[Archival from 2006 but still, in light of recent events, worth repeating.]
If your life on the web is running too s l o w, if your browsing and grazing at this site or that is just b o g g i n g d o w n, what do you do?
Like any good cybernaut, you look for the "techno-fix."
There are, of course, many fixes to find. New connections, new computers, new hard drives, new browsers, new plugins, and more. But the first thing everyone should do is to take the cure common to all cyberspace slowdowns. You click on your browser menus and tell it to "Clear History."
"Clear History" works wonders for your cyberlife. As you move within the web, your History grows, and the more History you hold the slower your web brain, your browser, thinks and acts. Thinking slowly and acting slowly may be wise in life, but it takes the zip out of your online drive.
When you "Clear History" your browser forgets all the places it has been, all the things that it has seen, all of what it has learned. All that bitsludge is wiped away and your browser's internal brain is made as smooth as a baby's bottom, as blank as a goldfish's brain. Things run faster, you get loaded more quickly and will probably stay loaded longer. You flash but you don't crash. Why would you? You've "cleared your history."
I probably didn't have to tell you to "Clear History." You knew it. Pretty much everyone knows it. But this better browsing tip seems, like many other dubious cyberspace insights, to have oozed out into the real world, into the world dimensional.
And when 2D goes 3D there's always a problem.
Applying cyberspace notions to the world at large, like believing the Mapquest is the territory, is usually a mistake, but people, being people, are always eager to make new mistakes. After all, "cyberspace" explains so much, doesn't it? Cyberspace has become the new paradigm and controlling metaphor of our age, supplanting the use of the computer as the controlling metaphor in the last quarter of the 20th century, much as the idea of the "clockwork universe" caught on at the dawn of the Enlightenment as the Age of Reason was driven forward on the escapement of the highest tech of that time, the clock.
As humans, we prefer that our "things" define us. It is always easier to explain ourselves through things than to explain ourselves outright. If mistakes are made, well, "Things didn't work out."
Of course, during these intellectually eviscerated times we can look back on the clockwork universe of the Enlightenment as a time when giants walked Europe's Cathedrals of Thought; Newton, Descartes, Voltaire, Montaigne, Kant, Hume, Jefferson.... the list is, as you know, still dominant though it be mainly male, all dead and very white. They all rose up in the age of clocks but they, in a real and metaphorical sense, wound the clocks. They "had" time and they would never "Clear History."
As much as these founders of our world valued time, they valued History more. Out of that time and that History, the Enlightenment swept across the world. When that wave receded it left many gifts on these shores, not the least of which were "The Declaration of Independence" and "The Constitution of the United States."
The Declaration and The Constitution: These two artifacts of history were the quintessence of the most revolutionary ideas to arise in the mind of man since .... not fire or the wheel, but previous... previous.... long before... since standing up on the hind legs.
Standing up happened before we began to become what we are now.
Standing up happened before the ancestors of who we are were what they were.
Standing up was, in that time long before the dream time, the most revolutionary idea life had had since the eye.
Standing up on the savannahs of Africa gave you something the other animals didn't have. It gave you the high ground.
Standing up you could reach the low-hanging fruit and see down where the prey hid among the high grass. Standing up let you see other animals that saw you as prey. Standing up above the grasses let you see out across the plains of that savannah.
Standing up gave you the long view.
Standing up was the start of your story. It gave you the long view out towards the horizons, the horizons that you would walk towards over the long epochs until you were man and then, when you finally received the First Light, more than mere man the scavenger. You became man the hunter; you became "that paragon of animals"; a blend of the satanic and the divine, knowing both the Will of God and your own Free Will. Which is when you found -- in a New World, among a myriad of thoughts within your remembered history -- the thoughts that became, in that time and of that place, the Declaration and the Constitution. And from these thoughts, expressed in these ways, you discovered, for the second time in your long history, fire.
