“Few Americans have the stomach or ruthlessness to do what is necessary to make their governmental wishes come true. They are willing to abandon constitutional principles and rule of law so that the nation’s elite, who believe they are morally and intellectually superior to the rest of us, can have the tools to implement “social justice.” Those tools are massive centralized government power. It just turns out last century’s notables in acquiring powerful central government, in the name of social justice, were Hitler, Stalin, Mao, but the struggle for social justice isn’t over yet, and other suitors of this dubious distinction are waiting in the wings.”
-Walter Williams
Addressing the line:
Few Americans have the stomach or ruthlessness to do what is necessary to make their governmental wishes come true.
I suspect this is true, not only with America but more Westernized nations. Does anyone know of any direct formal psychological study that shows that the pinciples of Individualism and perhaps Property rights within a culture tends to correlate with a less violent, and maybe even more passive (conservative) individual? The study would somehow have to take wealth out of the equation.
I know 3 social psych tests off the top of my head that could concievably imply it: Asch conformity test, Milgrim Experiment, and Stanford Prison Experiment. But they deal with conformity, obedience to authority, and the corruption and violence of power respectivly; but I know of no studies that deal directly with peaceful culture in relation to individualism.
That’s something that has bugging me too for quite some time. I have always wondered what makes people going against their own interests in the name of “greater good”, particularly in the economic sector. I am not saying to put up road blocks or torching buildings but simple, Gandhi-style resistance: we are not paying this new tax, we are not buying your subsidized, expensive salt. This has little to do with individualism but a lot to do with common sense. Why should I support or bear passively a new tax that will make me poor and not even give the pretense of giving something back? OK, fear of punishment can explain this but to a point.
I don’t know why people assume this is psychological, and not an issue of education.
One of the reasons for the state to control schools, media, standards of language etc is to control the primary narrative.
I know before I came across Ron Paul, I was anti-war and annoyed with politicians and taxes, but I don’t know that I would have even been a minarchist. I assumed like everyone else that I paid into employment insurance because I needed it. And sure enough, I drew on it several times in my 20s. Likewise, my grandparents were retired, and I just assumed that a state pension was something established to be sure they had a comfortable old age.
What I think is the more interesting psychological query, is how confirmation bias influences our capacity to adapt to new information. I find it very difficult to communicate anti-state ideas to people who have been paying taxes for 40 years and are ready to retire. To get them to acknowledge the state as a scam, they would have to refute many of their past, present and future relationships, ideas and decisions. Most people simply cannot handle that level of psychological upheaval, some even becoming aggressive and violent when put to that sort of challenge.