Posted on 05/07/2010 2:13:19 PM PDT by Noumenon
>>Do you remember that part in Unintended Consequences where Henry Bowman asked his Professor something along the lines of “How do we know when the Government is like that guy with the van and the handcuffs?”
Well I’d say we’re pretty much at that point now.
What do we do about it? Well that’s not a subject for this forum, nor any other public forum. That’s a subject for hushed whispers with trusted friends.<<
No, that is a subject that MUST be discussed in the open air where everyone, especially those who think they have control, can see and read.
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. -—Edmund Burke
I have read about the Holocaust, I will not life to see another one because I refuse to kneel down to Islam. Christ is my Saviour not collectivism or Marxism!
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion...
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams:
>>They can’t afford even the pretense of an election. There will be... a crisis. And then all hell will break loose. There are people on both sides - all sides, really - just waiting for an excuse. Best to choose your point of entry into this coming conflict very carefully - if you can. Do what you must to live through it. The alternative is unthinkable. <<
I have kept this article listed on my calendar for a response today. Today is when we start an uprising in support of The Presidential Election, November 6, 2012. Today is the day to call your representatives and tell them that you support them and want to vote for them on November 6, 2012. Tell them to resist any efforts to delay this election.
Ask those who have the skills to do a video for YouTube in support of The Presidential Election, November 6, 2012. Let both sides know that the American people want to vote and we want to vote on November 6, 2012.
If you know how to do graphics, please make and post posters in support of The Presidential Election, November 6, 2012. Give hope to both sides so they won’t do anything to prevent us from voting on schedule.
copying to my HDD to read at my leisure
Thanks for the links!
Delsol bump. She helps one think.
“Twentieth century totalitarianism treated those it ruled as a multitude of faceless individuals. They were not considered persons, but were denied their dignity and forbidden from developing true relationships with others. Admonitions against close family ties or close friendships were the essence of this particular form of dehumanization. Nor were individuals considered subjects. They were deprived of freedom of thought and the freedom to shape their own destinies.”“Western society in late modernity is reminiscent of holism in its effacement of the subject: the individual confirms the common conscience and avoids personal responsibility. It is reminiscent of totalitarianism in that it has in common the construction of collectives or masses and its weakening of the person-subject, who has trouble dealing with difference and participating in heterogeneous groups. Neither communitarian nor totalitarian, yet sharing common characteristics with both, the society of late-modern individuals is one of spontaneous gregariousness. It is merely a renewed form of the age-old phenomenon of involuntary servitude.”
Chantal Delsol, Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century - An essay on Late Modernity, pp.135
Delsol's acute observations regarding modern Western societies at times fail to take into account that the old totalitarianism that she references have not completely given way to and been supplanted by the soulless and hollowed out nature of the modern individual. The 'old totalitarianisms,' informed and fueled by the modern will-to-power have been merely biding their time until there were sufficient numbers of empty human beings to make their comeback definitive, final and fatally complete.
Now it seems like it's more name-calling and one line replies of no substance.
Can you elaborate on this?
It was discovered that man can live without a state; this became the basis of Western liberalism. It was discovered that the state, if it exists, must serve men and that it is incorrect to believe that the purpose of men is to serve the state. It was discovered that economic life, religious life, law, and private property can all exist and function effectively without a state. From this emerged laissez-faire, separation of Church and State, rule of law, and the sanctity of private property. In Rome, in Byzantium, and in Russia, law was regarded as an enactment of a supreme power. In the West, when no supreme power existed, it was discovered that law still existed as the body of rules which govern social life. Thus law was found by observation in the West, not enacted by autocracy as in the East. This meant that authority was established by law and under the law in the West, while authority was established by power and above the law in the East. The West felt that the rules of economic life were found and not enacted; that individuals had rights independent of, and even opposed to, public authority; that groups could exist, as the Church existed, by right and not by privilege, and without the need to have any charter of incorporation entitling them to exist as a group or act as a group; that groups or individuals could own property as a right and not as a privilege and that such property could not be taken by force but must be taken by established process of law. It was emphasized in the West that the way a thing was done was more important than what was done, while in the East what was done was far more significant than the way in which it was done.There was also another basic distinction between Western Civilization and Russian Civilization. This was derived from the history of Christianity. This new faith came into Classical Civilization from Semitic society. In its origin it was a this-worldly religion, believing that the world and the flesh were basically good, or at least filled with good potentialities, because both were made by God; the body was made in the image of God; God became Man in this world with a human body, to save men as individuals, and to establish "Peace on earth." The early Christians intensified the "this-worldly" tradition, insisting that salvation was possible only because God lived and died in a human body in this world, that the individual could be saved only through God's help (grace) and by living correctly in this body on this earth (good works), that there would be, some day, a millennium on this earth and that, at that Last Judgment, there would be a resurrection of the body and life everlasting. In this way the world of space and time, which God had made at the beginning with the statement, "It was good" (Book of Genesis), would, at the end, be restored to its original condition.
This optimistic, "this-worldly" religion was taken into Classical Civilization at a time when the philosophic outlook of that society was quite incompatible with the religious outlook of Christianity. The Classical philosophic outlook, which we might call Neoplatonic, was derived from the teachings of Persian Zoroastrianism, Pythagorean rationalism, and Platonism. It was dualistic, dividing the universe into two opposed worlds, the world of matter and flesh and the world of spirit and ideas. The former world was changeable, unknowable, illusionary, and evil; the latter world was eternal, knowable, real, and good. Truth, to these people, could be found by the use of reason and logic alone, not by use of the body or the senses, since these were prone to error, and must be spurned. The body, as Plato said, was the "tomb of the soul."
Thus the Classical world into which Christianity came about A.D. 60 believed that the world and the body were unreal, unknowable, corrupt, and hopeless and that no truth or success could be found by the use of the body, the senses, or matter. A small minority, derived from Democritus and the early Ionian scientists through Aristotle, Epicurus, and Lucretius, rejected the Platonic dualism, preferring materialism as an explanation of reality. These materialists were equally incompatible with the new Christian religion. Moreover, even the ordinary citizen of Rome had an outlook whose implications were not compatible with the Christian religion. To give one simple example: while the Christians spoke of a millennium in the future, the average Roman continued to think of a "Golden Age" in the past, just as Homer had.
Let me apologize for throwing at you so much text so densely packed with meaning and information. Virtually every sentence and frame of reference in these few paragraphs presupposes considerable background knowledge, not all of which I posses. Quigley was scholar and a philosopher of almost frightening erudition, tossing off revelatory insights as casual asides. But I think that the gist of it is clear enough for the purposes of this conversation, and ti may go someway towards answering your question.
A ping in your general direction. More food for thought...
Just what I need ... more food for thought.
I’m already gorged.
;-P
You got an electronic copy of that book?
bfl
Just a gun-grabbing bump for new readers.
Who are these gun-grabbers? Really, who are they?
Once you know who “they” really are, there is no room left for dialogue.
No, there isn't is there. Any future 'conversations' will occur at muzzle velocity.
The quote of the day:
Talking with Liberals is like playing chess with a monkey.
You get to Checkmate; they eat the Queen…
All the while screeching that “you’re stupid!”
Wow, Noumenon, that was excellent! (I think the format was fine. It was very readable & easy to comprehend.) I agree that this should be published.
“Nietzsche believed that the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by religious sanctions, without moral restraint of any kind, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind.”
That is the left to a T.
Yes - they are monsters - all of them. No one who supports them or their ideas is innocent, regardless of motive or ideals.
BTTT
Big bump
Thanks for posting.
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