The greater the international idealism, the greater the domestic suppression. I propose that as a new empirical law. It occurs because the idealism leads to war and war leads in a variety of ways to the suppression of dissent. This can be generalized. The greater the idealism, period, the greater the use of violence to attain the ideals. Idealism involves a notion of the here and now perfectability of the world or man or society. It involves a notion of utopia now or soon or in our lifetimes. A more realistic view of man’s capacity to generate evil and man’s capacity wrongly to identify ideals may temper the violent tendencies of idealism.

There are countless examples of which I mention only a few. Example 1 is World War I. I am told (by James Dunlap) that when Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war, the Capitol and Capitol Hill were swept clean of anti-war dissenters. Wendy McElroy has an article on the suppression of dissent under Wilson more generally. Example 2 is the current War on Terror. Example 3 is Lincoln’s preservation of his ideal, the Union. Examples 4 and 5 are Lenin’s Russia and Mao’s China, both attempts to remake societies and men. Example 6 is Hitler’s ideal of a pure Aryan breed of men. Pol Pot is example 7. He aimed at a radical egalitarianism. The neoconservatives are aiming at a world filled with peaceful, stable, and prosperous democracies; or else a world in which the U.S. is the sole superpower that dispenses benevolent hegemony. They are example 8.

Wilson could not even achieve his ideal within America, much less the world, and he actively worked at cross purposes to it domestically. By the same token, neoconservative ideals have produced suppression within America.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff