53 Comments

1. no mo uro:

“why can’t we just get along?”

=

Why can’t the sky be another color?

Jun 27, 2009 - 6:02 pm 2. Lord Acton:

Wretch, you are (once again) on a roll. Still think you would enjoy Toynbee’s Study of History. To me it’s like reading 10 large volumes of your stuff.

Thanks. Will hit the tip jar again pronto.

God bless.

Jun 27, 2009 - 6:24 pm 3. Thrasymachus:

I have a different take on George Orwell. I think George Orwell sums up everything wrong with the Western left.

Orwell was *not* against totalitarianism, and he was most definitely not against communism- he was a orthodox Communist. What Orwell was against was *Stalinism*, which is an entirely different thing.

I think the easiest term to use for Orwell would be Trotskyite, although it’s inaccurate. Orwell was all in favor of communists killing non-communists- he wrote very approvingly in “Homage to Catalonia” of the desecrated churches and absent, presumably murdered priests. What Orwell opposed, and the *only* thing he opposed, was communists killing other communists and socialists.

And how did he feel about that? Well, he thought is was very regrettable. Not at all good for the cause! A real shame. But he never turned on communism as a result! Only on Stalinism! He actually blames Spanish criminal law (civil law, Roman law, Napoleonic code, whatever the exact name was) for the troubles of his friends Bob Smilie and Georges Kopp.

It’s a tribute to the power of Stalinism that an orthodox communist somehow became known as a conservative anti-communist.

What Orwell saw and described was Stalinism as a rhetorical device. That’s all it is, a rhetorical device used by leftists of all kinds to this day. Only when it’s linked to a secret police force and a Communist legal system does it kill millions- otherwise it’s just stupid and annoying, but nonetheless amazingly effective.

First Stalinism brings to its targets a tsunami of negative emotion. They are evil, rotten, horrible, awful people. You don’t have to be a plutocrat to get this attack, just someone who disagrees in some small way with the Stalinist making the attack. This paralyzes people who were thinking in terms of having a debate rather than a war. Then it makes bizarre claims about the target, often ludicrous, that can’t be refuted precisely because they are so bizarre.

This works because people are inclined to believe smears and as Bin Laden says, they prefer the strong horse. This is why Charles Rangel once said anyone who supports tax cuts is a racist. You can’t refute it, because it’s so ridiculous, and if you try to refute it it’s just proof you are a racist.

George Orwell was more loyal to the socialist cause than to truth, justice, or humanity. He didn’t care for this kind of thing but he never actually refuted it by turning against socialism. It was regretably necessary. In general the left is just fine with violent, slanderous rhetoric; those who don’t care for it go along anyway.

Jun 27, 2009 - 6:35 pm 4. MarkJ:

Great post, as always. I believe this is also attributed to Orwell:

“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like [fascism and communism]: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

Jun 27, 2009 - 7:02 pm 5. Elijah:

when your spending alarms even the Europeans, via Instapundit…

socialism…money for nothing

Jun 27, 2009 - 7:02 pm 6. Batman:

RE: Thrasymachus @ #3 — Was Smilie the inspiration for John Le Carre?

I don’t really know Orwell deeply enough to judge whether he was a real anticommunist or whether or nor he believed that communism was intrinsically totalitarian in its very essence.

What I do know is that the capacity of people to deceive themselves is almost boundless. This is magnified by the triumph of deconstruction and relativism. Standards no longer apply. No culture is better than any other. No one may lose at soccer or any other sport. No one is evil; they are only misunderstood. Aristotelian logic is only your opinion. The very tools needed for real critical thinking are eroded.

I could never understand the world of the late 1930’s. How could people have failed to see what was awaiting them? Now I am beginning to understand. Or should I say now I am beginning to grasp that it is part of the wishful thinking within human nature. But it used to be compensated for by the will to survive and by the strength of one’s identity. Now identity has devolved into a relative concept that implies that one with a strong identity is too judgmental and prejudiced.

After 9/11 I thought that Americans still had both a strong identity and a strong will to survive. Now I am no longer sure of either.

Freud raises such a question at the end of Civilization and its Discontents. I will provide the exact quotation later, but from memory he declares that the struggle between the life force and its implacable foe the death instinct will continue interminably. But when the book reached its later editions he added, “But who can foresee with what result?”

One does not have to agree with Freud’s precise notions of eros and the death instinct to wonder whether we are seeing a waning of the will to survive within Western culture in general and American culture in particular.

Jun 27, 2009 - 7:24 pm 7. Batman:

With regard to the Golden Calf, a traditional interpretation is that Moses was to be on the mountain for 40 days, but there is ambiguity as to whether he was actually there 41 days. In that extra day the people demanded something tangible to worship.

But my point is not biblical exegesis; rather it is to point out that the sort of thinking Wretchard writes about goes back over 3000 years. No sooner had the Israelites been liberated than they began to complain about how much better things had been in Egypt. Then came the Golden Calf and a major rebellion that resulted in 3000 dead. This was followed by Miriam and Aaron turning against Moses. Right after that the spies returned from scouting the land and their self-doubt and lack of confidence in their mission (and God’s help) condemned them to 40 years of wandering.

Right after that (as is delightfully depicted in The Ten Commandments film as well as written in biblical text) there was a major rebellion among the leadership. Three leading families were destroyed, 250 chieftains consumed by fire, and 14,700 who died by plague. The story goes on and on.

The pioneering spirit and the self-confidence shown at America’s founding no longer exist. Like the Israelites of 3000 years ago we want freedom only when we are oppressed slaves. Once we get our liberty we yearn again for the certainty of slavery. And we chafe at leadership and standards and promote egalitarianism — not that of the Declaration of Independence where it says that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights — but that of the French Revolution with its trinity of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. The French version takes liberty to mean removal of the tyranny of standards, takes equality to mean equality of results, and fraternity to deny that there are differences among people with different identities.

Not only is plus ca change, plus le meme chose; perhaps it is that things appear to change in order that they may actually remain the same.

Jun 27, 2009 - 7:40 pm 8. Sidney Raphael:

You quote:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.

Did you realize these words are by Ezra Pound, an unrepentant Fascist who lived out WWII in Italy praising its fascist government?

Communists and Fascists, not really separated at birth.

Jun 27, 2009 - 7:53 pm 9. Josh:

The ability to recognize the face of tyranny is a fragile skill which cannot really be passed on, except as a critical attitude.

