Peter K.:
> It doesn't has to be anything. If a government can't be a moral agent
> outside its borders, you would think it couldn't be a moral agent within
> its borders either. This leads to a cynical, pessimistic anarchism and
> a dead end for the left.
>
> i.e., you can't argue for universal health care because of the
> war on drugs.
You can argue for universal health care and consent to the War on Drugs, but you can't do both consistently; one will undercut the other. Universal health care is communistic (from each according to their ability, to each according to their need) whereas the War on Drugs, which is part of _The_ War, that is, the State, pursues an authoritarian, unequal, unfree society in which the War is continuously replicated in a variety of ways, from overt violence to the "hidden injuries of class"; _its_ slogan is "from each according to their need, to each according to their ability" (to acquire power and property within State rules).
Social democracy appears as a bourgeois response to the threat of socialism, communism and anarchism, that is, freedom and equality. When the threat recedes, the social democracy is weakened or entirely dismantled because the bourgeoisie think they no longer need it. So far from a dead end, the recognition that the government cannot be a moral agent anywhere -- the radical view -- is what advances the Left's purposes, and compromise -- the turning away from the radical view -- is the dead end. Or at least this is what we observe in recent history.
-- Gordon