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Blupete's Weekly Commentary


May 13th, 2001.

"Totalitarianism."

In 1782, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity." (Notes on Virginia.)

A society that is under a central authoritarian control (total control) is one wherein totalitarianism exists. In such a system private judgment is sacrificed for the sake of public control. What the controllers believe is necessary, is, to shackle the spirit of man. While such a system is always under pressure from the natural diversity of human opinion, there is no arguing with totalitarian authority, thus there is only two ways to respond: it's either crack up or crack down. Ultimately force is always required; one way or another.

The idea that one group has the right to coerce the whole, so that they might comply with what the coercing group thinks ought to be done, has roots that run deep. We may go back to the times of Plato and come up to current day, there has always been men with waking dreams, dupes of imposture, who will torture and kill in their vain attempts to make their fellow men comply with their visions. Why is this? Well, it is, because there are men who feel obliged to feed their ego, or, because they have visions of bettering the human condition, maybe both. The first glint of knowledge will often ignite the imaginations of people. Their imaginations become turgid with glorious ideas. They take leadership positions for themselves and then proceed to dispense nostrums for the ills of mankind: we should do this or we should do that. They think that a rational approach will work! Some (most, I suspect) have no idea as to what might work, or not; they simply have pleasure conducting the weighty affairs of state, going from one thing to another, and back again: all at great expense and human misery.

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Peter Landry

May, 2001 (2019)