Islam, of all things, recognizes the face of tyranny – and preaches effectively chaos in its place, and then in practice inserts its own tyranny instead.

In general, in the west, we try to find freedom, I believe that is more the truth than a myth, and a legacy of classical Hellenistic thought. And the modern archetype of the argument for freedom might just be JRR Tolkien, and the revolutionary argument that, having found the ring of power, they might want to put nobody on the throne in place of Sauron.

Of course, the best political arguments for freedom, and pragmatic guidelines for establishing it, are the federalist papers. They preach government, not revolution, they are constructive, not destructive, not even in the service of good ends.

Just some noodling on a Saturday evening.

Jun 27, 2009 - 8:05 pm 10. E. Nigma:

Batman
I think it is hard for most of us to understand why the 1930’s proceeded as they did, because we can’t appreciate the carnage of the First World War.
The loss of so very many men in such a indefinite struggle with an ambiguous ending did a lot to destroy the ethos of Western Civilization. “The lights are going out all over Europe, and we will seem them again for years.”
The rise of Bolshevism in the east in Russia seemed the “answer” to many who had lost their faith in God, Church and Democracy (the civil patria that helped glue their societies together), because all three had failed them in WWI. Fascism in Germany and Italy seemed another “answer” to others.
The US was largely spared the terrible carnage and death of WWI (although our losses were not insignificant at all), and we did suffer from Wilsonian fascism for a brief time.
Harding promised a “return to normalcy” and America prospered in the 1920’s, while Europe languished in its death rattle. Honest observers knew that the rise of Bolshevism (USSR) and Fascism (in Italy, Germany and Japan) meant that war would rise again, but most people averted their eyes and didn’t want to see the impending storm; hence men like Chamberlain as PM of Britain.
It all seems so obvious in retrospect, yet they all sought to avoid the abyss and carnage of war because of the very real memories of WWI.
**************
Fast forward to the present, and the differences are real, yet in some ways the same. There is a great psychological fatigue because of the conscious destruction of self -confidence of the American spirit. As others more wise have noted the long Gramscian march through the Academy is complete, and children are now well indoctrinated with the corrosive pseudo-intellectualism and revisionism of the Left; some shake it off, others are totally seduced. My 15 year old son has to read part of Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States” this summer. We had a discussion about it tonight, as I tried to explain what the true purpose of the book was; I think he came to understand that. Sigh.

Even Orwell did not truly grasp the horror that had been unleashed, and what the true roots of it were. He saw it, described it, understood its consquences and could novelize about it (1984), yet, in the end, it seems he could not disconnect himself from the well he had drunk from in his youth.
The future will be a near-run thing in estimating if America can re-discover and save itself or fall down into the vortex that already seems to be consuming the rest of the West. It won’t be the brutality of “1984″ that overwhelms us, it will be the banality, vapidity and ignorance of the pop-culture that will be the death of the Republic.

Jun 27, 2009 - 8:21 pm 11. Walt:

At a hastily called press conference today, Robert Gibbs emotionally read an address to the people of the United States from President For Life Barack Hussein Obama. Mr. Gibbs cried with unbound joy as the Washington press corps rose as one in thunderous adulation.

My fellow Americans, Mr. Gibbs began, I bring you tidings of great joy. The President has proclaimed the following words shall be read and memorized throughout the land:

With whose eyes shall we see the world
There are those who will see the world hollow
With whose mind do we see fellow man
There are those who will tempt us to follow
They will smile and attempt to arrange
Your thoughts and your life and your time
By promising comfortable change
And it won’t cost you one single dime
Oh they know how to work it so well
They know every button to push
But know that the road leads to hell
I speak of that road built by Bush
We’re now in a crisis, they’ll shout
Obama is moving too fast
Only we know what it’s all about
The One’s promises surely won’t last
Yes, that’s how they speak ill of us
But we’ll save you in spite of your fears
Just know that we’re driving the bus
And we’ll be at the wheel many years
We’re creating a new nation here
A nation we’re all proud to serve
A nation we all hold so dear
That we tingle the end of each nerve
Which is why we’ve decided on this
That elections are truly passé
They are something you surely won’t miss
Though we’ll still have an election day
While you won’t vote you won’t really care
It’s the symbol that really does count
With these nice purple robes that I wear
I’ll look swell sitting here on the mount

Jun 27, 2009 - 8:45 pm 12. Karen Yvonne:

“‘A Croc sandal stamping on a human face forever?’ Who could credit such a tyranny, even if it were true?”

We’ve entered into an age of soft tyranny. For a society under the sway of political correctness and the worship of multiculturalism, tyranny per se isn’t so bad, it’s just the wrong kind of tyranny that merits opprobrium, the brutal kind like, say, Iran’s. Evidently, the Iranian tyrants just don’t know how to do tyranny properly.

How long our soft tyranny will stay soft, who knows? But, barring some truly dire eventuality, Americans would probably tolerate a soft tyranny indefinitely. I seriously doubt that we Americans – although certainly there are lots of exceptions, as demonstrated here at BC – but on the whole and in the main, I doubt that we can countenance any resolute passion like, “Give me liberty or give me death,” or an idea like, “The tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots.” Such sentiments are not for people like us. The current state of affairs would not be half so distressing if this was not true.

Jun 27, 2009 - 8:58 pm 13. ledger:

Now, the real crushing of people begins as Obama dithers. Here is disturbing news:

‘In a televised sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami called on the judiciary to “punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson”. He said that those leaders were backed by the United States and Israel. They should be treated as mohareb — people who wage war against God — and deserved execution.’

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/06/023910.php

I maintain that the Protesters should have been given the necessary tools of self-defense. For all intense proposes situation cannot get any worse.

With the Khatami’s strangle hold on Iran it will quickly produce nuclear weapons and Israel will have to attack. I think many people will die.

I still believe that the Protesters should be armed appropriately to defend themselves from extinction.

With ingenuity, and the proximity of American forces to Iran a considerable amount of weapons could quickly find their way into to the hands of the Protesters.

I say keep them busy and bloody Khatami’s thugs thereby slowing the dictator’s acquisition of nuclear weapons – and the destiny with war.

