Posted on 11/12/2004 2:18:38 PM PST by swilhelm73
Wretchard at the Belmont Club has a really outstanding post about the problems and challenges a society faces when its democratic apparatus loses the moral superstructure it was originally housed in.
This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. As Wretchard notes, America's founders took it as a given that the larger society had the sort of moral controls and institutions necessary for a healthy society. The machinery of the American democratic system was largely -- though certainly not entirely -- amoral. This tracked the consensus of the Scottish -- i.e. the good -- enlightenment as opposed to the French Enligtenment. Whatever the faults and horrors of the French Revolution, the one thing they understood was that most people want their governments to reside within their moral universe rather than without. Even today the French are very comfortable using the State as an instrument of culture and values in ways that still cause hissy fits here in the US.
For good or ill, I've become increasingly convinced that it is impossible in the modern age to keep the state from falling into the hands of those who want to use it toward moral ends (Sorry my anarcho-libertarian friends). People who are driven by moral passions and missions are simply more likely to do the hard work necessary to wrest control of the levers of government. This needn't be scary or bad and it can be great. But it is a fact. Which mean a society -- not just its government -- must be very, very concerned about the sorts of citizens it creates. In Holland, as Wretchard notes, radical Muslims could win the battle if for no other reason they care more about winning than the, until recently, self-indulgent, spoiled and lazy Dutch who've taken the tolerance and decency of their system for granted.
Anyway, read the post. We'll chat about all this more later.
But everybody believes what they are doing is morally right, no matter what side they are on.
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia XIII
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts. . . . Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government.
George Washington: Farewell Address
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of NATURE AND OF NATURE'S GOD entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. . . . We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; . . . We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the SUPREMES JUDGE OF THE WORLD for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; . . . And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Declaration of Independence
There is a twofold mode of truth in what we profess about god. Some truths about god exceed all the ability of the human reason. Such is the truth that God is triune. But there are some truths which the natural reason also is able to reach. Such are that god exists, that He is one, and the like. In fact, such truths about God have been proved demonstratively by the philosophers, guided by the light of the natural reason.
Saint Thomas Aquinas: Summa Contra Gentiles, Chapter III, (2)
The country was founded on the principles of Natural Rights discernible by natural reason. It is the job of conservatives to keep it that way.
The two best books on the subject:
Natural Right and History: Leo Strauss.
A New Birth of Freedom: Harry Jaffa.
I think the left is actually rejecting any notion of morality as a guide. Morality is based upon "higher" principles to which the left does not subscribe.
A lefty is guided by his or her own desires, period! Do not try to tell them there is a higher power who has made rules to govern our lives.
Someone needs to tell the left: reports of the death of God are premature.
Judge-made law is the biggest departure from natural law that the 20th century witnessed. The 21th century may be the deciding one for the U.S; whether it remains a civilization that is based on the rules of natural law or slides into anarchy from societal manipulators who teach that there are no responsibilities, everyone is a victim and that self-esteem is the divine concept at the center of it's version of civilization.
I love that so I thought I would post it again.
And I'll bump YOUR bump. ;^)
A very lucid post.
Is a state democratic or is that merely the form of the gov't set up under the state? Is the existence of a state a metaphysical question? Are states created or do they arise naturally from society? There seems to be a distinction between the State and the state, and the terms are used interchangeably and confusedly.
Democracy Versus Republic
When our Founding Fathers established a "republic," in the hope, as Benjamin Franklin said, that we could keep it, and when they guaranteed to
every state within that "republic" a "republican form" of government, they
well knew the significance of the terms they were using. And were doing all
in their power to make the feature of government signified by those terms
as permanent as possible. They also knew very well indeed the meaning of
the word democracy, and the history of democracies; and they were
deliberately doing everything in their power to avoid for their own times,
and to prevent for the future, the evils of a democracy.
Let's look at some of the things they said to support and clarify this
purpose. On May 31,1787, Edmund Randolph told his fellow members of the
newly assembled Constitutional Convention that the object for which the
delegates had met was "to provide a cure for the evils under which the
United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every
man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy...."
The Founders Knew the Difference
The delegates to the Convention were clearly in accord with this
statement. At about the same time another delegate, Elbridge Gerry, said: "The evils
we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want
(that is, do not lack) virtue; but are the dupes of pretended patriots."
And on June 21,1788, Alexander Hamilton made a speech in which he stated:
It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable
would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no
position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the
people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of
government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.
Another time Hamilton said: "We are a Republican Government. Real liberty
is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy." Samuel Adams
warned: "Remember, Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts
and murders itself! There never was a democracy that 'did not commit
suicide."' James Madison, one of the members of the Convention who was
charged with drawing up our Constitution, wrote follows:
. . . democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and
contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or
the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives
as they have been violent in their deaths.
