Our Political Problems Are Moral

When Lev Davidovich Bronshtein (pen name Leon Trotsky) wrote about homo Soveiticus, the new breed of man born under the pall of terror; a subject of tyrannical social engineering by the State, he was referencing a utopian conviction that contemporary capitalist states now achieved; an easily ameliorated human person devoid of natural attachments.  He wrote:

What is man?  He is by no means a finished or harmonious being.  No, he is still a highly awkward creature.  Man, as animal, has not evolved by plan but spontaneously, and has accumulated many contradictions.  The question of how to educate and regulate, how to improve and complete the physical and spiritual construction of man, is a colossal problem which can only be conceived on the basis of State Socialism.  

We can construct a railway across the Sahara, we can build the Eiffel Tower and talk directly with New York, but we surely cannot improve man.  No, we can!!  To produce a new, “improved version” of man, that is the future task of Socialism.

The task given the next U.S. President is no less challenging than the task put before Reagan or Truman:  it calls for the dismantling of the body of precedents undergirding the modern administrative state.

We begin with policy.  Why?  Because politics is applied ethics.