In the same way that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is the revelation to the ear of a single, great thought, so the Declaration which began the American Revolution, and the Constitution which codified and expanded on it, are the revelation to the mind of a single, great thought: All men are created equal and henceforth and ever after must live free or die.
With the creation and ratification of those documents, the American Revolution became, and has remained, the chief export of these states to the world. The Revolution that began here with those documents continues today well into its third century as the most successful revolution in the affairs of man since Christ walked and died upon the earth. In a very real way, much to the distress of millions here and abroad, the American revolution is cojoined and inextricable from the continuing revolution of Christianity which seems either to lead it on or follow in its train.
"America" -- by which I do not mean the United States but that greater embodiment of the two most powerful ideas of History, "Christianity & Freedom" -- is to those who stand against it, within and without these states, a terrifying presence. It terrifies them because it is, as once we sang it, "a terrible swift sword."
"America" should terrify tyrants of all creeds. "America" means the finish on Earth, once and for all, of all that is not free. Not soon, and perhaps not for some time to come, but in the end the American idea, if not America itself, will prove to be as unstoppable as man standing up on his hind legs.
You say you want a revolution? Here it is and here it has been for more than two centuries. And it is not over.
The Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and all the wars that have been fought and all the men that have died to found, sustain, advance and defend them, have many things in common for all the differences that arise around and within them. Chief among these is that they do not ever "Clear History."
Now the entire enterprise has again come up against another great idea that burns in the minds of men, the idea of submission and slavery; that all men are created to equally submit to an unchanging theology that recognizes only the will of a patriarchal god, and preaches that the human will can only find its freedom in a constant, repeat five times daily, submission to an omnipotent caliph who has decreed the way of all things, now and forever, world without end always.
It is an ancient idea, an early-medieval cult of the Old Testament, made new by the disastrous totalitarian and collectivist experiments of the 20th century in which "Slavery is Freedom." Like the religion of Freedom embodied in and carried forward by the American Revolution, this religion also does not "Clear History." Instead, it imprisons man forever within a "Stopped History;" a history that stopped before the coming of the escapement clock; a stopped history that finally was stopped in Europe with the fall of Grenada in January of 1492. In August of that year Columbus sailed out from Palos in Spain and took his three ships westward. For Islam, history had stopped in the same year America's began.
More than 500 years later, Freedom faces its ancient enemy once again on a battleground that lies hidden across the globe. Like all ideas that set fire to the minds of men and die back to become a root fire smoldering deep underground only to flare up when the fire wardens and watchmen are withdrawn, Islam is resurgent.
Islam thrives where men are oppressed either by governments or by economic systems that sustain ignorance, intolerance and exploitation beneath the trappings of democracy -- from Beijing to Mexico City, from Russia to Rwanda. As a religion, many tyrants are pleased welcome and sustain Islam, especially when those tyrants come draped in the robes of the mullah.
Islam is a religion created to congeal and control the masses by removing, through rote learning and repetition, any idea that Freedom can be found outside of submission. Unlike the West which finds, again and again, that History can have no end, Islam finds that History does end, long ago, and the only task or "Restoration" in front of it is the restoration of that ancient age so that, at last and to the relief on many, History can have a stop in the steady state that is Islam.
Like Freedom, the release from History is another ancient yearning in the soul of man.
How happy it would be for most if History did not keep happening, if all things -- no matter how confining -- would simply stay the same from sunup to sundown, all through the night, from birth to death. What a bright world it would be if there was, at long last, a single system, a bright Utopia, in which all men were finally agreed and reconciled. How fortunate that endless age in which there was, finally, One World in which, through the infinite mercy of a perfect god or a perfect state, everyone had what they needed supplied by those with the ability.
This was the impulse that filled the global abattoirs of the 20th century whose bloody shadows are still seen today in the Third World, notably wherever the forces of Islam are predominant.
The Collectivist promise and pursuit of the Perfect World perfected only death. Its monuments, when not denied or paved over, are everywhere to be seen on the planet. It is a thing of such recent History, one so terrible that it you would think it could not be easily "Cleared" by people who are the pure products of education in the West.