Jun 27, 2009 - 9:12 pm 14. whiskey:

Wretchard –

You kind of miss the obvious here. Orwell was a middle class man in a middle class society where policemen went about unarmed, and nobody regularly shot entire families over feuds based on women, or land, or both. Then, he entered a land consumed by such feuds and actions.

And saw, accurately, that middle class security and safety was an illusion, and a fragile one at that. His point made by the Blitz and Buzz bombs a few years later.

For most of the world, most of the time, violence and brutality is the rule.

BUT … you and Orwell both made the same mistake. If anything, Power is NEVER forever. WHERE oh where is Alexander, the conqueror of the World? Ghenghis Khan and his empire? Great Ceasar, and all his descendants? Attila, Conqueror or Ceasar? Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor, and scourge of the Saxons? Great War-King Harold Blue Tooth, or Nebuchadnezzer, or the Pharoahs of old Egypt, to say nothing of the great God-Kings of Persia?

Gone. EVERY ONE. Along with their peoples, their way of life, their very essence, gone. Lingering only in old stories, books, and tales, most of utter fabrications or mis-interpretation of the real story.

What human beings are, no more and no less, are very hypercharged emotionally, intellectually, sexually, primates. No other animal feels as deeply as we do, thinks as much as we do, fiddles around with tools as much as we do, and needs it’s kin and tribe and clan and group, yet fears it as well, as much as we do.

We are ALWAYS in tension between anarchy, our natural state, from which we evolved religion and other institutions to curb our baser appetites that threaten to fracture us into vulnerable disunity, and tyranny, which promises strong but rigid control over our own selves.

Democracy and freedom are robust, but relatively recent, and have the great risk of being overwhelmed by vastly superior forces (the Greek City stats by Philip) or self-destruction (Rome) as material prosperity undermines the ties among Democratic peoples to preserve freedom. It’s relatively easy to preserve freedom when failing to do so means you starve to death, and that failure is there evident every day. It’s harder when times are good, “normal” and expected, and violence is a very long way away, or so it seems.

Orwell’s mistake was thinking that technology had decisively made tyranny unavoidable, when in fact it’s advance made anarchy all the more powerful.

One cannot underestimate feminization either. The female-dominated electorate of the 1930’s CERTAINLY did not want to cede power, money, control, and so on to a war effort, and found conquerors quite charming. After all, if you are an attractive woman, you can soon exchange a husband or lover who is merely ordinary with a far more exciting, ruthless, and powerful lover. This was the experience of most French women of any significant attractiveness during Occupation. The Dutch also. Of course women living under more brutal tyranny find it intolerable as they are mere playthings for the powerful. The experience of Polish, Russian, or Iranian women today.

But tyranny is no antidote for stupidity. Stalin’s “stand and fight” orders created a demographic hole that bedevils Russia today, collapsing as fast as it can, in the way that Germany, and Japan also are collapsing. All those missing men never had kids. The legacy we see today in demographic collapse. The Thousand Year Reich lasted barely 12 years. The AK-47 makes anarchy at least as powerful a force as tyranny, so too nuclear weapons, and cell phones. The more powerful and individual user oriented technology becomes, the more powerful individuals and small groups are, for good or ill.

Jun 27, 2009 - 9:39 pm 15. Lifeofthemind:

We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.
- Hassan Nassrallah

The call of the dark, the desire of means without ends, is not new. It is in fact a very ancient temptation.
There must be some reason why human beings are susceptible to this appeal. There must be some survival advantage that is gained under some circumstances in having members of the tribe enter a herding mode in which critical faculties are suspended and submission to process and authority becomes of overriding concern. The refinement of modern totalitarians is that they tie this stultifying cult of death to enabling and mobilizing rationalizations that are themselves rooted in the opposite instincts. The totalitarians are able to manipulate the crowd including the intellectuals by casting their appeals not as peans to power and stasis but instead as the opposite, as an expression of a desire to perfect and protect and rationalize.

The emotional device needed could draw on great energies to support those who claimed infinite power. It served the Pharaohs and Japanese Emperors (in China they were not gods but the Mandate of Heaven served a similar purpose), where the god was present but subject to success or failure, and was distilled in Islam. When the totalitarian is moved off stage, beyond the reach of normative evaluation, and the doctrine of Free Will is traduced then there is no control over the evil to which people can be lead. Once the regime of totalitarian control is established the individual is extinguished.

In the modern age technical tools have been added to improve the ability of the totalitarians to both coopt the messages of progress and human worth to build their machine for delivering the opposite and have vastly increased the destructive reach of the totalitarians once they are established. Harnessing intellectuals and labor both schooled for a thousand years in concepts of reason and morality and dignity in building the edifice of power was the task of establishing Sovietism. The second task was in giving the totalitarian structure the tools to absorb all competition. The Soviets failed because the system once established failed to deliver the tools that a system that respects individuality and creativity can deliver. Lenin said that communism was “the Soviet power plus electrification.” Totalitarians can’t deliver the electricity, as America is about to discover if the Senate gives in to all of the fantasies of the energy bill and other socialist schemes.

When considering the rise and failure of totalitarian movements the question arises of the apparent success of Islam. That is the streetlights and plumbing in Andalusia argument. There are three possible mitigating factors to counter this argument for Islamic benevolence.
1) The portrayal of given locations as tolerant over time is overstated by Islamic apologists. Jews were dhimmis.
2) The more primitive and intolerant conditions in Christian Europe subsidized Islamic lands by making them a      relatively safer place for Jews or dissident Christians to live.
3) Given the far slower level of technical innovation 700 to 1400 years ago Islamic lands could benefit  nbsp;  for an extended period off of the intellectual capital of the people they subjugated.

The benefits of this form of parasitism no longer accrue to them in today’s rapidly evolving world. This partly the appeal of calls to simplify or primitivize among many in the Left. Once the alternative is again rolled back to wind power the soviet power p;us electrification (coal powered no doubt) will again look viable.

Jun 27, 2009 - 9:58 pm 16. Derek:

Tyranny lasts as long as it is beneficial to more people than it hurts.

If you compare most people’s lives in Germany before 1933 to a few years after, one starts to grasp the allure of totalitarianism. I had one elderly german lady tell me that the only people who didn’t do well are those who caused trouble.

The only difference between a soft tyranny and a hard one is the tacit support and acquiescence of most of the populace. There are enough laws and regulations on the books of every western democracy to make life impossible to anyone whom the state would target.

