Posted on 09/07/2004 10:13:48 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
Who controls the past, George Orwell wrote in "1984," controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past.
He was talking about thought control in a totalitarian state. A superstate with the power to rewrite history, or at least official history, in order to justify whatever it did in the past, does in the present or will do in the future.
That's why the job of poor Winston Smith, Orwell's pseudo-historian in "1984," was to constantly update the past, so all good party members would know what, as orators at any party convention like to say, "History will show. ... "
History, of course, will show pretty much what the historian writing it wants it to. That is why politics is at least one part historiography: a fight for man's memory between competing versions of past events. Shaping that historical memory is a lot messier in free societies. For that matter, it isn't a snap in totalitarian states, either. Because their control of information isn't as total as the term totalitarian would lead you to believe. See what happened in and to the happily late Soviet Union. There is a factual core, an element of objective truth about the past that, no matter what deconstructionists say, will out. Which is what poor Winston Smith believed, at least at the start of his interrogation. Before he was carted off to Room 101 to have his mind rearranged so he could love Big Brother. But a 72-year-old great-grandfather like Zell Miller, whose Georgia vowels have the savor of good slow barbecue, has a memory of his own, turned and tempered over the years through many a fire. Else this old Democrat could not have delivered that rip-roarer of a keynote at the other party's convention this week.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
>>Remembering a different past, Zell Miller can't understand how someone who aspires to be commander in chief can vote for a war and then oppose the appropriations to fund it at the moment of truth — no matter how John Kerry tries to explain away that vote as just a matter of parliamentary procedure, a misunderstanding because, after all, he voted for the appropriations before he voted against them.
Ol' Zell can't see how a responsible wartime leader could think, and vote, like that. Not when American troops are committed and in the field. Neither can I. <<
Speaks volumes.
I personally look forward to Bush winning and watching these anti-American groups implode under the weight of their mindless hatred. I look forward to poking the embers of their funeral pyre.
Very good post, hits the nail on the head, again. I like Zell more than a lot of "fair weather Republicans" after that speech.
Thay had alot of time to stew over this. Zell's book was released last year. Whay are they so suprised now?
"We didn't know!"
The he** you didn't, you are possesed of a lying and contentious spirit.
Sure enough...."A National Party No More" By Senator Zell Miller 2003. These idiots had plenty of warning. Zell suprised nobody.
The piece does speak volumes and I agree with it.
Zell Miller is the last of a dying breed, the conservative, patriotic southern Democrat.
By now, most men like him have become Repubs, but he is loyal to an ideal which ceased to exist well before FDR's time. But since he's backing our man, we can forgive his lapse of memory.
The rabid leftists, people like Bella Abzug and Alger Hiss had hijacked the Democrats long before the recent crop of Leahys and Kennedys and Schumers appeared.
Since the 1930s at least, this party has been the creature of radical socialists whose primary loyalty was not to America, but to the cause of International socialism.
Remember Adlai Stevenson? Remember all the Stalinist stoolies who had infiltrated the Roosevelt and Truman administrations?
John Kennedy, for all his faults, was a temporary abberration in the unending of leftist radicals. Was Carter, or Mondale or anything but a leftist?
The only other creatures the Democratic Party has created nationally in recent times have been immoral, unprincipled demagogues and opportunists like Bill Clinton and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
But I will forgive a great man his lapses of memory. The only sector of the Democratic Party ever worth anything in recent times was the group of Dixiecrats Zell Miller represents - God-fearing, patriotic men for the most part, and VERY MUCH not ever a part of the real Democratic "Establishment."
"Since the 1930s at least, this party has been the creature of radical socialists whose primary loyalty was not to America, but to the cause of International socialism..."
"The only sector of the Democratic Party ever worth anything in recent times was the group of Dixiecrats Zell Miller represents - God-fearing, patriotic men for the most part, and VERY MUCH not ever a part of the real Democratic 'Establishment.'"
What is kind of hard to understand is, 1) why the socialists and communists (for a while, at least) were able to take over the direction of the Democrat party, and 2) why the southeast conservative wing of the party were effectively shut out? Is there something weak about conservatives in not being able to more effectively shape its party's direction?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.