And yet we see, in our current political malaise, that there are many among us in these states who "Clear History" on a daily basis in order to keep their dark dream of a perfect world, a single world, a utopian realm, alive in the clear light of day. It is, as you can see today, even possible for these people to "Clear History" of a videotape of a woman having her throat cut and head severed in the name of Islam and to announce, yet again, that it is a religion of peace. With "Clear History" all erasures are possible.
This automatic ability to "Clear History" is a curious phenomenon. Something that is quite new.
Today's "Clear History" is not the "Revisionism" common to the Marxist, Leninist, and Maoist of old, where history was remade with the destruction of texts, the alterations of photographs, the burning of books, and the issuing of the Party Line of the day to the faithful and the enslaved. "Clear History" is a complete and immediate blotting out of history en masse. It is accompanied by a careful retention of a fixed number of "historical facts" in a Curiosity Cabinet of Argument found in a dusty chamber filled with monuments to aged intellect; a go-to place where the only events of history worth keeping are those that buttress a reality that exists nowhere but must surely, in some future perfect day, come to exist everywhere.
For when you "Clear History" one of the things that go away in the real world are the books. And then you are left, not with History Books but that other ubiquitous element of cyberspace existence, Bookmarks.
The History of your browser tells me where you have been and what you have seen, but your Bookmarks tell me who you are and what you believe.
Mark Twain remarked, "You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is." Bookmarks are the corn pone from which your 'pinions are baked, but if you have the kind of soul that has run "Clear History" on your life your 'pinions are not likely to have any foundation in the long history of Freedom, but only yearn towards a Utopian tomorrow that never knows.
Much of the current disunity seen in our politics arises between those who ran "Clear History" in November of 2000, and those who saw History return with a vengeance in September of 2001.
One group is determined to deny History, expunge the Declaration, and shred the Constitution in pursuit of a utopia that's buried in a global network of mass graves. Another group are those who believe in the American idea and are determined let this new birth of freedom work its way across the world. Absent a defining historical event of global significance, this twain shall not meet. There is, of course, a third group of people who want to merely get on with their happy world untroubled by History, either cleared or present as a clear and present danger.
This last group is exemplified best, in my mind, by the young man who works as a night checker in my neighborhood market. He's bright, quick, genuine and affable. He's anything but dumb and is just passing through the market job on his way to other, larger things. I like him and have taken to a kind of banter with my frequent forays into this handy store. Saturday I was picking up something and we got to a bit of quick conversation in which I happened to quote the old saw of "Those who don't remember history are condemned to repeat it."
He replied, "Oh, I don't know anything about history. I never paid any attention to it."
"Well, you should," I said, "because history is paying attention to you."
I don't think he got it, but I'll still give him one of my history books the next time I'm in for a quart of milk. Twenty years of schooling and he's got no History to clear.
You've got to start somewhere.
Posted by Vanderleun at March 14, 2016 10:04 PM
Thank you, Gerard, for yet another wonderful bit of writing. This one pretty much says (and has) it all.
Posted by: Dan at May 8, 2006 7:24 AMWell said. Which reminds me of this 60's slogan:
"Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?"
The clueless lefties conveniently forgot the next line:
"Why, then, war would come to them."
Sad.
Posted by: Eric Blair at May 8, 2006 12:08 PMGerard wrote ...."there are many among us who evidently "Clear History" on a daily basis in order to keep their dark dream of a perfect world, a single world, a utopian realm alive in the clear light of day. It is, as you can see today, even possible for these people to "Clear History" of a videotape of a woman having her throat cut and head severed in the name of Islam last Saturday. With "Clear History" all erasures are possible."
Here is a link to the story, of the murder of Atwar Bahjat, one of the country’s top television journalists,an act of exceptional cruelty:
The Fight Against Evil
by Curt at FloppingAces.net
Would not the LSM be screaming "bloody murder" if this had been one of the AP stringers? This was Iraq's Mrs. Jamie Ruben, only she wasn't on the same side as Christina or Eason Jordan.
