Is President Obama making George Orwell's "1984" a reality? (Vanity)

Friday, April 29, 2011

[libertarian27]

Yes

Read my tagline.

[Joe 6-pack]

"It's inaccurate to say Marx hated the West."

Where did I say that he did?

[Noumenon]

Many on the Left follow a destructive meme that owes its origin, substance and methodology to Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse, Saul Alinsky and the Cloward-Piven duo. There are many others, but these four are the most toxic – and yes, evil – of the lot.

The other meme is that of the dehumanization of humanity itself - the reduction of humankind to things, animals or machines. Look to Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, B.F. Skinner, Dr. Peter Singer and the current crop of so-called ‘bio-ethicists’ for that particular chain of thought. You can hardly ask for something more insidiously evil than that.

Converged and combined, these two streams of thought have served those who have committed the most monstrous crimes in history – These are the killers without conscience.

The book that I am presently writing suggests that the emergence of the will to power as the driving force behind those who have committed those crimes – the slaughter, enslavement, torture and impoverishment of hundreds of millions. As I see it, ideology matters little to those whose desire to control Mankind – it’s merely the horse they’re riding on the eway to dominus terra firma.

We have not seen the end of these monsters, nor will we. The desire to control others – and to harm others – without consequence appears to be ‘black code’ that’s written into our DNA. Modern ideology, that is, all of the modern totalitarian ‘isms’ – communism, socialism, and so on – provide the perfect environment for that ‘black code’ of the will to power to prosper and flourish. This is one of our great human failings, an aspect of our tragic nature that must always be recognized, fought and destroyed, if only for a little while. But for that, we’d be out among the stars by now.

I highly recommend two recent works by Chantal Delsol: Icarus Fallen – the Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World and The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century – an Essay on Late Modernity. The insights she presents are compelling and fairly leap off the page. The points of disagreement that I have with this author’s works are honest and thoughtful ones. Her European perspective often misses what makes America so unique among the world's civilizations, but is does provide valuable insights as to just why the lights are going out all over Europe. Even so, those points in no way invalidate the main themes of her works.

[Brandonmark]

"The Party’s concept of doublethink is contrary to reason, logic, and the workings of the brain." 1984 -- George Orwell

[Joe 6-pack]

I was exposed to Gramsci in college by (of all things) a conservative history prof who hated the man, and I've always been on the lookout for his particular brand of poison where it subverts culture.

I've heard of DelSol's Icarus but will have to dig into it a bit more deeply based on your recommendation; it sounds like something I'd find interesting.

[C. Edmund Wright]

1984 - and Atlas Shrugged - coming to your neighborhood 2011!!!

[Noumenon]

Delsol's Unlearned Lessons will blow your socks off. Read that one first.

[The_Reader_David]

The Orwellian quote is “Ignorance is Strength”.

“Ignorance is bliss” is a fragment of a poem by Thomas Gray, which is always quoted out of context. The original being “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” (which curiously does not assert that there is anywhere where ignorance is bliss.)

[BenLurkin]

bttt

[Conservative4Life]

Seems more like ANIMAL FARM

[JewishRighter]

You are absolutely right, but I don’t think we should confuse ends and means. He uses 1984 new-speak all the time: “reducing spending in the tax code” “investments” and on and on. That is the means. You stated the ends: “third world meaningless powerless banana communist nation.” Although I might say, he’d somewhat prefer a marxist dictatorship; not necessarily third world because he wants to rule over something that will support him and Michelle Antoinette in the style they’ve become accustomed to.

[LearsFool]

Is President Obama making George Orwell's "1984" a reality? War is Peace. Ignorance is Bliss.

Let's see...

- A tax cheat heading the Dept. of Treasury.
- A black head of the Dept. of Justice calling Americans racial cowards while refusing to prosecute blacks.
- Bragging about how he's cutting the budget in half, after more than doubling it.
- DHS counting the most patriotic among us as the biggest threat.

The list goes on and on of blatant lies and contradictions, aimed at the same goal as Big Brother: to cause cognitive dissonance, denial, and acquiescence.

Most of us will see reason thusly: "If it were as bad as I think it is, there's no way he he get away with it. We're not Venezuela or Weimar Germany, after all. I must be missing something here."

This self-doubt renders us impotent. The lack of outrage and action among those with the most political power serves only to reinforce our self-doubt. ("Surely they would do something if things were as bad as I think they are. I must be mistaken.")

You glance over at your husband or wife with a look of incredulity, as if to ask, "Am I losing my mind or did he just say what I thought he said?"

