There have been some conservatives who have been claiming that the people on the Left are destroying society. I have things to say on the subject.
It is inevitable that people will form societies. What is not inevitable is that these societies be tyrannical and corrupt. And the societies that these people have formed have been both.
They have high levels of incest. They have high levels of domestic violence. They have an anti-intellectual attitude and extreme conformity pressures. For as long as these practices go on in the name of society, that discredits society. And this leads the sincere people to become antisocial.
When someone claims to speak for society, he must be challenged. That is because what we have here is an authority that is unelected, unofficial, unaccountable, unchecked and unbalanced – that as such has nothing to keep it from becoming tyrannical and corrupt. If you want your society to wield authority, make it official. Pass it into law. Subject it to accountability, check and balance. Otherwise what we have here is a sneaky totalitarianism that controls people’s lives without there being any check and balance upon it.
So no, the people on the Left are not evil. Many of them are more sincere than the average person. They make the mistake of confusing the abuses of the value for the value itself. They see abuses done in the name of society and mistake it for society itself. This is wrong. Society can, and should, be done better.
Should we do away with society? By no means. But we do need to prevent it from becoming tyrannical and corrupt. Practices such as incest, domestic violence and extreme conformity pressures should be confronted. Wrong things done in the name of society must be abolished. And then society itself will survive without being associated with things that are wrong.