Individualism vs. Collectivism and the Neglected False Moral Dichotomy

In the FEE article Is Individualism vs. Collectivism the New Left vs. Right?, Nicholas Baum gets off on the right foot, correctly pointing out the collectivist orientation of both conservatives and liberals/progressives. He then advises, again correctly, that the real alternatives are individualism versus collectivism. (Individualism versus collectivism has, in fact, been the fundamental philosophical battle at the heart of the American Revolution since America’s Founding). 

I believe that Baum’s definitions of the terms are mixed. On individualism, Baum writes:

The first side of this spectrum is known as “individualism.” As Ayn Rand writes, “Individualism regards man… as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.”

Individualism believes that every person, because they are rational and equal, are independent beings entitled to the largest possible domain of freedom. This freedom of choice and action only stops when it directly conflicts with the ability of others to do the same, mainly if it intrudes upon their life, liberty, or property.

To an individualist, the maximum role of the government is to protect our lives, liberty, and property. If the government were to perform an additional task, whether it be for “progressive” or “conservative” ends, it would be, in the words of Frédéric Bastiat, “legalized plunder.”

On collectivism, Baum falls way short. He writes:

The other side of this spectrum is “collectivism,” and it encompasses most of the beliefs we are commonly exposed to. Whether it be conservatism, progressivism, or socialism, collectivism involves the imposition of a certain belief or point of view on the rest of society.

Whereas the key tenet of individualism is the maximization of freedom in order to live by one’s own morals, a key tenet of collectivist ideologies is the willingness to use coercive means to promote a desired social or economic agenda. This may come in two forms. The government might subsidize activities they endorse, or they might restrict people’s freedom through regulations for activities they disapprove of.

Baum is spot-on with regards to individualism. But he misses the essential nature of collectivism. It’s true that collectivism leads to statism, which leads to “the imposition of a certain belief or point of view on the rest of society” and “the willingness to use coercive means to promote a desired social or economic agenda.” But that’s an effect, not a fundamental definition. He could have consulted Ayn Rand like he did on individualism. As Rand explains:

Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called “the common good.”

Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group . . . and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force—and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.

But that’s not the worst of Baum’s article. The worst comes under the heading “The Ultimate Dichotomy” and deals with morality. After defending the individual’s independent rights to life, liberty, and property, Baum writes this surprising statement:

One may be tempted to assume that individualism is a form of egoism or selfishness. But in his classic work The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek points out that this is hardly the case.

“(Individualism) merely starts from the indisputable fact that the limits of our powers of imagination make it impossible to include in our scale of values more than a sector of the needs of the whole society,” Hayek observed.

Baum drops the ball, falling back on the utilitarian argument that collectivism is not good because no individual is smart enough or knowledgeable enough to know everyone’s needs. Presumably, if someone could know, or convince enough people that he does know, then he would be justified to “use coercive [state] means to promote a desired social or economic agenda” on “the rest of society” in the name of “the common good.” 

This is a complete capitulation to collectivism by a supposed individualist. This is the consequence of the failure to defend individualism on moral grounds. I left these comments: 

Baum is correct that the common Left/Right spectrum is a false dichotomy, since these days both sides represent some variation of collectivism. But he ignores the other false dichotomy, the moral one. This is a crucial mistake.

The conventional conception of egoism or selfishness is of a predatory individual who lives by harming others. The only opposite of selfishness, on this view, is said to be altruism, which means living for others at the expense of self-harm. Given that unappetizing choice, most people would say altruism is the better choice, even though most people don’t practice much of it because common sense tells them it’s completely impractical if you want to live and achieve your own values. 

Thus, we’re given a choice; sacrifice self to others and be moral, or sacrifice others to self and be immoral. But as Ayn Rand understood, this is a false and fraudulent choice. She advocated a third alternative, rational selfishness, which means achieving your goals by neither sacrificing self to others nor others to self, getting along with others according to the non-sacrificial method she called The Trader Principle. 

It’s obvious that collectivism thrives on altruism. That being true, and if individualism is collectivism’s opposite, then the only moral foundation of individualism has to be rational selfishness. Nobody’s going to believe that individualism, which defines every individual as “an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, liberty, and property,” is altruistic. It is implicitly egoistic. So, if egoism is immoral, then so is individualism . . ., and so is the whole point of the rights to life, liberty, and property—the pursuit of your own happiness. From this view, collectivism wins on the most important ground, the ground of morality.