All that is needed is a good threat.

Derek

Jun 27, 2009 - 10:14 pm 17. Mad Fiddler:

Mahatma Ghandi showed how “peaceful” resistance of a vast population can frustrate and seriously impede a government.

But he and his followers were dealing with British oppressors. The British committed many sins, crimes, even atrocities. But by and large the British were trying to create a civilization modeled after their own representative Monarchy, based on the rule of law, not whim.

Compared with the venality and ruthlessness of other European “conquerors” the Brits were probably the ONLY colonialists against whom Ghandi’s grand strategy could possibly have worked… because the British were (with a few exceptions) too decent to conduct a massive slaughter against a population out of hand.

Unarmed peaceful demonstrations will fail, regardless of numbers, against massed tanks, artillery, combat aircraft, and thugs with firearms, so long as the armed thugs are drawn from foreign communities, or indoctrinated from an early age, in isolation from their families.

Weapons can be improvised; education to the level of, say, 7th grade science class* can be sufficient for a reasonably intelligent people to work out how to weaponize everyday objects and common household chemicals, certainly for sabotage and ambushes. The ambushes secure modern weapons, and so on.

The problem is reprisals against the general populace.

On the other hand, a corrupt and repressive regime is probably already committing regular outrages against the people.

Evidently the key is an event that pushes the population to sense that things are likely to get much worse, even if they knuckle under.

Or some external signal that gives them hope of support should they rebel.
________________________

*…well, 7th grade science class as it was taught several decades ago.

Jun 27, 2009 - 10:27 pm 18. mac:

The passage of this cap and trade bill without even the possibility of it having been read by ANY members of Congress is the last straw. Our political leaders, at least the Democrat ones, don’t care what “we the people” think or do–they’re going to do as they damn well please.

That attitude is going to cause them to overreach in such a way that there will be a violent pushback. I’d say there are a lot of people right now who have already decided there will have to be a fight; it’s just a question of who the targets will be.

If we avoid one, it will only be because enough people have become aware of what Obama and his cronies really are doing, and have made it indisputably clear that they’re against both him and his policies.

Remember this line: if that happens, the people who will most want to see Obama die at an assassin’s hands WILL BE HIS OWN PARTY! The reason will be that, left alive, the term “Obama” will have become synonymous with “epic, colossal-beyond-imagining failure” and the Republicans will be able to hang his stinking legacy on Democrats for the next twenty years. The only thing to remove the horrific stench of his failed policies would be to have him martyred.

If you don’t think that’s the case, I recommend you check out the cases of both South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun and JFK. In both cases, there were plenty of problems with their administrations that were leading to massive scandals. In both cases, after the men were dead, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, they went from being crooked politicians to being “the honored dead.” The rather tawdry reality of both men’s lives has been completely lost in the emotional storm following their violent deaths.

Obama’s death in office, particularly at the hands of a supposed “wingnut” would be the left’s dream ending, and I haven’t the slightest doubt but that they’re ruthless and cynical enough to make it appear to happen that way.

The people running America now hate the country as it is. They want it changed greatly and they don’t give a damn what laws they have to break to get what they want. They also don’t care how many Americans don’t want the country they do. They can either shut up or be silenced.

Jun 27, 2009 - 10:32 pm 19. Tcobb:

Wretchard writes:
What Orwell learned after watching the Communists crush spontaneity in Spain was that Bolshevism could be totalitarianism too; which frightened him because it acted in the name of the poor and the oppressed; and if one could not trust the do-gooders, then who could you trust?
There are people who do good, and there are the do-gooders. The problem is that most people have difficulty distinguishing between the two. Those who do good works put their own money and effort behind their goals–do-gooders insist that everybody else puts their own money and effort into achieving the do-gooder’s goals, and they are quite willing to take extreme measures to coerce them into doing so.

Those who do good works are generally motivated by a desire to work toward the goals they advocate. Do-gooders are generally more interested in punishing people who don’t share their outward stated goals. For them the goal is really meaningless–its just a tool and prop for hating and bullying in the name of virtue.

Jun 27, 2009 - 10:35 pm 20. Michael:

That’s fine as far as it goes. Developments here, Germany, or in Russia depend not only on the identified ideology but also on cultural traditions and, yes, at least, leading individuals. Your theory would predict uninterrupted totalitarianism from Russia once it succumbed to communism. Yet, after the death of Stalin, Beria, a ‘yes man’ murderer for Stalin, cut the Gulag population suddenly in half, suspended executions, show trials, said that governmental affairs in an occupied Baltic country were to be conducted in the language of the country, and proposed that Germany be peacefully reunited. And, of course, sorry it wasn’t Reagan that ended communism there; it was Gorbachev by insisting on perestroika. In the U.S. it wasn’t (just) republican government embracing a Spinozan sense of private rights that made it a ‘city on a hill.’ It was the citizens willingness to transfer their loyalty from a King to propertied or successful individuals, at first the Whigs.

Jun 27, 2009 - 10:40 pm 21. Lifeofthemind:

mac,
It gets worse. Apparently not only had no human being in or out of Congress read the 1200 page Cap and Trade bill before it was voted on, the delightful Mary Katherine Ham tried, but it now appears that it wasn’t actually completely written when it was voted on. They literally voted on a series of place holders with blanks to be filled in later. This is worse then offloading legislative authority to a regulatory agency and it is seriously being argued that this is OK. If the bill gets through the Senate and it is signed, a given if it passes, then the only firewall remaining is the Judiciary. Why don’t I have a good feeling about that? We are now in the land of just make it up as they go along and arbitrary power.

The House votes and a Clerk delivers a document to the Senate. What proof is there that what is delivered is what was voted on? None since no one had read it.

However I find your speculations about violence reprehensible, they drag down the conversation.

Jun 27, 2009 - 10:41 pm 22. Alexis:

I think the essence of totalitarianism is the blasphemy of power worship. Sophocles grasped this reality over twenty-four years ago.

Power usually relies upon an Idea to create a bond that ties people together. Yet, this Idea typically limits the power of any tyrant to force his will. So, tyranny is about using an Idea to control others while not believing in that Idea one’s self. Of course, true believers will feel betrayed by a revolution once they discover that power worshippers had used them to attain power; that is the power of blasphemy.