Read that piece and you will truly understand what Gerard it telling us/teaching us with:
"Clear History" by Vanderleun at American Digest.org
And if you still need more words of sanity to complete your outrage and to implant firmly into your mind why you will not ever, ever, ever give them the power back, read:
Gerard, your "own way" is marvelous as usual. Thank you.
Posted by: LARWYN at May 8, 2006 12:55 PMGerard, here's a post by one Zoe Brain. I think you'll find interesting:
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2006/05/un-natural-selection.html
While not obviously connected to your posting, I do believe you will find areas of commonality. Not least the fact both your postings deal with the destructive effects of misunderstandings and erroneous assumptions.
We are a social animal because it improved our ancestors' chance of survival. We have history because we needed to keep records of what we produced and traded. We work best when we work voluntarily as a group, and when we know what we are doing and what our ancestors have tried in the past. Why re-invent the wheel when you can get Michelins from your auto mechanic?
Posted by: Alan Kellogg at May 8, 2006 3:09 PMBreathtaking. "Clearing History" is now bookmarked right next to Bill Whittle's "Sanctuary".
JWM
Posted by: jwm at May 8, 2006 7:08 PMFinally! An Abbey quote! I knew you had the poison.
Posted by: Dan at May 8, 2006 7:18 PMTwenty years of schooling and they put him on the night shift?
Posted by: neo-neocon at May 9, 2006 8:35 AMYou speak of a yearning towards a utopia that never comes and the connection of this with a lack of foundation in history. I have a slightly different take (exegesis) on this that also involves history. Consider that the exodus is the mother of the myth of creation. The Jews were brought out of Egypt. The world was brought out of the void. Now, the unadulterated spirit is will and will is power. The urge to go beyond the self (yearning), the daemonic urge, or romanticism, is perversion of this power. Classicism to the extent that it elevates the intellect, or dwells on the distinction that can be made between the power of the mind, rationalism, and mere corporeality, sets up a tendency towards adulteration of the will. The next logical step from classicism is towards romanticism. The daemonic spirit appeared through the movement of Christianity. Romanticism is the daemonic spirit, the erotic in nature. Think of the sensuous genius Don Juan: "My need is too great for anyone to satisfy." His need, having been brought out of the void is based in a state of estrangement from himself which he can never overcome simply by trying through the satisfaction of the senses to turn around and fill the void.
This ubiquitous yearning speaks of the soul's failure to recognize it is essentially complete from its inception. Thus the continuous attempt of the soul to go beyond itself with the concomitant urge to see reality as greater than itself.
The prehuman force existential mass is the most concrete medium while romanticism, the post human force is given perfect expression by the most abstract medium, music, e.g., the music of Mozart.
This leaves us with a "Sickness unto Death".
John Hinds
Posted by: John Hinds at May 9, 2006 1:57 PMis not this intense Technocratic state going to drive history underground, as it becomes to complex given its simplicity? For those of you who do not know, a Technocratic state, i may be wrong is saying "state", but whatever, anyhow, It is a society in which the government teaches its bright and young to learn in incredibly technical, and advanced ways, to increase technology. however, such a form of education results in the laymen not understanding anything any one of these professors has to say, resulting in a very ambiguous knowledge of everything, as these confused people go out and try to learn for them selves, and learn wrong.
Posted by: free at May 16, 2008 12:06 AMOutstanding, Gerard. I tried to get at some of this in Dark Gods and Dark Gods Part 2: The War On Truth, but you've outclassed me here. Congratulations!
"All men are created equal". The central problem of democracy, as practised currently in the West, is that the political system is based on that statement - which is just plain WRONG.
Men (and women) are anything but equal. In law in the USA (and in Britain), the vote of someone who can barely write his own name (or possibly that can't even do that) and is poorly enough educated that he can't possibly understand the issues is worth just the same as that of a brain surgeon. The vote of someone who has never done a day's work in his life is worth the same as that of a Medal of Honour (or VC) veteran. Examples could be multiplied.