If man is by nature a being possessing a rational faculty, then it is right to live by one’s own judgement. If that is so, then rational selfishness is morally right, and individualism wins. Collectivism always leads to a predatory, ultimately self-destructive society because altruism is fundamentally predatory. After all, if it is moral for you to live for others, then a moral life logically means that “society”—others—must live for you. If you really think it through, altruism and conventional selfishness are really two sides of the same predatory coin. 

If we are to get rid of the false collectivist Left/Right dichotomy and embrace individualism, we’ll need to get rid of the false moral dichotomy, as well, and give individualism the moral high ground it deserves, rational egoism. If you can’t defend egoism or selfishness, then it’d be better not to mention morality at all, and simply add the pursuit of happiness to life, liberty, and property, and leave the moral defense of individualism to those who will properly frame the moral conflict underpinning individualism versus collectivism—egoism versus altruism.

Related Reading:

QUORA: Is Ayn Rand's 'Selfishness' 'the middle between altruism and selfism?'

QUORA *: ‘Is Ayn Rand wrong about altruism?’

Books to Aid in Understanding Rational Selfishness

‘Can Anyone Be Truly Selfish?’

Is Science Catching Up to the Objectivist Ethics?

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

Related Viewing:

VIDEO: Individualism vs Collectivism - Dr. Yaron Brook

Stossel’s Optimism vs. The Biden-Led Pessimism

The Youtube video The GOOD News of 2020 by John Stossel was forwarded to me and 13 others by email by a friend. StosseI gives a summary of some of the wonderful man made technological and industrial advances we live under, but that we don’t fully appreciate. My friend’s preamble is

Friend and classmate John Stossel makes an optimistic pitch that 2020 wasn’t as bad as it has been made out to be and provides solid reasons why. Seeing this might provide a spring board for a greater sense of optimism about the current state of affairs and what we have to look forward to: [sic]

I replied to all recipients with this:

Kathy and I loved this piece. Thanks. It’s a breath of fresh air, especially given the irrational pessimism being generated in Washington.  

Unfortunately, President Biden and his supporters in the media and academia are painting an irrationally pessimistic picture, for political/ideological reasons. They are intent on creating an illusion of widespread crises. In fact, the very theme of President Biden’s inauguration speech was “The cascading crises of our era”--his words, not mine, and a false sentiment that will define his Administration.

We both love Stossel. People desperately need to learn the truth of the state of America and the world, before the progress gets reversed in the name of “fixing” an imagined “cascade of crises.” [Jonah] Norberg is great, and I have his new book on my buy list. The world is in the best shape its ever been in, at least from the standard of human flourishing and well-being. But he’s far from alone. Aside from Norberg, other scholars offer plenty of fact-based documentation for the amazingly good state of the world, including Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting by Ronald Bailey and Marian L. Tupy, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker, and The Great Enrichment by Deirdre McCloskey. None try to soft pedal problems that humankind still faces, nor should any of us. But all offer context and balance to counter the disaster-mongers. Or you can simply open your eyes and mind and look around.

I did not get any response.

Related Reading:

The planet has never been a safer place for humans to live—Alex Epstein for MarketWatch

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the 21st Century—Ronald Bailey

The Myth of Technological Unemployment: If the nightmare of technological unemployment were true, it would already have happened, repeatedly and massively, by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey.

Related Viewing:

Individualism vs Collectivism - Dr. Yaron Brook

Obama’s ‘Promise of America’ is a Little Off

On November 12, 2020, The Atlantic published I’m Not Yet Ready to Abandon the Possibility of America, a “Story by Barack Obama,” which is “an adapted and updated excerpt from former President Barack Obama’s new memoir, A Promised Land.” The subtitle of the article is

I wrote my book for young people—as an invitation to bring about, through hard work, determination, and a big dose of imagination, an America that finally aligns with all that is best in us.

Here are a few excerpts from the excerpts, with italics added by me::

I’m painfully aware that a more gifted writer could have found a way to tell the same story with greater brevity (after all, my home office in the White House sat right next to the Lincoln Bedroom, where a signed copy of the 272-word Gettysburg Address rests inside a glass case).

Do we care to match the reality of America to its ideals? If so, do we really believe that our notions of self-government and individual freedom, equality of opportunity and equality before the law, apply to everybody? Or are we instead committed, in practice if not in statute, to reserving those things for a privileged few?

I don’t know. What I can say for certain is that I’m not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America—not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind. I’m convinced that the pandemic we’re currently living through is both a manifestation of and a mere interruption in the relentless march toward an interconnected world, one in which peoples and cultures can’t help but collide. In that world—of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever-increasing complexity—we will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish. And so the world watches America—the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice—to see if our experiment in democracy can work. To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed.

First, let me say that I am pleased to hear talk of American ideals and an American creed. I am glad to see America referred to as “a promised Land. I am glad to read that the “the possibility of America” applies to “all of humankind.” Americanism is a philosophy that applies to all people, because it is grounded in the most solid foundation possible, in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.” (For a thorough understanding of why and how this is, see America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson.) For the Founding generation, facts and truth mattered.

But what is this creed? And does Obama get it right? The excerpts cited above indicate that he does not. After citing Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, in which Lincoln refers back to the Declaration of Independence, Obama refers to “our notions” that separate self-government from individual freedom and equates equality of opportunity with equality before the law.” 

So let’s be clear. Since Obama refers to America as an “experiment in democracy” rather than what it actually is, an experiment in a new form of republican government, Constitutional Republicanism, I think we can accurately infer that by “self-government” Obama means democratic majority rule. Constitutional Republicanism limits majority or democratic rule, by creating for every individual a safe space, individual rights, which shields individual liberty from electoral political power.

But to the Founding generation, self-government and individual freedom are synonymous. Self-government refers to individual self-government, secured by unalienable individual rights; that is, the freedom of each individual to govern his own life, without interference from others, including elected legislators and government officials. The Founders also understood “equality of opportunity and equality before the law” as antipodes. 

Equality before the law refers to equal protection of individual rights. But equality of opportunity does not exist in nature because each individual is unique in myriad ways. To the Founders, the purpose of individual rights is to protect each individual’s right to whatever life outcomes he can achieve based on his own unique opportunities that his myriad individual attributes and personal circumstances afford him. In other words, equality of individual rights protects the individual inequality inherent in human nature, as imposed by the Laws of Nature. To attempt to equalize opportunity would be to obliterate equality before the law.

Obama’s version of America’s ideals, creed, and promise is not the genuine version. Elsewhere, Obama famously lamented “a fundamental flaw that the Founding Fathers ‘allowed’ into the U.S. Constitution and that continues to this day…the failure to establish the means for bringing about ‘redistributive change’…or ‘economic’ and ‘political’ justice.” But that “flaw” is one of the Founders’ greatest achievements, protecting property rights, which they saw as fundamental to protecting individual rights more broadly.

Nonetheless, the very fact that Obama recognizes America as unique and born of revolutionary ideals that are applicable to all human beings everywhere is welcome. I take Obama’s book as a kind of refutation of frauds like the “1619 Project”, which denies Americanism altogether and accuses the Founders of intentionally creating a slave state, not a free society.

Related Reading:

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson.

Obama's Antipathy Toward America's Constitution Boils Over

Obama's Pre-Emptive Strike

A New Textbook of Americanism edited by Jonathan Hoenig

Biden Cancels America

1776 Unites: A counterpoint to the 1619 Project

The ‘1619 Project’ Fraud Begins its Poisonous Infiltration into American Politics

QUORA: ‘If socialism is about the workers owning the means of production, then why do most socialists advocate for state ownership of everything?’

QUORA: ‘If socialism is about the workers owning the means of production, then why do most socialists advocate for state ownership of everything?’

I posted this answer:

If by “means of production” one means businesses that start, own, and run the mines, factories, data centers, stores, patents, etc., then in a free society “workers” are free to create their own businesses, or pool their resources and offer to buy and run existing businesses. No one could interfere or stop them, so long as they seek only voluntary agreements. 

If by socialism one refers to a political system whereby all businesses and associated assets are confiscated and turned over to the “workers” regardless of the consent of the owners (the shareholders), there is only one way a doctrine of that kind can be established and maintained--by brute, physical force. And that means, the state, which has a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. Without the political power of the state, any worker or group of workers who take over the “means of production” by any other than voluntary means is a common criminal. When established politically, socialism is legal organized crime.