The Iranian government is presently using the power of blasphemy against the people of Iran. The murder of Neda Soltani is shocking enough, but it is the Iranian government’s treatment of her family that is more essentially blasphemous to basic decency. Her family was forced from their home and Iranians are prohibited from mourning her. In essence, the Iranian government is prohibiting Iranians from upholding Islamic custom. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become a modern day Creon.

The play Antigone probes the line between theocracy and totalitarianism. In a true theocracy (and never forget that ancient Athens was a theocratic democracy), all people are bound by the power of religious custom and commandment. In a totalitarian state, the tyrant is never bound by the power of religious custom and commandment; he may use religion or ideology as his cover, but his religion is political expediency.

Within law there is freedom, for while law may limit the power of individuals, it also limits the power of the State. In contrast, tyrants seek to break laws at will while holding others accountable to the laws he breaks. In a marriage contract, each party makes vows to one another. Yet, a tyrant will expect complete obedience to those vows by his partner while breaking those vows himself with impunity.

Literary critics often portray Antigone as an individualist. I profound disagree. If anything, it was the demands of Creon that were individualistic. Antigone represents the conservative order, loyalty to the state religion, and obedience to law. Creon represents the power of the State. Was Thebes a nation of laws or a nation of men? In Thebes, was obedience to the will of Heaven more important or obedience to the State?

By prohibiting the mourning of Neda Soltani, Mr. Khamenei and Mr. Ahmadinejad have crossed a line, for they are effectively prohibiting expression of the customs of Islam. The key question is whether the Iranian state is an emanation of Islamic principles or whether Islam is merely the malleable creature of Iranian statecraft. Has Mr. Khamenei become the new Humpty Dumpty, where Islam means whatever he says it means?

George Orwell also probes these themes in Animal Farm and 1984. I think George Orwell was an orthodox Communist who saw how tyrants were perverting his religion. Leaving aside the merits (or lack thereof) of Communism, Islam, and ancient Greek religion, each religion has been confronted by tyrants who commit blasphemy against the state religion by twisting it into a token of personal power.

Jun 27, 2009 - 11:34 pm 23. Ashen:

I like nachos.

Jun 28, 2009 - 1:17 am 24. Doug:

A Frenzy of Honor Killings

Jun 28, 2009 - 2:55 am 25. no mo uro:

I think you’d have to agree with the posters who say that technology helps the totalitarians, in particular, the technology of mass media.

Before widespread reading of newspapers, most people didn’t even know what the President looked like, let alone know about his level of “charisma”. Only the ideas of the person could become widely disseminated, and those are what people voted for or against. Perhaps charisma came into play when voting for representatives and state politicians, people who the citizenry might actually see speaking on the hustings. But not at the federal level.

Large increases in newpaper subscribers and then radio listening, combined with newsreel films, started changing all of this. Add to this universal suffrage and the improved skills of women over men to tune into the emotional, and eventually things evolved into what we have today. The classic example is the fact that people of all political stripes who listened to the Nixon-Kennedy debates on radio (where ideas are what mostly comes through and charisma is present but not visually evident) thought Nixon won, but those who watched on TV (where the pretty-boy factor became prominent vs ideas) thought Kennedy did.

The advent of 24/7 television, the blurring of entertainment and news reporting, the near-complete takeover of entertainment and education by leftist ideologues, and the susceptibility of the public to persuasion by these, is something that didn’t exist in the time of the Terror, or the Bolshevik revolution, or Weimar/Nazi Germany. Had these been available, those regimes might still be here. These technological changes in entertainment and media do NOT lend themselves to an intelligent, mature debate regarding ideas, they actively work against it.

Couple this with the successful long march through the institutions and removal of social norming constraints that were present in a more religious era, and you have the recipe for a VERY long and potentially tyrannical reich, with a society like the one in the movie Brazil or worse. The removal of these social norming constraints is what makes the reversion of humans to the primate alpha male-harem model possible. And as Whiskey and others have pointed out, this model is actually strongly desired by many if not most women, absent the civilizing role of a religion like Christianity.

When the Gramscian termites called public school teachers require their students to read “Nickled and Dimed” but not “Federalist #10″, and the left has made it nearly impossible for a kid to rectify this deficiency via content of mass media or entertainment, how then does one educate mass numbers of young people that outcome equality is inherently un-American and it isn’t the role of a good and responsible government to equalize disparate economic outcomes?.

When vast numbers of people actually believe that Gov. Palin said she could see Russia from her house because they saw someone who looked like her say it on a TV show, and refuse to be dissuaded from that when presented with the truth because they can’t distinguish between entertainment and reality, well, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

In nine short years, the internet has gone from being dominated by the center/right/libertarian part of our society to being dominated by leftists, primarily by virtue of the injection of massive amounts of money by wealthy “donors”. The center and right and libertarians are individual middle class pamphleteers on the order of Thomas Payne competing against people far more organized and well funded by rich socialists and social anarchists. No contest there. It is not in the nature of the center/right, and certainly not in the nature of libertarians, to mass together and engage the ideological fight on that level. And since it won’t be until bullets fly and re-education camps are built, here we shall remain.

Until such time as humans evolve a way to cut through the BS of the age of entertainment and mass media (put simply, TECHNOLOGY), this situation is at minimum not going to improve and it will quite probably get worse.

In addtion, increase in espionage and tracking technology makes it far more possible for a government to interrupt anything it feels is inimical to itself. The proliferation of videocameras in the UK is only the tip of this iceberg.

Jun 28, 2009 - 2:56 am 26. Doug:

Why Is the Justice Department Cozying Up to Islamic Radicals

Jun 28, 2009 - 2:56 am 27. mac:

LOTM,

I see little difference between what just happened on the C&T bill and totalitarian government. When the government passes bills on a near party-line vote that no one has read and which WILL be amended without any review, we’re all but there.

What with the DHS statements/warnings about the right being suspected domestic terrorists and the proposed Obamajugend, all we have left to see is the erection of the camps. Once that’s done, they’ll soon find people to fill them.

As for my speculations about violence, if you don’t like the argument, too bad for you. Your dislike doesn’t change the situation. Unlike the left, I choose to deal with the world as it is. There WILL be resistance to Obama and it will grow as his policies bring about the usual miseries of socialism.