I believe that there used to be restrictions to voting rights. They ought to come back.
Posted by: Fletcher Christian at May 16, 2008 10:45 AMOutstanding, Mr. Van der Luen.
I'll go ahead and cut a firing step for you, too.
My trench will have all the best people in it.
We face dark, dark days. But that is what freedom really comes down to.
"Will you fight for it? No? Then it was never yours to keep."
I fought. I'll fight again, too. I just wish my daughters didn't have this world as our legacy.
Posted by: TmjUtah at May 16, 2008 6:31 PMA worthy post, indeed.
"The other group is determined to shape History now by fighting and defeating resurgent Islam by any means, any means, necessary."
The fundamental weapon for which, is restoring history and education - that'll help produce more bullets and bombs and people determined to aim them true, than any other arsenal or boot camp.
Fletcher Christian said ""All men are created equal". The central problem of democracy, as practised currently in the West, is that the political system is based on that statement - which is just plain WRONG."
For one thing, the Founders never mistook George III as being the equal of George Washington. The only mistake the Founders made was assuming that Philosophy and Education could not devolve into such a process of diseducation, that their (then) commonly held principles, that all men were born with Individual Rights, could be contorted into all men are literally equal.
For another thing, they explicitly strove to ensure that we would NEVER become a Democracy, they devised a Constitutional 'Republic... if you can keep it", whose Representatives were democratically elected... via delegates. The Founders understood Hierarchy, and that hierarchy has been the target of the proregressives since day one - their 17th amendment a case in point. Another case in point would be their constantly and stridently referring to this nation as a 'Democracy', and stating that 'all men ARE equal' (and the implicit 'those who aren't, we'll forcibly equalize down to the level of the rest'), rather than all men possessed equal rights before the law.
Here, read the constitution line by line, together with the documents which they had in mind when creating it, and the arguments they used in debating for and against ratification, The Founders Constitution, hosted by the University of Chicago Press and the Liberty Fund.
Un-miseducation would be a worthy goal. It would also prevent having history cleared.
Van, the quote "all men are created equal" was a direct quotation from Mr. Van der Leun. Any political system based on that premise, whose falsity is demonstrated many times per day, is doomed to ultimate failure.
I'll take your word on the niceties of the American Constitution and its avoidance of this fallacy. However, I suspect that the recognition of inequality in that document has been rather diluted over the years.
Example: Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it the President is elected by an electoral college with members from each state. However, also as I understand it, many of the states have state laws requiring electoral college members to vote in the Presidential election en bloc, in accordance with the popular vote - which means that the electoral college is worse than useless. In other words, the way the system actually works is at variance with the way it was supposed to.
There is another reason why democracy without any entitlement qualification procedure is doomed, ultimately, to failure. I may not have the words exactly right; but "Democracies last until the masses realise that they can vote themselves largesse from the public purse". The USA is well along that path; so is the UK. This is a very old problem indeed; "bread and circuses".
The solution I personally favour is that of Heinlein. It is never going to happen though, short of complete breakdown and rebuilding of Western civilisation. Another way would be equally simple; if you paid tax last year, you get a vote; if you didn't you don't.
Posted by: Fletcher Christian at May 17, 2008 3:15 PMfletcher christian said "the system actually works "
That's a quote from your comment, does it adequately represent your view... or is it perhaps missing some context?
"...requiring electoral college members to vote in the Presidential election en bloc, in accordance with the popular vote - which means that the electoral college is worse than useless...."
The electoral college has always been the weakest creation of the Founders, but it still worked well enough to keep Gore out.
"I'll take your word on the niceties of the American Constitution"
The 'niceties'(?!) of the American Constitution?! You'll take MY WORD for it?! How dare you, you damn fool! The USA and the UK are well along the path they are on, because people like you have been more concerned with complaining (I assume Fletcher Christian is a selected nic), than in learning what is worthwhile and what those things depend upon - and here's a tip - you won't find the answers in Heinlein or H.G. Wells.
