More authoritarian approaches (as in Kings, Queens, Religious Figures, and Dictators of various sorts), start with a frame of reference that emphasizes the rights and responsibilities of the individual, but of course get a bit lopsided at times when the leader decides, to increasing degrees, that only one individual really matters at all.
One can certainly see the possibility of the left doing this too, as an extreme, with a group mind, or group mentality taking over to the detrimental effect to all individuality but, in my reading of history, you don't see that quite as much of at all.
Be that as it may, what may be the most salient point here is that Democracy itself may be seen as one attempt to try and balance both sides; at least as our founding fathers tried to set things up with. The old, top down, and definitely paternalistic, mentality was still the main bias though, in most of them, despite their intellectual leanings towards egalitarianism. How could it be otherwise when tribalism was still so dominant, and the mercantilism that grew to challenge the British, in as many ways as our desire to live free did, was also so top down oriented.
The bottom line, in my opinion, is not that Socialism is a danger, of itself, but that you cannot expect to operate with it when the economic operating system, that is the real dominant force for what drives most of what we do now, is so diametrically opposed to that type of organizational approach. Which is why I have been trying to implore the Left to realize that you cannot operate Socialism inside of what now passes as a Capitalistic methodology. You can't precisely because this monster has become a mutated beast. A working experiment in organizational Oncology as old, linear, segmented, mechanistic operating methods, are irradiated by all things electrical, and electronic. A situation taking old assumptions, pertaining to the need for human skill as a necessary component in the troika of Capital, Labor, and Markets, and making them useless.
What we need to realize now is that, in order for Democracy to have a chance to survive at all, much like life as we know it in fact, we will need to figure out how to organize ourselves in a way that also emphasizes balance. I would like to think that I have at least given us a place to start the debate on what the new, absolutely necessary, new alternative should be. And whatever that alternative ends up actually being, the most important part now is to know we need to have a completely new way to do things in the first place. And we need to hussle our asses big time to get started on this because the clock is ticking.
Hysteria over democratic socialism mostly the result of fear among American elites, not policy concerns
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