\/\/fee.org\/media\/16075\/foundationeconomiceducation_bbbb1262.jpg?center=0.27751937984496122,0.48166666666666669&mode=crop&height=287&widthratio=1.3937282229965156794425087108&rnd=131128161490000000\")
<\/p>\n\n
\nJeffrey Tucker
\n<\/a>
\n<\/h5>\n<\/p>\n