Since his policies can’t succeed, the lefties will need some way to twist Obama’s legacy from one of clear and abject failure to a more sympathetic view. Since the left has long since shown itself to have no compunction about anything up to and including murder, I see no reason to assume they’ll suddenly develop a conscience now. If you haven’t read “Darkness at Noon” by Arthur Koestler, I suggest you do so.

I’ve watched the left for a long time now. Expecting anything but the dirtiest of politics from them is foolish. They will do anything to win because for them the ends always justify the means, no matter how ugly or bloody those means may be. It’s just one more trait they share with militant Islam.

Jun 28, 2009 - 4:06 am 28. RWE:

The greatest challenge of totalitarianism is that it has so many forms, that so many forms of endeavor lead naturally to it.

From the book “Dragons of Expectation” by Robert Conquest.

“… an ever larger section of society is put through “higher” education.”

“… a growing proportion of them have no option afterwards but to go into an increasingly large and less educated academe or to seek jobs in the bureaucracy…”

“At any rate the state is to some extent creating a nonproductive class and providing nonproductive work for them.”

And that growing, hungry bureaucracy, made up largely of those who choose the non-technical courses in education, naturally tends toward totalitarianism to give them something to do and increase their power. Ironically, it is those who focused on the “humanities” in their youth that are most committed to destroying Humanity.

Jun 28, 2009 - 4:36 am 29. Mark:

Batman writes: “I could never understand this world of the late 1930’s. How could people have failed to see what was awaiting them.”

Yes, this is hard to understand.

One novel that helped me understand Spain in the 30’s is “The Cypresses Believe in God.” Here’s the editorial blurb from Amazon: “Considered by many critics to be the greatest novel about the Spanish Civil War, this classic work by Spaniard José Maria Gironella is an unbiased account of the complicated events, movements and personalities that led up to the war. Beginning in 1931, Cypresses covers the next five years of political unrest, culminating in the explosion of the brutal war that wreaked such great havoc on Spain and its citizens. In his epic novel, both gripping and suspenseful, Gironella deftly portrays the human conflict, both internal and external. The most influential philosophical movements of the 20th century are embodied in various characters. Through them, the reader is introduced to every faction involved—anarchist, communist, Catholic, royalist, existentialist, and others.”

Very much worth reading. Also worth reading, especially for young people trying to figure out their lives, is Orwell’s “Keep the Aspidistra Flying,” an entertaining, amusing, and wise novel.

I continue to thank Mr. Orwell for calling English pacifists “Objectively fascist.” Try saying these words twice and take two tylenol prior to reading anything about cap and trade legislation. Makes one feel a little better.

Jun 28, 2009 - 4:56 am 30. E. Nigma:

In the beginning of the modern totalitarian state, of course the intellectuals and the “right people” will be for “social justice” and the upending of the corrupt status quo, whatever that is.
But in that atmosphere, the most ruthless always rise to power; not the most intelligent, moral or just. The most ruthless, which illuminates the inner morality of the totalitarian. It is then just the pursuit and maintenance of power that is paramount, and the giddy intellectuals will then be liquidated as too dangerous to live.
It has happened so often in the 20th century, that wecan’t see the forest for the trees.

But in America, it won’t be naked brutality that destroys us, just the banality that will come to dominate the Media and the Internet. The so-called intellectuals think that they will control the narrative, but it is beyond the control of any one person or group. The downward spiral to the age of the “March of the Morons” is accelerating.

All of one piece:
1)Leftist domination of the internet and Media; the screeds and vulgarity will continue to increase. The corporate mavens of one of the most powerful corporations in America, GE, WANT MSNBC to be like it is. This is NOT a mistake, or a consequence of “free speech”.
2)Corruption of the Media; the latest example are the paeans to Michael Jackson this week. A creepy soap-opera less newsworthy than can be imagined.
3) Control of the narrative; ABC and their tongue-bath to the Obama Health Care plan last week. Almost utter silence on Cap and Trade legislation. Coincidence?

Jun 28, 2009 - 6:33 am 31. programmer:

Whiskey, @14.

In my humble opinion, sir, you are growing in power as a writer. Press On, sir, Press On.

Jun 28, 2009 - 6:41 am 32. buddy larsen:

America has one last chance –the united states (no caps intended).

Jun 28, 2009 - 7:03 am 33. dan:

“…he suddenly saw that totalitarianism was a face that haunted every human undertaking.”

regrettably, i dissent from this proposition and propositions instinct with it. in fact, totalitarianism is the by product of the miseducated personlity whose spirit has been taught to resonate with the dark motive force of socialist thought. time will reveal that the engine of totalitarianism’s spread throughout Europe and, after World War 2, the rest of the world, was not a reaction to conditions (e.g., World War 1, anti-colonialism) nor the product of “world-historical forces,” which is mere fantasy, but of the endeavors of Soviet Power. it will be learned, one way or another, that the 20th century was the Century of Marxism-Leninism – a fact which gives me no pleasure to perceive or announce. “totalitarianism” is just a word for what socialists do once they get into power. it is simple political expediency that there should apparently be different manifestations, which in reality is but the locality-required facet of a single cruel political instinct: unlimited vengeance, made holy by popular agreement, turned on the “haves,” rendered into killing machine and world-bouldozer by pure infantile human barbarism. mussolini, arch-socialist, invented “fascism”; hitler, roehm, goebbels invented “national socialist german workers party”; bolshevism itself is the “majority” faction of the all-russian social democratic party. it is all the same, everywhere – from germany to russia to china to angola to nicaragua to san francisco – which unformity across such incredibly different locales is sufficient to prove my thesis.

on orwell specifically, i agree to some extent with thrasymachus. it is jarring to read fine anti-communist passages and then suddenly to come to a Leninist-consonant wailing against “the rich.” i believe it was orwell’s englishness, not his intellectual discernments, which ultimately saved him from his own “totalitarian” impulses. nevertheless, his contribution has been great. there are few enough like him that i personally am grateful for his work.

Jun 28, 2009 - 7:28 am 34. JFSanders:

“What Orwell learned after watching the Communists crush spontaneity in Spain was that Bolshevism could be totalitarianism too; which frightened him because it acted in the name of the poor and the oppressed; and if one could not trust the do-gooders, then who could you trust? “—Wretchard

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.“— C.S. Lewis

As we slowly spin around in the porcelain space that once held our forefathers, destined as we are to come to the same place of their resting. It becomes clear to some that we as humans really are not all that far from our beginnings. What should be as evident as the sun rising in the morning to all is only barely registered by the vast majority. What is this mental sickness that afflicts some humans to the point that they believe that absolute control over others results in Utopia?! More importantly how do we as humans go about the task of ridding our collective psyche of this malady?