Of course, the idea of a fully socialist society in which workers own all means of production without state coercion is a fantasy. Without state coercion, workers would be thwarted by any business owner that simply said no. That’s why modern socialists--i.e. Marxists--must advocate for state ownership of “the means of production.” Of course, the ultimate means of production is the productive labor, both physical and intellectual, of the individual. So, socialists must advocate for, and achieve, state ownership of everything, including the individual. “Workers owning the means of production” is a hollow phrase. That’s why socialism, as a political/legal system, must, of necessity, devolve into a totalitarian state.

[For a more in-depth analysis of this subject, see my essay Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society.]

Related Reading:

QUORA *: ‘Why is socialism controversial?’

QUORA: ‘Can you start a purely communist society in the US?’

QUORA: ‘Given that I live in a capitalist society, how can I avoid having my labor exploited?’

QUORA: ‘Can a communist society include capitalists?’

Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society

Heather McGhee Shamefully Links Racism to ‘Whites’, Anti-Racism to Socialism, and Capitalism to Racists

Heather McGhee, the author of a new book on race in America, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together” was interviewed by New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial page editor Tom Moran on 3/14/21. There are elements of truth and policy proposals worth considering on the merits. But, overall, McGhee’s ideas shamefully link racism to ‘white’ people exclusively, anti-racism to socialism, and Capitalism to racists. She also peddles common misrepresentations of pro-liberty ideas. Below is an annotated review of Moran’s interview with McGhee. Here are some excerpts, starting with Moran’s preamble. All italics are mine:

Heather McGhee is the author of a new book on race in America, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.” The former head of the liberal think-tank, Demos, McGhee argues convincingly that white supremacy is a curse not just for Black people, but for white people. The path to redemption, she says, is when both races join hands to fight for their common interests, like  higher wages, universal health care, and secure retirements. This battle can’t be won until white Americans understand how they are harmed by racism and appreciate its ferocious legacy, and she believes that is beginning to happen.

This means government-mandated “higher wages, universal health care, and secure retirements, imposed on people whether they agree or not, as we shall see. Note also the collectivist framing: “both races join hands to fight for their common interests.” It is your group, based on “race”--that is, skin color--that matters. There is no room in McGhee’s worldview for real living flesh-and-blood human beings--individual human beings with individually differing interests to respect. We are all to be mashed together into races. But races, or groups generally, don’t have interests. Individuals have interests. And individuals act on common interests, voluntarily and by mutual choice, while leaving those who disagree to their lives and interests. That’s not what McGhee has in mind. She is a statist. Let’s look at some questions and answers:

Q. You call this “zero sum” thinking, a mistaken belief that a gain for one group is a loss for the other. How does that play out on other issues like health care or education?

A. Sociologists have found that white Americans are more likely to view race relations through a zero-sum lens, the idea that progress for people of color has to come at the expense of white people. In health care, that means politicians have been able to get the majority of white voters to oppose health care reform, often by using dog whistles about the benefits going to Black Americans. So even though white people are the largest group of uninsured, the majority of white people remain opposed to the Affordable Care Act.

Really? I’m for health care reform -- free market reforms that leave individuals freer, drive innovation, increase quality, and lower prices. There is nothing zero-sum about freemarkets. It is government control that is zero-sum, harming some for the unearned benefit of others. So why is McGhee for government control? Yet because I, a “white” person, oppose the Affordable Care Act, which moves in the opposite direction of free markets, not to mention my moral and political beliefs, I am a racist? What “dog whistle” is she talking about?* “Free market”? “Capitalism”? “Freedom”? “Individual rights''? “The Declaration of Independence”? “The Constitution of the United States”? Is my only path to racial redemption to renounce justice and support a statist, socialist agenda? As we will see--and as I have repeatedly observed, from the 1619 Project on--this premise is the fundamental driving force of the whole racist Anti-Racist movement.

Q. You write that the fear of losing social status among many whites is connected to their embrace of “anti-government stinginess” that has left America lagging behind other rich countries when it comes to health care, retirement security, child poverty, and other measures of social health. What’s the evidence for that?

A. White Americans with high degrees of racial resentment, which is the feeling that Black people don’t try hard enough and get special favors from the government, are 60 points more likely to oppose government spending than white Americans with low levels of resentment.

Another piece of evidence that’s compelling to me is that before the civil rights movement nearly 70 percent of white Americans believed government ought to have a universal job guarantee and income. Support for that cratered after the March on Washington and President Kennedy’s comments around civil rights, from 70 percent to 35 percent. And it’s stayed that low among whites ever since, even though Black people remain enthusiastic. And of course, we know that after President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, the Democratic Party lost the majority of the white vote. 

