Hayek's warning: The convenient enemy

Last week I figured it was time to reread The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek, after letting it sit on the bookshelf for ten years.  It now has several more underlined passages; it gains a few of those each time. 

It strikes me that one of those newly-underlined passages could easily have been Hayek's warning about today's political debate—if it hadn't been for two or three telltale words that give away how long ago he wrote it (60 years).  Here's the passage:

It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program—on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off—than on any positive task... It is consequently always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved allegiance of huge masses... The enemy, whether he be internal, like the "Jew" or the "kulak," or external, seems to be an indispensable requisite in the armory of a totalitarian leader.

Just replace "the 'Jew' or the 'kulak'" with "the 'rich,' the 'immigrant,' the 'national debt,' or the 'corporation'" to bring Hayek's warning sixty years forward, right up into the twenty-first century.  (Of course, it would also be necessary to replace "a totalitarian leader" with "most presidential candidates.")  The convenient enemy is a timeless tool.   

And fifty years from now, I bet we'll be able to modernize it the same way: by changing just a few words.   

Comments

[muirgeo]

I think you missed his point by a mile. The current administration has rallied people around hatred and fear of the "Islamo-fascist" as a means to consolidate executive power, to steal from the treasury, to hide the workings of the government and to be more authoritarian.

Just yesterday Fox News despicably was trying to tie the Southern California fires to Al Quada.

Also most people aren't against wealth. They are against government welfare. As Hayek wrote;

"A conservative movement, by its very nature, is bound to be a defender of established privilege and to lean on government for the protection of privilege.

I don't think Hayek would have supported the system we have set up that re-distributes massive amounts of wealth from the working class to paper pushers who add nothing to our productivity.

[muirgeo]

Steve,

Why shouldn't the working family who has seen his income stagnate over the last 30 years be happy with all of his increased productivity going to a few wealthy powerful elite? The working man knows that it is possible to have a more equal sharing of the productivity pie as we did in the 50's, 60's and 70's without destroying the national economy.

It blows me away that people defend the ever increasing wage gaps as some sort of ethical natural market phenomenon when all the evidence suggest most of it is just a transfer of wealth from the working class to those with power and access to policy makers.

Paul Krugman dispels such myths in his recent book The Conscious of a Liberal.

[Bob]

Well, one could also use Zionist, Christian and Great Satan to add to the list of the totalitarians in Iran.

I'm not sure totalitarain fits most Presidential candidates but there is one that seems to come real close.

You're wrong about illegal immigrants from the South, Steve. They're not enemies. They are allies to the left. The left finds allies in another group of people they can confer victimhood upon. And, I'm not talking about the loony left, either. It's the neo-liberals which make up most of the Democratic party that have a decent shot at making this country unrecognizable.

[PseudoNoise]

Really? The anti-debt/pro-regulation people are the ones exhibiting totalitarian tendencies?

How about these substitutions for internal threats:
- liberals
- environmentalists
- illegal immigrants

How about these substitutions for external threats:
- Iran (GDP < Florida)
- Al Qaeda (criminal death cult which this administration has elevated to superpower status on par with Soviet Russia)
- Islamofascists (completely made-up term for brown people we don't like, made up those who can't tell other brown people apart)

Rather than raise/allocate funds to counter any real threat from these powers, this administration has diverted funds away from what could help while simultaneously playing up the threat as much as possible and castigating their opponents as traitors for any criticism or attempt at oversight.

No, that's not totalitarian at all. But those balanced budget people -- wow, they're dangerous.

Oh jeez, and I just now read Bob's comment. Bob, we torture our enemies now. Talk about making America unrecognizable.

[muirgeo]

Speaking of Hayek...he was OK with state organized health insurance.

" Where, as in the case of sickness and accident..... the case for the state's helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong." F.A. Hayek

[Bob]

PN,

Oh crud. You're with the torture crowd. Define it. I'm definetly okay with sticking an Isalmofascist (I think the term is accurate, BTW) terrorist in a 40 degree room in his underwear while listening to rap music at full blast. If he gives up info about blowing up hundreds of people in an airplane, I'm okay with that. If you're talking about poking his eyes out or cutting off fingers and toes, I'm with you.

