We’re focusing on the wrong war. The real war we’re fighting is not in Afghanistan or Iraq. It isn’t against Bin Laden or the Taliban. The real enemy isn’t Iran or North Korea. (Don’t get me wrong – I don’t for a moment pretend that these aren’t major threats, but I’m talking in this IntegrityWatch Blog post about an even bigger threat to the United States than terrorism from abroad.)
The real war we’re fighting is a civil war. A war without guns, so far at least. It’s the 1960s all over again. But this time the source of change is not sex drugs and rock-and roll. The weapon we’re using against one another is a vastly expanded version of fascism than was used during the 20th century.
Today’s fascism in the United States is not about the use of military or police force to control citizens. It’s not merely about what people believe government has been doing to deny their freedom or take their money in the form of taxes. Today we’re being torn apart by a three-headed social fascism competition! Ideologues, special interests, and politicians are all fighting over who will manipulate the most people to support their cause by using the core strategy of social fascism: coercion. This is the war we’re really fighting and we don’t yet know it because this is a subtle form as fascism that is just as dangerous as the classic military/police version!
I’ve written before about the tactics that social fascism uses, so rather than reiterate them here, I’ll just point you to two of my IntegrityWatch Blog posts in which I described them should you want those details:
- The Dysfunctional Dynamic Crippling the United States
- The Sick Recipe Responsible for Today’s Crazy Public Discourse
Three large groups combined to pave the way for this triple-threat fascism to emerge:
1. Citizens refusing to be self-responsible.
2. Businesses and financial institutions refusing to be socially responsible.
3. The government refusing to be constitutionally responsible.
As you are now hopefully beginning to see, what’s fueling our civil war of fascism tactics is the three-headed monster beneath three-headed fascism: irresponsibility:
- Lack of self-responsibility
- Lack of social responsibility
- Lack of constitutional responsibility
Before we do any more damage, we would be wise to wake up to the ways in which in the United States we have become a fascistic country. Not merely because of government tyranny, but because of the mass abdication of self-responsibility and social responsibility that provides politicians with engraved invitations to engage in government tyranny.
Yes, that’s right. The engraved invitation the government uses to justify intervening in our personal and business lives is irresponsibility! The fatal combination of lack of self-responsibility on the parts of consumers, lack of social responsibility on the parts of businesses and financial institutions, and lack of ethical responsibilty on the part of ideologues and other special interests.
Historically, government has started over-regulating only after too many irresponsible consumers have been treated in unethical or misleading ways by too many businesses or other special interests. Historically, government has shifted to de-regulating when enough people and businesses get sick of dealing with the damaging impact of over-regulation.
As someone who is not a fan of government intervention, I view government regulation as a last resort when this is the only way to hold citizens accountable for refusing to be self-responsible, hold businesses accountable for refusing to engage in socially responsible business practices, and hold special interests accountable for refusing to engage in integrity-centered dissemination of information.
I believe we have forgotten as a society that accountability falls on a continuum, with self-responsibility at one end and government regulation at the other end:
Personal | Education/Experts’ | Guild Codes of | Official Company | Government | Government | Court
Choice | Recommendations | Ethics/Conduct | or Org. Policies | Guidelines | Regulations | Intervention
<————————————————————————————————————>
When people aren’t self-responsible and/or businesses aren’t socially responsible, two things occur. First, far too many of us tolerate this lack of responsibility for far too long, pretending we’re doing this in the name of preserving individual freedom. Second, once the tolerance tipping point is reached the government quickly jumps from under-education to over-regulation, pretending it is doing this in the name of promoting the common good. THIS is the untold story behind what creates our pendulum swings between regulating too much and de-regulating too far!
Pendulum-swinging is an unsustainable strategy. Getting off our addiction to pendulum swings requires more quickly and aggressively utilizing the wide range of options that lie between the two extremes in the above diagram. This is the only way I know of to slay the three-headed monster of fascism and irresponsibility.
What are YOUR thoughts about this?