Madison and Hamilton and Jay and their compatriots of the Convention
prepared and adopted a Constitution in which they nowhere even mentioned
the word democracy, not because they were not familiar with such a form of
government, but because they were. The word democracy had not occurred in
the Declaration of Independence, and does not appear in the constitution
of a single one of our fifty states-which constitutions are derived mainly
from the thinking of the Founding Fathers of the Republic- for the same
reason. They knew all about Democracies, and if they had wanted one for
themselves and their posterity, they would have founded one. Look at all
the elaborate system of checks and balances which they established; at the
carefully worked-out protective clauses of the Constitution itself, and
especially of the first ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights; at the
effort, as Jefferson put it, to "bind men down from mischief by the chains
of the Constitution," and thus to solidify the rule not of men but of
laws. All of these steps were taken, deliberately, to avoid and to prevent a
Democracy, or any of the worst features of a Democracy, in the United
States.
And so our Republic was started on its way. And for well over a hundred
years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a
republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that
distinction. Again, let's look briefly at some of the evidence.
Washington, in his first inaugural address, dedicated himself to "the
preservation . . . of the republican model of government." Thomas
Jefferson, our third president, was the founder of the Democratic Party;
but in his first inaugural address, although he referred several times to
the Republic or the republican form of government he did not use the word
"democracy" a single time. And John Marshall, who was Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835, said: "Between a balanced republic and a
democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."
Throughout the Nineteenth Century and the early part of the Twentieth,
while America as a republic was growing great and becoming the envy of the
whole world, there were plenty of wise men, both in our country and
outside of it, who pointed to the advantages of a republic, which we were
enjoying, and warned against the horrors of a democracy, into which we might fall.
Around the middle of that century, Herbert Spencer, the great English
philosopher, wrote, in an article on The Americans: "The Republican form
of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it
requires the highest type of human nature-a type nowhere at present
existing."
And in truth we have not been a high enough type to preserve the
republic we then had, which is exactly what he was prophesying.
Thomas Babington Macaulay said: "I have long been convinced that
institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or
civilization, or both." And we certainly seem to be in a fair way today to
fulfill his dire prophecy. Nor was Macaulay's contention a mere personal
opinion without intellectual roots and substance in the thought of his
times. Nearly two centuries before, Dryden had already lamented that ~no
government had ever been, or ever can be, wherein timeservers and
blockheads will not be uppermost." And as a result, he had spoken of
nations being "drawn to the dregs of a democracy." While in 1795 Immanuel
Kant had written: "Democracy is necessarily despotism."
In 1850 Benjamin Disraeli, worried as was Herbert Spencer at what was
already being foreshadowed in England, made a speech to the British House
of Commons in which he said: "If you establish a democracy, you must in
due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great
impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase
of public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from
passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace
ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your
authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season
find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete."
Disraeli could have made that speech with even more appropriateness before
a joint session of the United States Congress in 1935. In 1870 he had
already come up with an epigram which is strikingly true for the United
States today. "The world is weary," he said, "of statesmen whom democracy
has degraded into politicians."
But even in Disraeli's day there were similarly prophetic voices on this
side of the Atlantic. In our own country James Russell Lowell showed that
he recognized the danger of unlimited majority rule by writing:
Democracy gives every man The right to be his own oppressor.
W.H. Seward pointed out that "Democracies are prone to war, and war con-
sumes them." This is an observation certainly borne out during the past
fifty years exactly to the extent that we have been becoming a democracy
and fighting wars, with each trend as both a cause and an effect of the
other one. And Ralph Waldo Emerson issued a most prophetic warning when he
said: "Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors." If
Emerson could have looked ahead to the time when so many of the editors
would themselves be a part of, or sympathetic to, the gang of bullies, as
they are today, he would have been even more disturbed. And in the 1880's
Governor Seymour of New York said that the merit of our Constitution was,
not that it promotes democracy, but checks it.
Across the Atlantic again, a little later, Oscar Wilde once contributed
this epigram to the discussion: "Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of
the people, by the people, for the people." While on this side, and after
the first World War had made the degenerative trend in our government so
visible to any penetrating observer, H.L. Mencken wrote: "The most popular
man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most
despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him
to boss them. Their natural gait is the goosestep." While Ludwig Lewisohn
observed: "Democracy, which began by liberating men politically, has
developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of
majorities and the deadly power of their opinion."
