Posted on 04/17/2020 6:35:33 AM PDT by otness_e
Heck, going by the overall description of Leninthink and what that entails, it actually makes Tarkin's Rule of Fear doctrine from Star Wars seem very benign by comparison (and would most likely have Tarkin executed by Lenin because he dared to show even the slightest ounce of restraint in the use of force).
Rule of Men (Oligarchy) -- The Left is all about this. As the article above says, even Leninists don't believe in Leninism. You need to just believe in Lenin. Believing the ideology is risky because what you need to do is to support the Party which enforces the ideology. The Party cannot be wrong. If the Party deviates from the Ideology, that is OK. Do not question the Party. Do not question the Oligarchs. The rulers are in charge and that's all that matters.
Rule of Law (Republic) -- A body of law exists and is applied to all equally. This is what we are supposed to have in the US. But we clearly don't. We are also an Oligarchy. Ask Hillary Clinton.
Well, to be fair, Hillary Clinton didn’t get elected president (thank goodness), which points to us still being a Republic (although just barely).
I personally adhere to neither, though: I’m more of a “Rule of God” if I must be honest (ie, God alone is in charge, we don’t question God, just believe in God, he cannot be wrong, and heck, God by virtue of being in charge isn’t even bound by ideology, and will sell humanity down the river if he so desires, and just so we’re clear, by “God”, I mean the Judeo-Christian God, the father of Jesus. It’s sort of similar in ideology to Oligarchy, only in this case, Men aren’t even in charge, just God.).
There are still people who insist that Russian Communism would not have taken the direction it did “if only Lenin had lived longer”. This article makes clear that Lenin and Stalin were essentially the same.
This thread is useless without a joke:
One time Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, visits an elementary school.
The schoolchildren asked her to tell them a story Vladimir Lenin.
“Children, you should know about Lenin’s great kindness.” she says with eyes misty.
“I remember once he was shaving his beard outside of home, and a little child was passing by & asked him (What are you doing, Mr Lenin?) And my kind loving husband replied (Oh, my little fella, I’m just shaving my beard.)”
“But Ms Lenin”, asked one of the children, “Where’s the love & kindness in that?”
She answered: “Were you not paying attention, you little thing? The razor was in my husband’s hand and he decided not slit the child’s throat!”
Many think that Stalin poisoned Lenin and hastened his demise.
Just as many think that Beria poisoned Stalin.
One day, Lenin and Trotsky went to a drive-thru.
After Lenin ordered, Trotsky started to order, but he didn’t know what he wanted. He either wanted the McNuggets or a double cheeseburger. After a few minutes of silence from Trotsky, Lenin shouted, “Come on! We haven’t got all day! Stop Stalin!”
The only good thing Stalin did was to kill Trotsky.
Failure to elect Hillary Clinton does not mean we are a republic.
It’s about Rule Of Law. About no one being above the law. If you kept classified documents at your house, you’d be in jail. Not Hillary. As Comey said, “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue charges against Hillary. Because the Law doesn’t matter. The fear of Arkancide matters.
I agree with you about God being in charge. But Christianity isn’t “whatever”. It isn’t a guessing game. We have the Bible. We have the Word. We have been told how to live and the Word is eternal and unchanging. A republic is supposed to follow a similar model. But an Oligarchy is more like “New commandments every day. Because I said so.”
Yeah, agreed. It also makes clear that a large part of Communism’s excesses were derived from the Jacobins and similar groups in the French Revolution in the beginning paragraph. And don’t bother with claiming Marx should have lived long enough to ensure Communism went a different direction, he also made it pretty dang clear that was the path it was meant to go. Lenin, Marx, Robespierre, and Stalin are one and the same.
Just look at this:
https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/1068877898520633344/photo/1
Would post the image directly, but unfortunately, developer tools doesn’t seem to list the actual image in there or the appropriate size.
You today, me tomorrow.
Trust me, if it were wholly up to me, I’d just have Hillary, Bernie, and those guys locked up for the crime of being Communists and hostile to the American way, so you do NOT want me to state how far I’d go to ensure it adheres strictly to rule of law (if I were to go by that path, I’d go so far that all of humanity, myself included, is left extinct, since that’s the natural result of rule of law, where everyone’s guilty. After all, we’re all sinners, and going purely by law, we deserve nothing less than extinction. That’s pure Rule of Law there, allowing for absolutely NO ONE to be left unpunished, even those up top, a suicide pact.).
As far as that last bit, unfortunately, God committed several murders in the Bible despite it being against the 10 commandments that he himself wrote (that they deserved their deaths ultimately doesn’t matter.), and in one of those cases, he outright LIED to Abraham during Sodom and Gomorrah, since due to being omniscient, he’d know since before creation that there were NO innocents in those communities besides Sodom and Gomorrah. A truly honest omnipotent God would mercilessly and mentally torture Abraham for even DARING to try and do a barter game with an omnipotent and omniscient God, leave him too broken to even dare question him, with God being pleased at his proving his omniscient and omnipotent nature by outright breaking his most loyal follower. That’s true honesty there, utterly brutal and merciless.
It has me wondering, what then led to the downfall of this doctrine?
I believe it is its disconnect with reality.
The leader must be right, no matter what decision, no matter what is said, no matter what contradictions are created.
This creates conditions where it is very difficult to correct the leader's mistakes, as they can only be corrected by him (or the party, perhaps).
As no one actually believes in an ideology, all decisions come down to how can I use the power I have to benefit me, without being punished.
This is basic hedonism.
It is not efficient.
It becomes impossible to plan for the future.
Because nobody knows what will be the law in the next moment.
You are not omniscient and omnipotent.
Therefore your conjecture about what an ominiscient and omnipotent being would do is frivolous.
Heck, not even the leader, more like the party.
And then there’s the French Revolution, which destroyed the state and left France in lawless anarchy until Napoleon took control (and quite frankly, I would have preferred Napoleon if I had to choose between him and Robespierre, though my personal preference was King Louis XVI still ruling).
Chinese TV Host Faces “Severe Punishment” for Mao Zedong Jokes
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chinese-tv-host-mao-jokes-814168
I know I’m not omnipotent and omniscient, but I’ve seen omniscience essentially defined as “Your plans [against the guy[s] in charge] are invalidated, even before execution.” To quote Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid 2. The definition of omniscience is “all-knowing”, nothing you can be wrong about, knowing something WELL before the situation occurs even if you didn’t have a hand in it. That essentially means when you imply in ANY way that, say, Sodom and Gomorrah might have 50 innocents, when you know full well since before creation that there weren’t even THAT many, you essentially lied, since the definition of lying means saying something you KNEW wasn’t true beforehand.
Yep, that’s pretty much Leninism at its core. Heck, if anything, that’s an understatement, since at Leninism’s core, they’d have him face severe punishment if he praised Mao simply out of arbitrariness.
One thing Lenin did figure out was that getting completely rid of the market-based economy really wasn’t wise. That’s why he implemented the New Economic Policy (NEP), which essentially was the State Capitalism model that the ChiComs use now, ultimately, Stalin got rid of it, and returned to complete Centralized control of the economy.
Mao - Greatest Mass Murderer in History?
Estimates range from 42,000,000 to 110,000,000.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/mao-murder.htm
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