The 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Acts passed with widespread public and bi-partisan political support. The exception was among the racist Democrat-dominated South. But notice that if you opposed President Johnson’s massive Welfare State/War on Poverty spending binge, it’s because you believed the racist view that it’s because Black people don’t try hard enough and get special favors from the government.” Well, my parents and Aunts and Uncles were strongly in favor of Johnson’s welfare state binge. The objection to the welfare state is that it discourages work among all people--a truth that even liberals acknowledge--not that it encourages laziness among people of a particular skin color. McGhee is big on statistical correlations over causation. But the drop in white voter support for Democrats in the 1960s also correlates with Johnson’s prosecution of the ultimately wildly unpopular Vietnam War, followed by the rise of the often violent New Left and the capture of the Democratic Party by the socialist McGovern faction. Does that make white voters racist? Many were, of course. But not because free market ideology is racist. A free market is, in fact, a bulwark against racial discrmination, as Thomas Sowell has shown.

Q. What about conservatives who say they are driven not by fear of losing status, but by a desire for lower taxes and a conviction that government is wasteful and ineffective?

A. The sociological research that shows a correlation between anti-Black attitudes and anti-government attitudes suggests something deeper is going on. And this zero-sum idea, the draining the pool, is a strategic weapon deployed by elites to divide white Americans from Black and brown Americans with whom they have so much in common. It’s a tactic to convince white Americans to choose their race over their class, and side with wealthier whites, even as they are harmed by it. 

Note that if you support lower taxes, wasteful and “ineffective” (whatever that means) government, you are “anti-government.” McGhee disingenuously equates limited government with anarchy. But they are exact opposites. “Limited” in limited government means limited to the equal protection of individual rights. Had America adhered consistently to its limited government creed from the Founding, there would have been no slavery, no Jim Crow Era, and women would have had the vote in 1776, not 1920.  But McGhee’s anti-government folly has the effect of wiping out the Americanist idea that the government should be limited to protecting each individual’s right to his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, without consideration, as if such a system cannot exist, and has never, ever existed. Of course, those ideals run contrary to socialist central planning, so they have to be wiped out. 

Q. It sounds like you’re saying there is no intellectually sound reason to be a small government conservative, that it must be rooted in racial attitudes.

A. No, I think the percentage of people who are ideologically committed to the idea of small government, who would go without health care, let the minimum wage stagnate, be opposed to unions and higher taxes on the wealthy — that’s a much smaller group than the share of white Americans who vote for those policies.

Once again, a false correlation. “Small government” does not mean “go without health care.” Yes, “small”--or, more accurately limited--government does forbid government interference in the job and healthcare markets, such as minimum wage laws or the Affordable Care Act. But it does not forbid unions, only government-mandated unions that force unwilling workers into unions and force employers to negotiate with unions. As to taxes, limited government does oppose unfair taxes, such as taxes targeted specifically at some minority. 

Here we see the creeping in of Platonism. McGhee seems to believe that wealth and prosperity are caused by government. This is nonsense, and I don’t believe she actually believes that. Governments have existed for thousands of years. Yet, The Great Enrichment--the near 100 fold increase in the general standard of living of the past 250 years--cannot be explained on the state supremacy premise promoted by McGhee. That Enrichment happened as a result of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to individual rights, limited government, and free market Capitalism that liberated the common man. It’s absurd to think that without the Affordable Care Act, there would be no health care, as if private individuals left to their own freedom and self-reliance, would result in no health care. In fact, the government creates no wealth. It can only hamper private wealth creators with regulation and redistribute wealth produced by free, private enterprise.

McGhee doesn’t have room in her worldview even for an honest and accurate acknowledgement of what the American concept of what limited government or Capitalism even is. Everything is government or nothing. It’s the resurrection of the age-old pre-Enlightenment Platonic belief that the “common” man is incapable of running his own life and needs totalitarian philosopher kings to direct them. And from this absolute statist lens, she calls for socialist “solutions'' to every injustice committed against black Americans, whom she obviously believes are incapable of self-reliance under the American system of individual rights and limited government. It’s the ultimate aim of “cancel culture”; the cancelation of America.