"... democracies have ever been spectacles
of turbulence and contention; have ever been
found incompatible with personal security or
the rights of property; and have in general been
as short in their lives as they have been violent
in their deaths."
James Madison, known as the father of the U.S.
Constitution, in "Essay #10" of The Federalist
Papers: ".
[I pledge allegiance to the flag..... and to the REPUBLIC for
which it stands...!]
Didn't Dostoyevsky also state that if God did not exist, we would have to invent him?
Belmont Club
Address:http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/11/communism-of-21st-century-cardinal.html Changed:3:40 PM on Friday, November 12, 2004
______________________________________
Jonah urges us to read this post..
Why?
Which country are you refering to? The USA is a Republican form of government - NOT a democracy.
I'm more and more inclined to think that there really is no such thing as a content-neutral political framework or procedure for government, although we might suppose that what we have of elections, representative government, and judicial procedure, these things may be the closest thing anyone ever had in the history of the world to being neutral. But even the political framework is inherently disposed to produce a particular product. Our framework appeals to a low common denominator and the old see-saw between the populares and the optimates is like a jack-in-the-box nemesis of every political order ever created.
Thanks for the link.
Answer: Yes.
Wretchard at the Belmont Club has a really outstanding post about the problems and challenges a society faces when its democratic apparatus loses the moral superstructure it was originally housed in.
I read it, Jonah. You are easily impressed.
This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. As Wretchard notes, America's founders took it as a given that the larger society had the sort of moral controls and institutions necessary for a healthy society.
Not at all. They wrote a Constitution that used separations of power and checks & balances to help protect the individual american from all levels of government in the USA, fed, state or local.
The machinery of the American democratic system was largely -- though certainly not entirely -- amoral. This tracked the consensus of the Scottish -- i.e. the good -- enlightenment as opposed to the French Enligtenment.
Yes, amoral. -- Amorality in politics is good.
Our ~Constitutional Republic~ was to be above any particular mans vision of 'morality'. We were to value the rule of constitutional law above the rules made by men's gods.
Whatever the faults and horrors of the French Revolution, the one thing they understood was that most people want their governments to reside within their moral universe rather than without. Even today the French are very comfortable using the State as an instrument of culture and values in ways that still cause hissy fits here in the US.
As well it should. Tell me Jonah, is it bad to get into a bit of a 'hissy fit' when a State like CA violates your RKBA's? This offends my culture & values no end.
For good or ill, I've become increasingly convinced that it is impossible in the modern age to keep the state from falling into the hands of those who want to use it toward moral ends (Sorry my anarcho-libertarian friends).
Jonah, -- living in a police state/city like NY no doubt makes you that way. You're just a victim of your upbringing, poor little fella.
But please, get a grip, and try to think of living in liberty. It works, -- in much of the US.
People who are driven by moral passions and missions are simply more likely to do the hard work necessary to wrest control of the levers of government. This needn't be scary or bad and it can be great.
Its GREAT to have 'moral' zealots on a mission to wrest control of our government? How could we believe their oaths to honor our Constitution as the supreme Law?
The rational mind boggles at such Jonah-ism.
But it is a fact. Which means a society -- not just its government -- must be very, very concerned about the sorts of citizens it creates.
Um, -- 'government & society' should not be in the business of 'creating' citizens. Your communitarian slip is showing, jonah.
In Holland, as Wretchard notes, radical Muslims could win the battle if for no other reason they care more about winning than the, until recently, self-indulgent, spoiled and lazy Dutch who've taken the tolerance and decency of their system for granted.
Dutchmen are just as capable as any other Europeans of winning battles. -- Have no fear jonah, they really aren't any more spoiled than most New Yorkers. [your uptown crowd excepted that is]
Anyway, read the post. We'll chat about all this more later.
I have the hardly waits to see you defend some of your bizarre positions.
I disagrees, people do things every day that are less than morally right to some degree both deliberately with full knowledge or by rationalize to justify there actions
To me the concept of original sin is to morally as the Socrates concept of wisdom is to knowledge
You accept that the path to wisdom is to acknowledge your ignorance nature
You accept that the path to morally right is to acknowledge your immorally (fallen) nature
In both cases the best you can do it go as far as you can it the right direction, to follow, accepting that there is perfect wisdom, perfect knowledge, perfect truth, and knowing we can never reach that perfection and will fall far, far short
Our saving grace is to follow and quest for what is truth external to man’s corrupt nature
To follow the dictates the moral compass not the whims of men
Shouldn't we get that settled before anything else?
It proposes mental health screening exams for all students in public schools.
Mental Health screening of kids
Should the Federal government be involved with things like mental health?
"But everybody believes what they are doing is morally right, no matter what side they are on."
