There has been plenty of fodder during the economic debate on the Powerhouse Roundtable on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Next up is an exchange between Mary Matalin and Matthew Dowd. These two do not quite see eye to eye when it comes to the economy. Dowd says Democrats and Republicans are "trapped in an old mantra." But never fear; he has a collective solution.
I think the Democrats and the Republicans are trapped in an old mantra and an old status quo. Republicans refuse in many ways to take on Wall Street in a direct way. They would be so much benefited if they'd adopted some of Elizabeth Warren’s message, and say the big corporations, the big banks in Wall Street have taken us down this path, along with a ‘Washington is not fixing the problems.’
Democrats, on the other hand, many of them have an anti-Wall Street, anti-big bank, anti-big corporation, but they’re stuck in an old mantra that the government needs to solve this problem. If somebody came along and said, ‘I’m going to bridge this, and it’s about Washington isn’t doing the job, Wall Street isn’t doing the job, we need to go back to middle America.’
Mary Matalin suggested that this is exactly what the Tea Party proposes. But of course, he disagree. And suddenly, in a blatant contradiction of how "we need to go back to middle America," he turns to collectivism over individualism.
They don’t have a collective solution. What they say is, let’s return it all to the individuals. What we need is a collective solution to the problem that’s not based in Washington.
To Dowd, the individual doesn't matter; only the common good of the group. More collectivism, less individualism. Ayn Rand wrote about the dangers of this thinking in 1944:
Totalitarianism is collectivism. 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." Throughout history, no tyrant ever rose to power except on the claim of representing "the common good." Napoleon "served the common good" of France. Hitler is "serving the common good" of Germany. Horrors which no man would dare consider for his own selfish sake are perpetrated with a clear conscience by "altruists" who justify themselves by — the common good.
More Rand, Less Dowd.