If “white” people are racist, limited government and free markets are racist, and socialism is the cure for racism, then McGhee seems to be resurrecting the old Confederate argument for slavery as a necessary good with the contention that black people are not capable of living and flourishing in the freedom of capitalism. So, to balance the racial justice scales, liberating black people from the oppression of government-enforced segregation and racism, McGhee proposes to equalize the oppression by forcing everyone under government controls. 

This is the exact opposite of the Abolitionist counter-argument to the “inferior race” premise put forth by George Fitzhugh and other slavery-defending Southern intellectuals. American Abolitionist Frederick Douglass dealt with this insidious argument directing in his famous speech What Shall Be Done with the Slaves If Emancipated?

These objections [to freeing the slaves] are often urged with a show of sincere solicitude for the welfare of the slaves themselves. It is said, what will you do with them? they can't take care of themselves; they would all come to the North; they would not work; they would become a burden upon the State, and a blot upon society; they'd cut their masters' throats; they would cheapen labor, and crowd out the poor white laborer from employment; their former masters would not employ them, and they would necessarily become vagrants, paupers and criminals, overrunning all our alms houses, jails and prisons. 

Douglass categorically rejected this demeaning “prejudice” as the “depraved moral sentiment” of “the enemies of human liberty.” His powerful answer:

What shall be done with them?

Our answer is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and succeed best by being let alone . . . —let alone altogether, and assured that they were thus to be let alone forever, and that they must now make their own way in the world, just the same as any and every other variety of the human family. As colored men, we only ask to be allowed to do with ourselves. As colored men, we only ask to be allowed to do with ourselves, subject only to the same great laws for the welfare of human society which apply to other men, Jews, Gentiles, Barbarian, Sythian. Let us stand upon our own legs, work with our own hands, and eat bread in the sweat of our own brows.  When you, our white fellow countrymen, have attempted to do anything for us, it has generally been to deprive us of some right, power or privilege which you yourself would die before you would submit to have taken from you. 

By pushing socialism and demeaning capitalism, McGhee is saying don’t correct past injustice by ensuring blacks the same rights as everyone else, take away everyone else’s rights to secure our own livelihoods, healthcare, and retirements so we are all equally subservient to the state. While Fitzhugh defended Southern slave farms as “the beau ideal of communism” and as necessarily good, preaching that “slavery is a form, and the very best form, of socialism,” Douglass sought to free the slaves from socialism and release the slaves into the freedom of American Capitalism. 

McGhee moves in the opposite direction. How is McGhee’s vision of government-as-provider different in essence from George Fitzhugh’s claim that “The slaves are all well fed, well clad, have plenty of fuel, and are happy. They have no dread of the future—no fear of want.” Douglass understood the connection between being provided for and being subservient, and the difference between dependence on a master and being free to provide for oneself by keeping what one earns. Is being dependent on a plantation master any different from dependence on the state? A state of independence is the only condition in which reciprocal affection can exist among human beings. In answer to those who insisted that by enslaving blacks they were providing for their welfare, Douglass retorted angrily, “Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings.” “The negro,” insisted Douglass, “is a human being, capable of judging between good and evil, right and wrong, liberty and slavery.” 

Keep this in mind as you digest the racist “anti-Racists” claim that if you oppose socialism/statism/collectivism you are a racist. Their goal is not to stamp out racism. It is to shame people into rejecting Capitalism and embracing “big government”; i.e. socialism. Remember that slavery, racism, segregation in America were powered by government’s legal apparatus. McGhee acknowledges that statism drove injustice against blacks, yet she embraces more statism as the solution. She’s got it backwards. McGhee is committed to statist socialism, snuck in under the guise of “Anti-Racism”. But we need genuine anti-statism--that is, individualism. We need to embrace Douglass, who rejected socialism and embraced the individual liberty of the Declaration and the Constitution.

* [“Dog whistle” is the term used by people who “see” racism in unrelated remarks because they can’t find real evidence of actual racism.]

Related Reading:

The Racism of the Anti-Racists: Dr. Jill Biden, Wanda Blanchett, and Dr. Bob Harris

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’: San Diego’s ‘Educators’

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’

The Racism of the 'Anti-Racists': 'This New America' - Apartheid?

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’: The NJ State Budget

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’: NJ Governor Murphy’s Strange and Discriminatory ‘Baby Bonds’ Scheme

An Anti-Racist Education for Middle Schoolers by ROBBY SOAVE for Reason