You talk to your coworkers the next day and ask, "How in the world can he expect to get away with that?" They look at you with the blank faces of pod people, and you realize he already has. He could tell them we're going to subsidize unicorn breeding and they wouldn't question anything except "more wasted taxpayer money". They'd think it's just the usual party politics, and maybe a bit over their heads.

The truth seems so obvious that, when he talks right past it, the listener immediately doubts himself. That's the technique of "The Big Lie" in a nutshell. Outflank the "argument" defenses and attack your opponent's sanity.

During the State of the Union address, one man shouts out, "You lie!"...while everyone else applauds. There should've been a couple hundred people in that chamber murmering among themselves, and then standing up demanding the truth, and then walking out in protest. But instead they turn on the sane one.

The best antidote for the mind-game poison we're being served is to yell with Congressman Joe Wilson, "You lie!" Just be sure to do it in private, or risk being called a nutter by the pod people. As one prescient FReeper said a couple years ago, this is about to become a dangerous place for the sane.

[Borges]

You have Freud and Nietzche wrong. There work is a lot more complex than “reduction of humankind to things”. At core Nietzche was a defender of Classical Western Culture.

[Jim W N]

Yes. Ultimately, it's a spiritual issue and a spiritual battle.

Our country began in the worst of conditions in so many ways. One of many examples is Jamestown, this county's first settlement, which was almost wiped out by a mysterious plague. Washington's strategy in the first part of the Revolutionary War was...retreat. Valley Forge, what probably should have been the end of the war, instead miraculously created an army that the greatest military power on earth couldn't defeat. In the battle of 1812, the British had overrun and burned down an abandoned Washington D.C., when a storm came through that was so powerful, it drove the troops back to wherever their base of operations was.

This country was founded by praying Christians whose faith and whose God saw their way through the toughest of times. I know personally that faith in the Lord is why I can trust Him in my efforts and not man or government.

We've moved far from the "In God We Trust" people we used to be and are susceptible to the subtleties and snares of opportunists who hate America and America's values of Life, Liberty, and Happiness. Do we still have Divine Providence on our side? Are we still the home of the brave and the land of the free? I think these are the underlying issues that will decide our fate.

[Noumenon]

At core Nietzche was a defender of Classical Western Culture.

In some alternate reality. Not this one.

[Borges]

Let me guess...you've never read him right? He was a philologist. He almost single-handedly revived study of the Ancient Greeks in Europe. A lot of the more deleterious things attributed to him were actually forgeries written by his lunatic sister.

[Noumenon]

Wrong again. Philosophy - one of my majors. Read all of Walter Kaufman’s translations and commentaries. You know who I’m talking about.

[Borges]

I’ve read some of Kauffman’s stuff. The notion of N as a proto-Nazi is a complete slander. He hated German Nationalism and was not anti-semitic. Leftists hate N with a passion. He was no mealy mouthed liberal. His oft quoted “God is Dead” line was describing a situation he saw taking place in the Europe of his day. Religion didn’t have the sort of sway that it once had.

[Noumenon]

Take a tour through Voegelin's assessment of Nietzsche - you might find an interesting and informative perspective there.

I never claimed that Nietzsche was a Nazi or proto-Nazi. That's a trope for lesser minds. And a strawman from you.

Sure, Nietzsche was a philologist - one of his greatest works was Beyond Good and Evil where his philological background came into play in this interpretation of those words. But you must also remember that Nietzsche also called for the transvaluation of all values in an attempt to liberate the concepts of good and evil from what he believed were the unnecessary and foolish constraints of moral and religious thought. I recall that Nietzsche was inordinately fond of the term 'religious naiserie' - a bit of a giveaway with respect to his attitude towards traditional morality.

But there's no dispute that Nietzsche's ideas were co-opted and wrongly interpreted by the National Socialists to serve their own ends.

I stand by my original claims with respect to Nietzsche's insight that, with the waning of the Christian virtues of mercy and restraint, something would fill that vacuum. That something, according to Nietzsche, was the will to power. History has proven him - and me - correct.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

For example... The teaching that matrimony is a sacrament gives to a clergy the judging of the lawfulness of marriages and ecclesiastical censure for divorce... The government of men's external actions by religion, pretending the change of nature in their consecrations cannot be esteemed a work extraordinary, it is no other than a conjuration or incantation, whereby they would have men to believe an alteration of nature that is contrary to the testimony of sight and of all the rest of the senses.