National Character and the Quality of Peoples

Looking back at the histories of different nations, one must conclude that high cultural achievements have never been an antidote to evil.

Many years ago, I happened to read the book Russia in 1839 by the French traveler and literary man Marquis de Custine, and there I found some interesting judgments about the Russian people:

"The Russian people are a nation of mutes. Everything is there, the only thing missing is freedom. That is, a life."

"To live in Russia, it’s not enough to hide your thoughts. You have to pretend."

"The government in Russia lives only by lies, for both tyrant and slave fear the truth."

Yet, it was not foreign invaders who enslaved the Russian people and gradually formed its slave mentality, as the wise Marquis pointed out, but the main oppressors were the Russian princes and noblemen who paid tribute to the Mongol Horde, and who treated their own subjects as ruthless occupiers.

By way of contrast, back in 1215 the Magna Carta was adopted in England, granting liberty and protection from the Crown, while in Russia serfdom was abolished only 650 years later! Emancipation was greeted by the lower strata of society without much enthusiasm and was even accompanied by peasant revolts. Over the centuries, the slave mentality became so ingrained in the flesh and blood of the Russian people that the former serfs did not want freedom — they preferred to continue living in the yoke.

The Czarist system was just like the Communist system in that both perpetuated the idea that government knows best.

Government is paternalistic and it will make all decisions and care for you. Government will control wages and prices and everything else. You don’t need to do anything...just obey.

Kinda like Liberal governance 😏

In England, the end of serfdom began with the Peasants' Revolt in 1381. It had largely died out in England by 1500 as a personal status and was fully ended when Elizabeth I freed the last remaining serfs in 1574.[6] Land held by serf tenure (unless enfranchised) continued to be held by what was thenceforth known as a copyhold tenancy, which was not completely abolished until 1925 (although it was whittled away during the 19th and early 20th centuries). There were Scottish born serfs until 1799, when coal miners who were kept in serfdom gained emancipation. However, most Scottish serfs had already been freed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_serfdom

Serfdom lasted longer and was more oppressive in central and eastern Europe. Serfs there had less opportunity to escape to towns and cities and engage in other occupations. Also, further east it was often the case that the nobles and serfs were from different ethnic groups, e.g. Hungarian nobles and Romanian serfs in Transylvania.

Serfdom differed from slavery only in that the serfs were attached to the land, rather than being property of an individual. Thus, if you were a noble who owned an estate, the serfs came along with the acreage.

There was no trade in serfs and serfs had no cash value. The land was generally overpopulated, and if you had land, you had enough serfs to cultivate it. Excess serfs could be used to run the manor or to engage in small scale manufacturing at the estate level.

This writer has some interesting points, though he comes across to me as being way high on the arrogance chart. That may be intentional on his part.

His discussion of the different layers of the social pie uses interesting language but is not particularly new. I would compare his vision to the very similar one set out by the Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy in his book, “The Return of the Native.” Hardy focused on England, though, whereas this author makes it universal.

I hope his notion that the US is not subject to a National Socialist takeover is correct. However, I think it overlooks what the current powers that be are trying to do, which is to destroy the Constitution and the current republic. If they dissolve the union, I suspect that various areas of the country are subject to a totalitarian socialist regime. The west coast and the northeast coast come to mind in that regard.

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