As for those who would think the conversation brought down by predictions of physical violence I would defer to Mr. Mill.

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that Nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” — John Stuart Mill

I will also give appreciation to “Whiskey” for his unusual restraint and his sharp discernment in his latest post. And a quote from someone who shares his view.

“”The cardinal difficulty,” said MacPhee, “in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, ‘Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you’ll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.’ The female for this is, ‘Put that in the other one in there.’ And then if you ask them, ‘in where?’ they say, ‘in there, of course.’ There is consequently a phatic hiatus.“— C.S. Lewis

Jun 28, 2009 - 7:39 am 35. buckets:

I focused on the humanities and social sciences in my youth; not everyone can/wants to be an engineer or a computer programmer. Also, attractive women were scarce in the engineering department at college, so I don’t feel I’ve missed out too much.

Enigma – I think any civil unrest will be more a reaction against the petty tyranny of the State than the media.

Normal middle class people are starting to get angry. If you couple a soft tyranny at the national level with what’s happening at the state and local levels (increased income tax, sales tax, vice tax, property taxes), eventually people will react.

I’m living in Chicago, and I could write an epic novel about government control and fleecing of an entire population. The city and state are doing everything they can to get more money and more control. Parking meter fees and fines, highest sales tax in the country, red light cameras at every intersection… I think the pushback will start based on something like these red light cameras. No due process of law, no legal defense to the alleged infraction, it’s simply “click,” you’re guilty, pay a fine of $100 for each violation. And believe it, much more is on the way – it’s an incredible source of revenue, and it’s sold to residents as “safety.”

Cap and trade destruction of the private sector, health care “reform” and the move towards a single payer system and the loss of medical autonomy, bailouts to well-connected firms, billions of TARP and stimulus money missing – but I would bet it is some petty form of control like red light cameras that will be the awakening of many people.

Jun 28, 2009 - 7:40 am 36. WillDoMathForFood:

The Founding Fathers, and educated men in general during their time, focused on the example of Rome for what not to do about governance. The example of Rome is one in which liberty is gradually exchanged for power and security, with the result being madness and decay. And it all started because the Populares, exemplified by the Gracchi brothers, exploited the wealth gap between poor and rich to set the poor against the rich for the purpose of aggrandizing power to themselves. The Poor were Julius Caesar’s power base, but Caesar cared only about Caesar, to the detriment of Rome. His divisive policies set Rome on the road to the final, catastrophic Civil War in which Ausgustus Caesar seized power and re-established peace, but only through monarchy. Claudius in Robert Graves’ “I, Claudius” recognizes too that once power is centralized, there is no going back. Claudius was emperor but had not the power to change the form of government, despite his own Republican sentiments. His choices were (a) to be a good Emperor, in which case the populace became content with tyranny, or (b) to be a bad emperor, in which they suffered under tyranny. But neither choice would restore the Republic. It was always in the interests of the powerful to maintain their power. Even the Emperor didn’t have sufficient power to change things: the Praetorian Guards preferred a cushy job in Rome to a life on the Rhine fighting Germans, and the Guard had most of the weapons. Rome was locked into tyranny forever once it adopted the system. The default government of any large group of human beings is despotism, and once in a despotism, it is all but impossible to break out of it and establish a government based on separation of powers and a respect for human liberty. And that’s why the American experience is so unique and remarkable: it’s almost incomprehensible that America should have come to be at all.

IMHO, America is on a dangerous road, and Obama is Julius Caesar.

Jun 28, 2009 - 8:26 am 37. aaron:

you think not reading the bill is bad.
they hadn’t even WRITTEN this one when they passed it.

Jun 28, 2009 - 9:07 am 38. Langley:

Obama is Nero.

Jun 28, 2009 - 10:29 am 39. buddy larsen:

willdomath/36; “on a dangerous road” bothers me in the same way as the word “threat” as it’s often used. When the bullet has been fired and is entering your forehead, is it still a ‘threat’ (as it was when still resting in the breech), and is your forehead still ‘on a dangerous road’?

related, i note that the January 2009 deepcapture dot com article The Mitchell Report has been updated, and now carries a subhead:

Evidence suggests that Bernard Madoff, the “prominent” Wall Street operator and former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, had ties to the Russian Mafia, Moscow-based oligarchs, and the Genovese organized crime family.

Mercy –how ancient IS this war?

Jun 28, 2009 - 10:41 am 40. ipw533:

“And, of course, sorry it wasn’t Reagan that ended communism there; it was Gorbachev by insisting on perestroika.”

Um, not quite true. Perestroika was in many ways a warmed-over version of of Lenin’s New Economic Plan, a limited injection of capitalism in order to prop up a failing socialist economy. But that’s not what really did the Soviet Union in. The real culprit, at least on the Russian side, was Glasnost’.

For decades Soviet citizens knew that they were living a lie but were afraid to openly acknowledge that fact. Glasnost’ allowed them, as a people, to say what they had known in their hearts for years–the Soviet emperor was naked, and there was no clothing him. The regime was pretty much doomed from that point.

Putin, an old KGB aparatchik, appears to be restoring tyranny to Russia but in a more familiar form. Russia has almost always been ruled by authoritarians, but I suspect Putin is more of an old-fashioned Russian chauvinist than a Soviet revolutionary; he’ll probably try to some degree to reconstruct the old Russian Empire but won’t go much further. The Russians living under him will have no choice other than to go along for the ride but at least will not have to pretend that they are some kind of ideological future wave….

Jun 28, 2009 - 11:26 am 41. buddy larsen:

(Don’t miss this)

A “WAR AGAINST SCIENCE?” E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming. Chris Mooney, call your office!

Posted at 1:58 pm by Glenn Reynolds

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/80933/

Jun 28, 2009 - 11:28 am 42. The Other Bob:

I think that socialism (in any form) simply appeals to one’s inner control freak. The control freak seeks to use government to impose his view on his neighbors because he lacks the means to impose it himself.

“Hey, y’all watch this!” is held up as a warning of impending buffoonery. “There oughtta be a law” is a warning flag that someone’s view is about to be imposed on someone else.