At the time of the founding, and for generations after, America had a broad consensus of what constituted right and wrong. There were gaping differences,to be sure, as with slavery. But the fact is, until very recently, in America, some things simply were considered indefensible. And some things simply went without saying.
Unfortunately, largely due to the leftist sabotage from the 60's on, that sweep of consensus has been deliberately eroded.
Now, nothing can be assumed, nothing can safely be left to "go without saying." As a result, everything is up for grabs including the definitions of common words (like "marriage") and the definition of the virtues, which have been understood since antiquity.
So, what you say is true today, and illustrative of a severe problem in our culture.
It was not always so.
But just because everybody says they have different ideas of good and right doesn't mean that any of them are right or that there isn't any such thing as absolute good. We'll get this all sorted out, have faith.
The proposals by the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health afford the perfect opportunity.
For good or ill, I've become increasingly convinced that it is impossible in the modern age to keep the state from falling into the hands of those who want to use it toward moral ends (Sorry my anarcho-libertarian friends).
People who are driven by moral passions and missions are simply more likely to do the hard work necessary to wrest control of the levers of government. This needn't be scary or bad and it can be great.
But it is a fact.
Which means a society -- not just its government -- must be very, very concerned about the sorts of citizens it creates.
------------------------------------
Um, -- 'government & society' should not be in the business of 'creating' citizens. Your communitarian slip is showing again, jonah.
-tpaine-
Wonder if they'd consider using government mental health workers to instill the correct morality in public school kids.
The proposals by the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health afford the perfect opportunity.
Consider?
Hell, the socialists of right n' left - Communitarian's all, [exemplified by the Jonah crowd] establish these 'Commissions' expressly for such purposes.
Jonah & his mother are typical of these faux 'east coast' self proclaimed conservatives. -- They scored big political points by loudly opposing Clinton.
They are now rapidly losing all credibility as their true socialistic agenda becomes clear.
"Cultural relativity, that's what it is."
Certainly that is a shaping influence; also, a more general moral relativism, which eviscerates the very meaning of good and evil, right and wrong by demanding that we eschew "judgmentalism." Back in the 70's schools taught something called "values clarification," a hideous exercise in just this sort of amorality.
The malignant agenda underlying this corrosion of civil society is the hard leftist drive to make the State the ultimate authority on everything. Virtue will be what the government says it is, not what God says, or the wisdom of the ancients, or the common ground held dear by a cohesive nation. Marriage will be what some judge says it is. Sexual relations will be whatever some diseased psychopath can get the media to say it is. Natural law will be wiped out and with it the defining elements of our culture, the infrastructure of our nation.
Without democratic values and rights and powers reserved to the people, we will be as an undifferentiated mass, our lives shaped and structured by an authoritarian moral exoskeleton imposed by a godless and soul-dead cabal of power-driven thugs.
Hinkley:
Certainly that is a shaping influence; also, a more general moral relativism, which eviscerates the very meaning of good and evil, right and wrong by demanding that we eschew "judgmentalism." Back in the 70's schools taught something called "values clarification," a hideous exercise in just this sort of amorality.
The malignant agenda underlying this corrosion of civil society is the hard leftist drive to make the State the ultimate authority on everything.
tpaine here:
--- The 'hard rightists' on FR are making the exact same drive.
I've been on thread after thread where dozens of FReepers argue that States like CA have the "ultimate authority" to prohibit assault weapons, etc.
Virtue will be what the government says it is, not what God says, or the wisdom of the ancients, or the common ground held dear by a cohesive nation.
Our common ground should be the Constitution & its Amendments. Far to many self-styled 'conservatives' here disagree.
Marriage will be what some judge says it is. Sexual relations will be whatever some diseased psychopath can get the media to say it is. Natural law will be wiped out and with it the defining elements of our culture, the infrastructure of our nation.
Good point; natual law, our inalienable rights to life, liberty & property, cannot be infringed by ANY level of government, fed, state, or local.
Without democratic values and rights and powers reserved to the people, we will be as an undifferentiated mass, our lives shaped and structured by an authoritarian moral exoskeleton imposed by a godless and soul-dead cabal of power-driven thugs.
Right on.
The state has no authorship. Some use the state lexically as a synonym for gov't, but the state is in no way like the gov't. The gov't as a corporate entity can have authorship. There is some debate among anthropologists about how the state arose, but they miss the firm philosophical foundation of development of the right and the law. Interestingly, the state is a concept only now being developed after 1000s of years of everybody assuming that everybody knew what they meant. Turns out nobody knew what they meant. Stay tuned for exciting new developments in the theory of the state.
'You understand well enough HOW the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me WHY we cling to power.
