Ideological roots of western totalitarianism
The natural law is a guide-post and lumber-room which points in different directions and permits a convenient diversity of arguments. The theory of eighteenth-century jurists of the natural law Scholl justified conquest as a right incident to war. The failure of the natural philosophy in general and the natural right philosophy in particular to provide definite and restrictive answers makes the right of security preeminently serviceable in the justification of both imperialism outside and totalitarianism inside. Though the natural right to liberty did not lend itself to territorial expansion and to enslavement of their peoples, it could be used in the same time as ideological weapon for expansionism and imperialism through a corollary natural right to « safety » or security. The concept of security is logically flexible yo a degree permitting much more sweeping political implications. in virtue of the natural doctrine and the natural right to security and self preservation, the law of nations has been deduced from natural law and this apparent assumptions was the ideological fundament allowing both the infant United States to annex adjacent territories and the European powers to colonize and to enslave other people Inside and outside continent. The natural right of security and self preservation lead to override the right of self-determination and here for the first time the idea that « our rights » must not be destroyed leads to the destruction of that cornerstone of the natural right philosophy the universal right to political liberty. This imperialistic idea had become synonymous of another idea that of subordination of the political liberty of citizens to the general welfare of the larger geographical unity. Imperialism imperatives were the impetus for domestic totalitarian system under the pretext that the governed, for their internal and external security must to consent to government whether for better or for worse.