Paying for a ticket to vote is not going to solve anything - those able to are just more prosperously ignorant of what they need to know. Abolishing the Income Tax isn't going to solve anything either. Those are just results of the progressive egalitarianism - 'democracy', abolish them, and the people indoctrinated with the ideas will just holler for replacement legislation. It took a good 50+ years to de-educate us into this mess, and it will likely take as least as long to educate us out of it.
There are no easy answers... certainly not through science fiction.
Oh, that was good. That hit the spot.
I got all choked up here:
"America" should terrify tyrants of all creeds. "America" means the finish on Earth, once and for all, of all that is not free. Not soon, and perhaps not for some time to come, but in the end the American idea, if not America itself, will prove to be as unstoppable as man.
I miss my father terribly. He used to talk like that. He was a Korea-era vet and a dyed-in-the-wool-dharma-bum beatnik.
Among other things, he left me his book collection when he died--it's all military history, Jack Kerouac, D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts zen. I devoured them all greedily. Now it's my history.
Thanks, Gerard.
Van:
Yes, I did mean "how the system actually works". I will expand: As I understand it, the entire concept of the electoral college was created to avoid the problem here being discussed; that unfettered democracy will inevitably lead to "bread and circuses". The idea being, presumably, that the members of the college will be better educated and informed than average (particularly regarding the merits or otherwise of the candidates) and will therefore be more likely to return a candidate capable of doing the job.
However, this requires the college members to have the freedom of their own judgement and conscience in making that selection. Mandate them by law to do what they are told by the mass electorate, and they may as well not be there.
I believe (no time to check) that the majority of American states have that mandate for their collegiates - so the college members from those states might just as well be photocopiers, for all the difference they make.
Incidentally, there is a hidden assumption in your latest post; that it was a good idea to keep Gore out in the first place. I think that a majority of voters at the time, and even more likely now, would disagree with you; and it's certainly arguable. After all, with Gore as President there would now probably be approximately 4000 more Americans, and 650 billion dollars more in the kitty.
"Niceties" was perhaps the wrong word. "Details" might have been better. However, perhaps you can answer a question for me. I'm British. What possible utility is there for me in learning the details of the constitution of a country which I have visited once for two weeks, may never visit again (I have medical problems making it inadvisable for me to fly), have no intention in ever living in and certainly will never be a citizen of, and therefore will never have an influence in?
I don't know for sure, obviously, but I suspect that members of the several states' electoral colleges are all the most reliable of the party members. Perhaps one way out of this impasse would be to make it unlawful for any electoral college member either to be a member of any party or accept money from them?
I agree with you about one thing (I think); democracy, whatever the details of its working, only works if the majority of the electorate is educated well enough to understand the issues and to see through the lies of politicians (what was that quote about statistics, for example?). That assumed education is no longer the case, either in the USA or in the UK. I am a nasty, cynical SOB, so I suspect that state of affairs is deliberate - it's much easier to rule uneducated proles. The people in charge always manage to get THEIR kids a decent education, one way or another - and thus make sure that their little in-group stays in charge.
Where we might differ is in one thing; I think that voting is a privilege that should have to be earned. Heinlein's answer, though incomplete, was one; another might be to restrict the vote to people who pay tax; a property or educational qualification is another. The main point is for those who elect the people who make the decisions to know that if they elect an idiot, a lunatic, a demagogue or a crook, electing him will be paid for one way or another by the people who made that mistake. This is very far from being the case at the moment, in either of our countries.
"The system actually works", although definitely out of context, might actually be accurate. But for whom does it work?
Posted by: Fletcher Christian at May 19, 2008 2:13 AM"Incidentally, there is a hidden assumption in your latest post; that it was a good idea to keep Gore out in the first place."
If that seemed hidden, let me correct that - it was a damn good thing that Gore was kept out in the first place. And if you consider his political assexertions in his movies, the idea that his admin would be less expensive is even more ignorant than his glowbull warming preaching’s.
