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To: nopardons
I've looked at the points he was making and disagree with you completely. He certainly didn't have an Ayn Rand worldview, for instance, but he DID have a distrust of tyranny. He discussed Hitler and his tactics and was repelled by them. In the chapter entitled "Education For Freedom," Huxley writes:

"Big Government and Big Business already possess, or very soon will possess, all the techniques for mind-manipulation described in 'Brave New World', along with others of which I was too unimaginative to dream . . . . [T]hey will (unless prevented) make use of all the mind-manipulating techniques at their disposal and will not hesitate to reinforce these methods of non-rational persuasion by economic coercion and threats of physical violence. If this kind of tyranny is to be avoided, we must begin without delay to educate our children for freedom and self-government."

He ends the book with these words:

"Perhaps the forces that menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them."

I think you misconstrue his own words. V's wife.

130 posted on 11/01/2002 5:25:58 AM PST by ventana
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To: ventana; nopardons; Burkeman1
You give a most convincing reading Ventana, and I disagree with you nopardons. (Also, you sound over the top when you try to plume yourself.) At the time when BNW appeared, many of Huxley's progressive friends thought that he had turned "reactionary." Like 1984, it represents a progressive writer having a serious rethink about socialism and social control.

Huxley is difficult to categorise, in political terms. But as early as Crome Yellow, his writings demonstrate an understanding of how the forward-thinkers of the inter-war era were implicitly more intolerant than their elders whom they wanted to displace.

179 posted on 11/01/2002 4:01:09 PM PST by BlackVeil
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To: ventana
Orwell openly repudiated his past Socialism and wrote " 1984 " and " ANIMAL FARM ", for the distinct reason of warning evryone, especially those who still clung to Marxist / Socialist views , how dreadfully wrong those positions were. He was also very vocal publicly, and denounced his previous works and positions.

Huxley, OTOH, never did anything at all even close to that. His " BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED ", is a polemic on how surprised he was that somethings in BNW were coming true in 1958. They weren't, and as usual, Aldous saw himself as more than he was. Much of this book sounds like a FR Libertarian wrote it ... including all of the Jeffersonian cherrypicked and misused quotes. As a matter of fact, this ultra slim book is made up of more quotes, of others, than actual thoughts of Huxlely's. What you have chosen to quote, of his, is out of context and doesn't fit the whole. You have taken it all out of time, hence it seems more relivant, than it truly was / is , to the scheme of things.

Yes, he is against " big business " ; that was the tacit LIBERAL vent of the day, back then. He also was scared to death of over population ( this stems from his Fabian days, as well as the Liberal hysteria, that was beginning to bubble over )and the fact that " undesireables " were living into adulthood and that there were far too many of them in America. This had nothing whatsoever to do with immigration or illegal aliens. As to " big government ", Ike was president, and this polemic was anti-Republican ; not just a complaint against " big government ". Taking things out of their time context, will make things appear to be that which they weren't. Try reading " HUXLEY IN HOLLYWOOD ", for a better understanding of Aldous and his positions. Then, you should try redaing a few of the massive amount of books about and by the Bloomsbury crowd.

I think that you don't know enough, to make any kind of rational critique on what Huxley was saying and what my posts contain.

209 posted on 11/01/2002 11:28:36 PM PST by nopardons
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