While we are on the subject, over to Crooked Timber there are a series of posts on Hayek's idiotic idea that authoritarianism grows out of either socialist central planning or the welfare state. The discussion there is if Hayek did, in fact, make such an idiotic claim -- he did.
What baffles me is that right now we are watching not just here in the good Ol' US of A, long may she be united and free, as result of the militarization of state and society the not gradual but rather rapid expansion of a surveillance state, an increasingly powerful executive, the erosion of citizens protection from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, plus and also the repeal of the prohibition of using propaganda on American Citizens.
This is not unexpected. From the reign of that dangerous radical DDE, sensible people have known that in addition to America's authoritarians coming flag wrapped and cross bearing, they will enter swords drawn and insisting on the need to fight those bastards over there while cleaning house over here.
Which is to say, we are half-way to "serfdom" precisely because those granted the privilege of steering the ship of state have decided that the nation and the wider world do not want economic equality and effective, functional democracy but rather permanent war, an increasingly power plutocracy and, for good measure, a state that monitors women's healthcare while seeking out internal enemies.
Enjoy the holiday.
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