Dont get me started on illegals. I don't care what color they are. But excuse me if I get just a bit perturbed when they runaround with no drivers liscense and no auto insurance, expect entitlements with no taxation ('cause they're paid in cash and have no SSN) and then start protesting against the very country that gives them the opportunity to earn $10/hour instead of the $4/day they got in their own country. And to top it off we're expected to learn THEIR language.

Gimme a break!

[Kevin]

Hi Steve,

Just in some of these comments, I think you've got fodder for 3 or 4 more great posts. Has the "working family" really seen their income stagnate? Is a wage gap a real problem, or used for class warfare? The economic costs and benefits of illegal aliens.

Would love to see you weigh in on these things.

[Bob]

From Kevin:

"The economic costs and benefits of illegal aliens."

I'd love to get in on this. The reason is that I keep hearing about all these great benefits to our economy but no one, as far as I know, has taken a shot at what these folks cost us... and I'm not just talking border security here.

[JBL]

It's not about the costs and benefits of illegal immigrants. The question isn't about whether to like them.

The question is the relative costs and benefits of illegal immigrants, the costs and benefits of keeping immigrants out completely, and the costs and benefits of legal, tax-paying immigrants.

Note that I can say that without taking one side or the other in the debate.

No amount of fervor is going to substantively address those issues. Fervor can motivate people to support a particular candidate or policy, but it's really not a very good tool for acheiving practical long-term solutions. I think that's a lot of what Hayek (and Steve) were getting at.

[Andrew]

Steve,

Your replacements work great to describe the democratic side, but you forgot the republican side:

The enemies for them are gays, Iran, Al Qaeda, and immigrants. They have successfully won two presidential campaigns by vilifying and aggrandizing these threats. I'm not saying that Iran or Al Qaeda are nonthreatening or worth our military attention, but they have become the end-all-debate crutch for the party.

Both sides are guilty of demonizing some group to forge an artificial common cause. It's much easier to whip voters into a seething irrational rage than it is to make them optimistic and pragmatic.

The sad thing is how crappy our options are in 2008. Not that they have ever been that great. Where is a good classic liberal? Someone that sees gay marriage and flag burning as the non-issues they are, while likewise advocating free trade and the invisible hand. Someone who will torpedo our outrageous subsidies to certain industries or companies, and maintain a healthy, responsive military... one not bogged down by unnecessary wars of opportunity. Where is our simplified and sane tax code and our honest representatives?

[Tom Hanna]

Although I agree that the threat of the ongoing deficits are overblown, I'm not sure that I'd put eliminating the national debt in the same class as eliminating kulaks and Jews. Eliminating the debt may not be essential or even a high priority, but it's still desirable at best and irrelevant at worst. (The Social Security trust fund could always be invested in municipal bonds if the "nightmare" scenario happened and federal Treasury securities weren't available.)

[William]

The Road To Serfdom in Cartoons helps to abstract Hayek's work: http://www.mises.org/books/TRTS/

[Dave Justus]

It seems interesting to me that so many here seem to be taking this post as a slam against 'the left' when Steve's examples are pretty balanced (although there are certainly other examples that could be used.)

Certainly 'the rich' is a devil to the left, but 'immigrants' are the devil of the right. Similarly, 'corporations' are hated by the left, but for the most part 'national debt' is a right issue.

It seems pretty clear to me that Steve was saying both sides do this, odd that by saying that he would be attacked for being partisan.

[The Practical Skeptic]

The posts above prove the point of the original post, it is human nature to point to any particular group of people and blame them for our lot in life.

So what can we do to either avoid this or fight against this tendency?

(1) Focus on refuting intellectual arguments without resorting to personal attacks.

(2) Consider all points of view without abandoning our core principles or allow ourselves to feel threatened by others' core principles that may disagree with our own.

(3) Recognize that governments like humans are imperfect.

(4) Focus on finding ways to succeed without attacking others.

(5) Recognize that people and governments will disagree and that is OK. The disagreement does not always lead to dysfunction.

(6) Talk with as many different kinds of people as possible and more often than not you realize what binds us together is far greater than what divides us.

(7) While my first six posts are sure to be dismissed as Pollyanish it is in striving for the ideal that we raise our humanity.