What is our motive? Why should we want power? Go on, speak,' he added as Winston remained silent.
Nevertheless Winston did not speak for another moment or two. A feeling of weariness had overwhelmed him. The faint, mad gleam of enthusiasm had come back into O'Brien's face. He knew in advance what O'Brien would say. That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail, cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. That the party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of others. The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing was that when O'Brien said this he would believe it. You could see it in his face. O'Brien knew everything. A thousand times better than Winston he knew what the world was really like, in what degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what lies and barbarities the Party kept them there. He had understood it all, weighed it all, and it made no difference: all was justified by the ultimate purpose. What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly. 'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore----'
He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.
'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he said. 'You should know better than to say a thing like that.'
He pulled the lever back and continued:
'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'
Winston was struck, as he had been struck before, by the tiredness of O'Brien's face. It was strong and fleshy and brutal, it was full of intelligence and a sort of controlled passion before which he felt himself helpless; but it was tired. There were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged from the cheekbones. O'Brien leaned over him, deliberately bringing the worn face nearer.
'You are thinking,' he said, 'that my face is old and tired. You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism. Do you die when you cut your fingernails?'
He turned away from the bed and began strolling up and down again, one hand in his pocket.
'We are the priests of power,' he said. 'God is power. But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone--free--the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he IS the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body--but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter--external reality, as you would call it--is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute.'
For a moment Winston ignored the dial. He made a violent effort to raise himself into a sitting position, and merely succeeded in wrenching his body painfully.
'But how can you control matter?' he burst out. 'You don't even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are disease, pain, death----'
O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. 'We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation--anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.'
'But you do not! You are not even masters of this planet. What about Eurasia and Eastasia? You have not conquered them yet.'
'Unimportant. We shall conquer them when it suits us. And if we did not, what difference would it make? We can shut them out of existence. Oceania is the world.'
'But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny--helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited.'
'Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.'
'But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals--mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of.'
'Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.'
'But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach for ever.'
'What are the stars?' said O'Brien indifferently. 'They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it.'
Winston made another convulsive movement. This time he did not say anything. O'Brien continued as though answering a spoken objection:
'For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?'
Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said, the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he knew, he KNEW, that he was in the right. The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind--surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false? Had it not been exposed long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name for it, which he had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the corners of O'Brien's mouth as he looked down at him.
'I told you, Winston,' he said, 'that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression,' he added in a different tone. 'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.' He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'
Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.
'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy--everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always--do not forget this, Winston--always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever.'
He paused as though he expected Winston to speak. Winston had tried to shrink back into the surface of the bed again. He could not say anything. His heart seemed to be frozen. O'Brien went on:
'And remember that it is for ever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. Everything that you have undergone since you have been in our hands--all that will continue, and worse. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease. It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. Goldstein and his heresies will live for ever. Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon and yet they will always survive. This drama that I have played out with you during seven years will be played out over and over again generation after generation, always in subtler forms. Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible--and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning, I can see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end you will do more than understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become part of it.'
At risk of sounding disrespectful of such obviously learned men, how come these seemingly powerful quotes are never accompanied by any examples? Does anyone know of a good political history book(s)?
Thought provoking post. Bump for later.
Copy that!
And ol' St. Paul would say to that, "Against love there is no law."
You couldn't be morewrong, tpaine, and that's saying a lot.
As president John Adams once said, "Our Constitution was written for a moral and religious people – it is wholly unfit for any other."
RE: Metaphysical morality, accidental backbone...
There is a preponderence of evidence of deliberate language in the constitution that nakedly describes the moral context of our laws. Everything from being "created(not born)equal," to the "freedom OF (not FROM) religion (as Tom Wolfe mentions)" harkens to a strong moral backbone that was intended, not accidental. It maybe late, but take note even Democratic strongman Hillary Clinton quoted the bible a few days ago, this was the same woman who subtley affronted Bush in a press conference during the election regarding his Evangelical faith.
P.S.
And if I hear that hackneyed catchphrase "whatabout' separation of church and state?" again without any other proof or points I am going to scream.
robertpaulsen wrote:
You couldn't be morewrong, tpaine, and that's saying a lot.
Our Constitutions words support my view, paulsen. You have admitted in the past that you can't even agree that our 2nd amendment RKBA's is valid in States of the Union.
Thus, your Constitutional credibility is non-existent on this forum.
As president John Adams once said, "Our Constitution was written for a moral and religious people – it is wholly unfit for any other."
Adams considered himself an arbiter of other peoples morals. [much like you do] Many of his peers disagreed.
flying monkey bttt
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.