"I think that a majority of voters at the time, and even more likely now, would disagree with you"
Hint: that's actually THE prime purpose of the Electoral College, that the weighted votes of the states are counted, NOT the popular 'democratic' vote.
"However, perhaps you can answer a question for me. I'm British. What possible utility is there for me in learning the details of the constitution of a country which I have visited once for two weeks, may never visit again ..."
Sorry, I'm struggling to forego a few cracks about the extent to which you may suffer from being mentally impaired (I said struggling... not succeeding). Perhaps you can answer a question for me... given THAT position... what in the Heck are you debating the issue at all for? Not only do you not understand the issues and ideas involved (largely derived from your countrymen btw, Locke, etc), but you say they are of no relevance to you?!
"I am a nasty, cynical SOB, so I suspect that state of affairs is deliberate - it's much easier to rule uneducated proles. The people in charge always manage to get THEIR kids a decent education, one way or another - and thus make sure that their little in-group stays in charge."
Yes, on that part we can agree. Might want to look into the educational philosophy which dominates both our systems, descending from Hegel, Wundt, Fichte, Dewey - it's actually quite easy to locate the quotes where they come out and say as much. For example, this from Woodrow Wilson, who prior to becoming President of the United States, was President of Princeton College, and he typified the progressive goal with his advice to the Federation of High School Teachers: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
What could be better than an entire class of slaves, who didn’t realize that they were slaves? It also follows that such a statement also betrays not only supreme political ignorance, but economic ignorance as well - typical of Progressives and the modern left.
Van:
"what in the Heck are you debating the issue at all for?"
Simple curiosity. But my curiosity is limited; I cannot possibly affect American politics, so my taking what amounts to an American civics course is somewhat pointless - and of course such a course will be pretty heavy on the propaganda. If I need specific information; well, that's what the Internet is for.
I will take a stab at defining the central issue - one that has been debated for thousands of years, and humanity hasn't got it right yet. That issue appears to be the greatest happiness and freedom of the greatest number. Freedom, that is, consistent with not impinging on the freedom or well-being of others; only real extremists advocate total freedom including the unrestricted freedom to commit violence on anyone else. In any case, anarchy is unstable.
Benevolent dictatorship may be an ideal as far as the happiness is concerned - but that, of course, depends on the benevolence continuing.
...dozens of pages of possibilities omitted...
I believe that it was Churchill who said that "Democracy is the worst political system conceivable, apart from all the others". One specific problem is that unfettered democracy is hard on the minority. Another is that democracy in any form (going back to the roots - "rule by the people") relies on the voters being responsible in the exercise of their vote; which requires as a minimum that the electorate is at least able to understand the issues. Another is the buying of votes by one means or another. (bread and circuses, pork-barrel, heavy lobbying?)
Hell, entire books have been written on this sort of subject. By the way, does being a science-fiction writer mean that you are not allowed to express your ideas, or that others are not allowed to consider them?
Perhaps the Singularity will solve all our problems. Having a non-human entity or entities, with none of our hormonally-based drives, running society might be the best idea of all. I think I'd like to live in the Culture.
Posted by: Fletcher Christian at May 19, 2008 2:53 PM"so my taking what amounts to an American civics course is somewhat pointless - and of course such a course will be pretty heavy on the propaganda. "
(blink)
An 'American civics course'!? Propaganda?!
Click the link I left above, the first two references linked to, you'll find are for
1. John Locke, Second Treatise, § 131, 1689
2. William Blackstone, Commentaries 1:157, 1765
You're countrymen. Work on through the site and you'll also find Cicero, Montesquieu, Aristotle, etc. There's no Propaganda, there's the development of, and arguments for and against, a revolutionary development of ideas. 'American civics’ lesson'... the Founders didn't discover an 'American' anything, civics or otherwise, they drew on the lessons of history, found the next lesson to be learned, and put it into practice. There is nothing exclusively American about what they accomplished, only that the time and place it was in America. Sorry, but what you said smacks of (and I don't mean the deeper insult or equivocation here, just the sense) Hitler forcing Einstein out of Germany (to America), saying they didn't ‘need no stinkin' jewish science’. That kind of thinking tends to come back and bite you in the end.