(8) Focusing on what we can control individually and recognizing what we cannot control and accepting it ultimately leads to a greater sense of personal satisfaction and well being.

(9) I rely on faith in God, family, friends, and others I am blessed to know and to love to keep me focused on the positive. For some it is faith for others something else but that which lies outside you but is still a part of you is God.

(10) Life is very short. To waste time blaming others makes for an even shorter life. It robs us of finding our true purpose, true fulfillment in this world.

[Bob]

Right, PS. So we all sit around and sing Kumbaya.

How dare you! You don't know my lot in life nor anyone else'e here. As far as you know we're all on top of the world.

There was someone in power who wanted to sing the song, however. The result was over 3,000 innocent civilians crushed or incinerated to death. But, the budget was in surplus by jiminy.

Penny wise, dollar foolish my grandma used to say. Only it wasn't just dollars this time.

[muirgeo]

Yeah PS, I agree with Bob. Blame needs to be placed. There was some one in power who let this happen. Ignored a PDB he did. And now he's gotten 4,000 more people killed in a miserably failed attempt to capture the perp while spending $3,000,000,000,000 we don't have.

[Rich Berger]

muirgeo-

Is this the PDB?

The following is the text of an item from the Presidential Daily Brief received by President William J. Clinton on December 4, 1998. Redacted material is indicated in brackets.

SUBJECT: Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks

[muirgeo]

"The following is the text of an item from the Presidential Daily Brief received by President William J. Clinton on December 4, 1998".....Rich Berger.

And Rich do you understand that Clinton put New York and East Coast airports on high security alert? He actually did something about the threat.

(see December 4, 1998). Also on this day, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke holds a meeting of his interagency Counterterrorism and Security Group (CSG) to discuss the threat. The group agrees that New York City airports should go on a maximum security alert that weekend and security should be boosted at other East Coast airports. The FBI, FAA, and New York City Police Department get versions of the PDB report. Later in December and again in January 1999 the source says the hijacking has been postponed because two operatives have been arrested in Washington or New York. But the FBI is unable to find any information to support the threat nor is it able to verify any arrests similar to what the source described, and the source remains mysterious. The high alert in New York airports is canceled by the end of January. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 128-130]

From;
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=counterterrorism_and_security_group

[Rich Berger]

muirgeo-

The quick reaction you claim was after the bombings of our embassies in Africa in August, 1998. From CNN-

A former aide to Osama bin Laden testified Wednesday that he warned U.S. officials of a potential strike two years before the deadly 1998 embassy bombings in Africa.

In his second day of testifying in the trial of four men accused of the embassy attacks, Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl also said he had once attempted to purchase uranium for bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the bombings.

Blame Bush if you would like, but
Clinton was a disaster.

[juandos]

"Paul Krugman dispels such myths in his recent book The Conscious of a Liberal"...LOL!

Good one muirgeo, quoting the much discredited ex-ENRON advisor...LOL!

Regarding the wetback problem (illegal aliens in libtard speak), consider reading The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayer (http://www.heritage.org/Research/Immigration/sr14.cfm) by Robert E. Rector and Christine Kim...

[KH]

Riight, I remember that great quote from Niemoller:

When they came for the rich, I did not speak for I was not rich...
When they came for the corporations, I did not speak, for I was not a corporation...

Seriously, if the debate you're seeing on your TV has "most" presidential candidates attacking the rich and corporations, I think you need a urinalysis test.

[The Practical Skeptic]

Actually, instead of singing Kumbaya, humming might bet better.

How dare I?

Not sure why this person felt the need to act indignant but I simply suggested focusing on ways to affect positive change rather than blaming one group of people for others' failures.

This person's post needs far more explaination for me to grasp the point but I'm sure he or she will make it clear enough for me to refute in the future.

The Practical Skeptic

Right, PS. So we all sit around and sing Kumbaya.

How dare you! You don't know my lot in life nor anyone else'e here. As far as you know we're all on top of the world.

There was someone in power who wanted to sing the song, however. The result was over 3,000 innocent civilians crushed or incinerated to death. But, the budget was in surplus by jiminy.

Penny wise, dollar foolish my grandma used to say. Only it wasn't just dollars this time.