Critical Thinking Avoids Shallow Ideologies

By Leo Toribio

The idea that individualism leads to totalitarianism is highly questionable in view of the fact that it is the blind acceptance of political doctrines by masses of "believers" that has led to both right-wing and left-wing dictatorships.  If all people were taught critical thinking and taught to value the practice of critical thinking in their daily lives, shallow ideologies, whether left-wing or right-wing would not carry enough weight to permit dictatorships to evolve.

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George Bernard Shaw famously quoted a famous French proverb:  "The more things change, the more they stay the same."  Back in the fifties, when I was a student at the University of Pittsburgh, I subscribed to a newsletter from an organization with an intriguing name:  Intercollegiate Society for Individualists.  As it turned out, I was quickly disillusioned when I read the newsletter.  Contrary to what I expected, the articles were full of conservative propaganda, and I hated propaganda, regardless of whether it emanated from the left or the right.
 
Sunday, in the New York Times, in an article by Ross Douthat, Mr. Douthat states that millennials are left-leaning individualists, and that individualism leads to totalitarianism.
 
Douthat wrote: This was the point raised in 1953 by Robert Nisbet’s Quest for Community,” arguably the 20th century’s most important work of conservative sociology. (I wrote the introduction when it was reissued.) Trying to explain modern totalitarianism’s dark allure, Nisbet argued that it was precisely the emancipation of the individual in modernity — from clan, church and guild — that had enabled the rise of fascism and Communism.  
 
I have not read Nisbet's work, but the idea that individualism leads to totalitarianism is highly questionable in view of the fact that it is the blind
acceptance of political doctrines by masses of "believers" that has led to both right-wing and left-wing dictatorships.  If all people were taught critical thinking and taught to value the practice of critical thinking in their daily lives, shallow ideologies, whether left-wing or right-wing would not carry enough weight to permit dictatorships to evolve.  When all is said and done, the very term, "dictator" derives from the practice of someone whose utterances are copied unquestioned by others.
 
Apart from politics, there are many opportunities for people to find community in local public works projects, sporting events, community centers, holiday events and (sadly) shopping malls.

But it was nice to finally read an article by a conservative acknowledging  that conservatives are not individualists.  Maybe a future article by Mr. Douthat will admit that conservatives seek to be the dictators of our society.

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