Little-Acorn
Gold Member
A stunningly good summary. And it identifies the fundamental difference between today's conservatives and today's liberals.
Will a society do better, on average, when each member can make his own decisions, learn from his mistakes, and sink or swim by his own efforts? Or would it do better if ruled by an elite who can overrule the individuals' decisions with "better" decisions of their own?
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Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out (III) | FrontPage Magazine
Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out
by Daniel Greefield
May 24, 2013
There is a characteristic feature to tyranny. It isn’t the scowling faces of armed guards or the rusting metal of barbed wire fences. It isn’t the black cars of the secret police or the prison camps surrounded by wastelands of snow.
The defining characteristic of tyranny is the diversion of power from the people to the unelected elite. The elite can claim to be inspired by Allah or Marx; it can act in the name of racial purity or universal workers compensation or both. The details don’t matter, because in all instances, tyranny derives its justification from the superiority of the rulers and the inferiority of the people.
The left launched two revolutions. One was the hard revolution of bombs and assassinations by those who did not have the time or patience to wait for the long march through the institutions of the state. This revolution was born quickly and died quickly. It killed millions and choking on their blood it died by stages, losing its ideas and then its power, until there were only a few old men and women in shawls clinging to red velvet portraits of Stalin.
But there was also the soft revolution that was slow and subtle. It was a revolution of laws, rather than bombs. It did not concern itself with 5-year-plans but with 50-year-plans. It proceeded by increments, raising the temperature so very gradually that the free world did not realize it was cooked until it could smell its own burning flesh.
The revolutions of the east failed. They rose quickly in fire and fury and only ashes and statues remain. But the revolutions of the west have been underway for generations in countries where millions of men and women go about their business without realizing what is taking place around them.
When H.G. Wells met with Lenin in 1920, he wrote, “Our essential difference, the difference of the Collectivist and Marxist, the question whether the social revolution is, in its extremity, necessary, whether it is necessary to overthrow one social and economic system completely before the new one can begin.”
Lenin demanded a revolution that would directly attack the capitalist system, but Wells believed that, “through a vast sustained educational campaign the existing Capitalist system could be civilized into a Collectivist world system.”
That educational campaign is the soft tyranny we see all around us. The educational campaign is a nanny state in which we are forever being educated by our betters for our own good.
The nanny state has a short term purpose and a long term purpose. Its short term purpose is to educate us out of our selfish freedom of choice. Its long term purpose is to incrementally “civilize” or “evolve” a free people into collectivism through smaller measures undertaken in the name of the public good.
Instead of a single explosive burst of revolution, instead of terrorists rushing in with guns in hand, instead of bombs exploding and assassins gunning down public officials, there is the slow creep of laws that remake attitudes and accomplish the same purpose not in a day or a year… but over the decades.
Instead of one great revolution, there are a million smaller revolutions stripped of overt ideology and pretending to serve the public good.
Complete article here: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreen...is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out-2-1-1/
Will a society do better, on average, when each member can make his own decisions, learn from his mistakes, and sink or swim by his own efforts? Or would it do better if ruled by an elite who can overrule the individuals' decisions with "better" decisions of their own?
------------------------------------------------
Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out (III) | FrontPage Magazine
Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out
by Daniel Greefield
May 24, 2013
There is a characteristic feature to tyranny. It isn’t the scowling faces of armed guards or the rusting metal of barbed wire fences. It isn’t the black cars of the secret police or the prison camps surrounded by wastelands of snow.
The defining characteristic of tyranny is the diversion of power from the people to the unelected elite. The elite can claim to be inspired by Allah or Marx; it can act in the name of racial purity or universal workers compensation or both. The details don’t matter, because in all instances, tyranny derives its justification from the superiority of the rulers and the inferiority of the people.
The left launched two revolutions. One was the hard revolution of bombs and assassinations by those who did not have the time or patience to wait for the long march through the institutions of the state. This revolution was born quickly and died quickly. It killed millions and choking on their blood it died by stages, losing its ideas and then its power, until there were only a few old men and women in shawls clinging to red velvet portraits of Stalin.
But there was also the soft revolution that was slow and subtle. It was a revolution of laws, rather than bombs. It did not concern itself with 5-year-plans but with 50-year-plans. It proceeded by increments, raising the temperature so very gradually that the free world did not realize it was cooked until it could smell its own burning flesh.
The revolutions of the east failed. They rose quickly in fire and fury and only ashes and statues remain. But the revolutions of the west have been underway for generations in countries where millions of men and women go about their business without realizing what is taking place around them.
When H.G. Wells met with Lenin in 1920, he wrote, “Our essential difference, the difference of the Collectivist and Marxist, the question whether the social revolution is, in its extremity, necessary, whether it is necessary to overthrow one social and economic system completely before the new one can begin.”
Lenin demanded a revolution that would directly attack the capitalist system, but Wells believed that, “through a vast sustained educational campaign the existing Capitalist system could be civilized into a Collectivist world system.”
That educational campaign is the soft tyranny we see all around us. The educational campaign is a nanny state in which we are forever being educated by our betters for our own good.
The nanny state has a short term purpose and a long term purpose. Its short term purpose is to educate us out of our selfish freedom of choice. Its long term purpose is to incrementally “civilize” or “evolve” a free people into collectivism through smaller measures undertaken in the name of the public good.
Instead of a single explosive burst of revolution, instead of terrorists rushing in with guns in hand, instead of bombs exploding and assassins gunning down public officials, there is the slow creep of laws that remake attitudes and accomplish the same purpose not in a day or a year… but over the decades.
Instead of one great revolution, there are a million smaller revolutions stripped of overt ideology and pretending to serve the public good.
Complete article here: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreen...is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out-2-1-1/
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