Is that control of the individual can yield collective happiness. At the center of all authoritarian ideologies that have resulted in failures, it is the belief that there is some kind of utilitarian benefit for millions of people over the long run if the individual is curtailed in his freedoms, molded into some ideal and forced to work for some common goal that is not chosen by himself, but rather by an "enlightened" committee of government bureaucrats.
Fascism, communism and Nazi ideology all have as the common denominator between them this belief in an utilitarian overall maximization of value for all if the individual sacrifices his free-will for the common good. In fact, all collectivist ideologies have a stong religious underpinning. In common with religion, they promise happiness in exchange for a sort of moral rectitude. Christianity promises as reward Heaven if you behave morally towards others, whilst Communism promises a just and fair kind of Society if the right to own property is withhold from the individual and all property is made public.
But think about it: what is "Society" if not an amalgamation of individuals? And how can any collectivist ideology pretend to know how to maximize happiness for each and every single individual? Happiness can only be maximized at the individual level, and that is best accomplished at the individual level. Having a Society where there are no poor people and everyone has medical coverage can be seen as ideal, but if the money to achieve that comes from taking away, in the form of taxes, from the most affluent in the Society, then such a Society is making life less happy for those who produce more. And how is this benefitting the "common" good if those productive people who are paying for these social programs are part of the word "common" and you are decreasing their affluence by taking away from them? Then, there is the issue of motivation. Suppose you are gifted with extraordinary visuo-spatial skills and, if you worked as an engineer, you could create machines that could make the life of millions of people better, but you don't really care about engineering and what you really want to do is be a musician? Even if you made millions of people happier by pursuing engineering rather than music, you would be making yourself miserable. From the point of view of utilitarianism and maximization of utility, you pursuing engineering does yield more overall happiness, but you are making life miserable for yourself, and who is to say that some maximization of well-being for others is more overall valuable than your own happiness. Also, the overall increase in happiness that the machines created by you as an engineer would give to others, all added up, might not compare to the happiness you would have as an individual if your poursued your dreams.
This is the reason why libertarianism is the only political ideology that makes sense. An ideology that puts the individual above collectives of any sort, and tries to maximize happiness at the individual level. This also implies that happiness at the individual level is maximized by not only giving individuals the highest possible degree of freedom, but also giving them freedom to the highest degree possible up to the point where it starts to infringe upon other people's freedom and not one little bit more. If your freedom starts to somehow restrict the freedom of others, then your freedom stops at the point right where that starts happening.
In the American political lingo, Conservatives and Liberals both restrict freedom irrationally. The only difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives are libertarian in the economic sphere but authoritarian in the social sphere; liberals, conversely, are libertarian in the social sphere and authoritarian in the economic sphere. They both seek to supress freedom, and they do it differently. When it is accepted that freedom is better maximized at the individual level, it is accepted that both economic freedom and social freedom are necessary, and that the only acceptable use of restrictions to individual action are those on individual actions that restrict the freedom of others. For instance, you have the freedom to own guns, but if you use those guns to steal money from others, then you are infringing on their individual rights to not be assaulted and also robbed of their money. The only kind of individual restrictionism that is acceptable to libertarianism is the restriction of individual action that limits others' individual actions.
SUCKMYMUSCLE
