When I meet someone and the discussion turns to politics I often tell them about my personal basic conservative philosophical test on good vs. bad government. I'll say something like this: "These three things go together: Bigger government, higher taxes, less freedom. You can't affect one without affecting the other two -- for example if the government raises your taxes they'll use the money to expand government, then next year they'll demand the same amount of money or more to sustain or expand the government, meanwhile they'll use the expanded power to regulate your business or intrude on your personal life more by imposing more laws and regulations, so your freedoms are more limited. Ask yourself which camp any given politician running for office belongs to, the other one being the camp I favor, the one philosophically favoring limited government, whose credo is: Smaller government, lower taxes, more freedom."
If equality wins (socialism) then the country goes to hell. Unfortunately D’ Tocqueville predicted as much and we can say that society (regardless of what party is in power) is becoming more liberal or socialist.
A lot of things work toward that end: 1) Death of God, which means more relativism and a concentration on self. No transcendent values means more temptation for doing evil and more irrational acts that you don’t have to account for in the afterlife. You are the sole arbitrator of your fate and this concentration on self (ego and desires) means more pleasure and no responsibility — no responsibility for creating a better future for society. Pleasure and no responsibility mean no kids to inherit that future. Kids take the focus off the self. The central concerns are: where do I shop, where can I vacation to, what are my pensions, etc. In other words, socialist Europe without kids.
Another force that works toward a socialist/nihilist end: 2) Society is rich and romantic. Wealth leads to romanticism, that is to say, we can afford having ludicrous ideals. Transgender washrooms are a serious question in life! As well, now that God is out of the question, man has the presumptuous arrogance and belief in his power to create his own world utopia. Our progressive society doesn’t learn the hard lessons from the past because, in great part, it concentrates on feeling good, feeling virtuous and the lessons of the past dampens those feelings. To make matters worse free thought is not encouraged in university — it’s all about not feeling hurt and collective group think.
In the end, things don’t look optimistic. But there are forces out there that are reacting against the madness. My solution is take a metaphorical flamethrower to the universities because they are the bastion of the left. It all comes from there and infiltrates every walk of life and government. The university has become its nemesis: it’s become irrational. Education now means indoctrination. Perhaps western society doesn’t have to fall if it has the wisdom to turn itself around.
“There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another.”
The “better” culture is the one that defeats the other when two cultures clash.
Nonsense. 90% of the country would agree that the West or America was/is superior to Nazism, Stalinism, and Islamism. Even people who violently disagree over politics and culture aren't saying that Hitler was better than or the same as today's America. Similar for Stalin and ISIS.