“Another is that democracy in any form (going back to the roots - "rule by the people") relies on the voters being responsible in the exercise of their vote; which requires as a minimum that the electorate is at least able to understand the issues.”
Yep, a Republic (‘if you can keep it’) requires an educated, not schooled, but educated and aware populace. That requires a people who don’t dismiss their most significant ideas and history as propaganda.
"By the way, does being a science-fiction writer mean that you are not allowed to express your ideas, or that others are not allowed to consider them?"
Of course not, and some of the best writing done in recent times has come from science fiction writers, but when considering such issues, the first level or knowledge and understanding ought to come from closer to home, then more abstract considerations have a foundation more worthy of being abstracted from.
"Perhaps the Singularity will solve all our problems. Having a non-human entity or entities, with none of our hormonally-based drives, running society might be the best idea of all. I think I'd like to live in the Culture."
Yeah. Or perhaps you'll be led to the slaughter by those wanting only "To serve mankind" (a little twilight zone (?) science fiction there for ya).
Just finished watching the second episode of HBO's John Adams before reading this. Truly, only those who have "cleared history" can support what is happening in this country right now. To turn our backs on liberty for the soft tyranny of the European welfare state is a damn shame. And a bitter irony. I pray you are right, Gerard, about the Declaration and Constitution being as persistent an idea as "standing up". However, I fear the temptations of socialism are as the serpent with the apple and humanity is doomed for the fall.
Posted by: Western Chauvinist at July 18, 2009 5:36 PMdude,
your clerk is all too typical youth, no past, (no history), no future, (thanks barry), living in the moment, the eternal now.
A blissful way of being until its time to open the vein and offer the jugular to the predators.
Nice piece.
Posted by: adagny at July 20, 2009 6:25 AMGrand and sweeping statement of our situation. Brilliant! Thanks for re-posting.
Posted by: Jimmy J. at July 22, 2012 9:29 AMLast night I stayed up late to watch Ann 'Barnburner' Barnhardt give a speech on the 1793 War against the Vendée. 4 parts. Bloody brilliant.
You learn a lot from clearing out 'useless history' and getting some better history. The kind of wiping of history going on now has happened before, and it's amazing that in this age of archiving everything electronically, that there still exists a 'history eraser' button.
It would be convenient for some enterprising earth worshiper to say, "Now that we have archived every important document of the West, we can just churn these books of old into cement and build prisons with it!" And then, mysteriously, all your books on Kindle will somehow...'vanish'.
History. Erased.
Posted by: Jewel at July 22, 2012 10:41 AMNice Post,
Clear history...
Pleased to meet you, Hope you guess my name..
But what's puzzling you Is the nature of my game
I stuck around st. petersburg, When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank, Held a generals rank When the blitzkrieg raged And the bodies stank
I watched with glee While your kings and queens Fought for ten decades For the gods they made
I shouted out,Who killed the kennedys? When after all It was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached bombay
Pleased to meet you..Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah ..But what's puzzling you, Is the nature of my game,
The nature of the game IS to clear history, that is the only why..
Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.. I think Mick and Keith unearthed an acorn writing Lucifer's theme song..
Some want to build... Some just want to burn...
The "New World Order", that is often discussed by the conspiracy theorists (see the back of a dollar bill), was originally to be the spreading of America's freedoms across the globe, not the spread of a global ruling class, but the spread of true freedom for all of mankind. The rulers today fear personal freedoms just as the rulers of old feared it, for personal freedom is the antithesis of their power. Another excellent piece, Mr. Vanderleun, my thanks and compliments. Pray for America.
Posted by: Roger Drew Williams at July 25, 2012 8:26 AM
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