Jun 28, 2009 - 12:12 pm 43. ForNow:

The embedding of the first video was discontinued “by request.” But here’s a direct link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyyFOTrkIN4

Jun 28, 2009 - 12:26 pm 44. ForNow:

And here’s a direct link to the second video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPgyJ4aR-WQ

Jun 28, 2009 - 12:42 pm 45. JMH:

How long our soft tyranny will stay soft, who knows?

Not long. The problem with soft tyranny is that somebody has to pay for it but the tyrants have little respect or understanding for those who pay. Inevitably they make life difficult for the productive class, which shrinks and therefore must be squeezed harder and harder to meet the ever-expanding budget needs. Squeezed much harder than “soft” tyranny can squeeze. Something has to give.

Jun 28, 2009 - 3:55 pm 46. Doug:

Slave training
Gene Edward Veith

Most of those worrying about America’s educational problems focus on the effect of bad schooling on individuals (the children who are left behind) or the economy (businesses struggling with semi-literate workers). But there is a much more important issue: What kind of society will bad schools give us? What kind of government will we have if current educational trends have their way?

The Founding Fathers did not think that a free, democratic republic would be possible without well-educated citizens.
John Adams made education a priority when he wrote in the Massachusetts constitution of
“Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties.”

Thomas Jefferson said of education,
“No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness.”

Jun 28, 2009 - 6:28 pm 47. WillDoMathForFood:

Buddy @ 39: For what it’s worth, I don’t think we’ve reached the point of no return until the violence starts. But I think it’s a testament to just how much damage has already occured that that event is no longer unbelievable.

Jun 28, 2009 - 8:20 pm 48. Doug:

Marvin Olasky Podcast Episodes

A series of articles chronicling his progression from card-carrying Communist to Bible-carrying Christian.

Jun 28, 2009 - 11:46 pm 49. GerryP:

Maybe a way out is secession of some states from the U.S. Texas is already playing with the idea, as are some other states. See http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=67932864703.

It says in part:

“How do the vast resources of Texas compare that of other independent nations? Texas has 23,507,783 people; 11% larger than Australia. 79% of the nations have populations smaller than Texas. Our GDP is $1,065,891,000,000; 32% larger than Australia. 93% of the nations have a GDP smaller than Texas. Texas annual oil production is 393,000,000 barrels; 90% of the nations produce less oil than Texas. Texas annual gas production is 5613039 MMcf; 93% of the nations produce less gas than Texas.

“Will Texas manage and collect revenues on oil in the 14 Million acres of the Western Gulf of Mexico? Yes. Texas will abide by the current Delimitation Treaty with Mexico and negotiate a treaty with the U.S.

“Will other states be able to protect themselves without the massive military strength of Texas? Yes, Texas does provide the largest contingent of troops for the U.S. war machine. However Texas and the other seceding states can negotiate a peaceful transition of personnel and equipment so that all can be protected. Just as the U.S.S.R. did in 1989 when their republics seceded.”

A “Federal States of America” or some such name, could be an alternative right now, or soon. It could be based on the U.S. Constitution, maybe with a couple of amendments changed. It would give non-leftists “some place to run to” from the mess to come. It could separate us from the future bankruptcy of CA, NY and NJ. (We thrifty, prudent states with little or no deficits don’t much want to prop up the big-spending, welfarist, big-deficit states.)

Where? Probably the states that went for McCain in November. (See appropriate maps.)They are also the states least likely to be running deficits. And the most likely to field a serious military.

I can think of lots of other advantages. For one, Obama doesn’t seem to want to fight any wars. So now might be the time to do it without having to fight a war. If we could get a little strip along the southern edges of New Mexico (blue state) and Southern California, we could take care of the Mexican border sensibly. And still be a “sea to shining sea” country. When our northern “blue” cousins come to their senses someday, we MIGHT consider re-joining them.

Crazy?

Jun 29, 2009 - 12:04 am 50. Karen Yvonne:

JMH @45: that would seem to be the logical progression.

GerryP @49: Not crazy at all. On the contrary, eminently sane. If Texas were to secede, I’d be one of its first immigrants.

Could it really happen? Seems like a pipe dream. Strange times we live in when the pipe dream appears to be the only sane solution. Wow, imagine living in a country that could actually use its own natural resources; that could safeguard its own borders; that based success, not on quotas and equality of outcomes, but on merit; that honored and abided by the Constitution’s original intent, because its people recognized the truth of Montesquieu’s assertion that “society, notwithstanding all its revolutions, must repose on principles that do not change.”

Well, it could happen, couldn’t it? If it happened once before, a couple of centuries ago, it could happen again. If the idea of America is not to perish from the earth, it’ll have to happen.

Jun 29, 2009 - 2:26 am 51. ELC:

Re: “The most frightening thing about Orwell’s life is that it took a man as inquiring and perceptive as he was so long to understand his world.”

Frightening, perhaps, but surely typical: “Did you ever notice how long you have to see most things before you see them?” (Ralph Parlette, The University of Hard Knocks)

Jun 29, 2009 - 7:12 am 52. Will48:

Death instinct is only a natural force within our psyche. Life force/Eros/ego drives us to procreate while we’re young, to achieve to draw in females; but when you’re on top you become calm and content, so naturally the top spot is free again for the new blood to conquer.

When you think there’s nowhere UP for you to go, the only way for you to go is DOWN.

When the life’s easy, one isn’t compelled to fight for it. It’s much easier to give way.

Human animal evolution is group selection, and these individual traits were advantageous to the survival of the group, in the past.

The only real Freedom to be had is the Freedom from Nature, or what the great late Russian Sci-Fi writer Ivan Efremov called “Inferno” in his prophetic Bull’s Hour.

Jun 30, 2009 - 3:50 am 53. Will48:

@49, 50:

Call it The Free World Federation, and open it to accession by any state in the world which subscribes to same ideas and ideals, and accepts its Constitution and Founding Principles.

Declare yourself protector for any Free People wishing to join in; demand the right of free emigration with compensation as inalienable right of every individual in the World.

If the substantial part of any foreign nation wishes to join in, support its peaceful partition.

Demand the right for FREE and UNIMPEDED access of the individual to FULL NON-DISTORTED NON-FILTERED information as an inalienable natural right and enforce it throughout the world as a real guarantee for peace.

Jun 30, 2009 - 4:15 am

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