Democracy is unstable as a political system as long as it remains a political system and nothing more, instead of being, as it should be, not only a form of government but a type of society, and a manner of life which is in harmony with that type. To make it a type of society requires an advance along two lines. It involves, in the first place, the resolute elimination of all forms of special privilege which favour some groups and depress other, whether their source be differences of environment, of education, or of pecuniary income. It involves, in the second place, the conversion of economic power, now often an irresponsible tyrant, into a servant of society, working within clearly defined limits and accountable for its actions to a public authority. –R.H. Tawney, Keeping Left (1950)
The morning sun scorches the dying bees; earthquake predictions are regularly ignored so as to avoid causing undue panic should the predictions be faulty – which they quite often are. Local television news report of the 7.9 Mw earthquake event as thought it was brought on by “climate change” and “global warming”; and at the same time the Myanmar junta is slow to respond to offers of help, scared as though they must be to appear weak and scared to accept help from people that just some months earlier called for their overthrow and prayed persistently for their deaths when the pompous monks demanded a resumption of fuel subsidies.
The Chinese government allows free market elements, yet now they are bad for doing so; the government was not firm enough when handling out construction contracts; was it not just following the recommendations of the IMF and World Bank (the scum of the world in my book, so to say) economists. It is their fault, their fault; when it happens to us it is by accident, when it happens to the ideological enemy, we are always quick to blame.
Light goes up.
The Soviets do what the U.S. does; when the U.S. or its allies do something, it is done for freedom, liberty and prosperity; the soviets do the same, and it is an act of dangerous aggression, a fascistic totalitarian act of despicable inhumanity. We will liberate you. Let you taste the air of freedom—the same system as before, we just changed the faces of the rulers and the empty words they spew.
What you are I was, what I am you will be.
It is double-think; not mere allegory, not mere criticism, it is vast and it is efficient, intelligent and deep, profound;
. . , the rulers of mankind . . . maintain side by side two standards of social ethics, without the risk of their colliding. Keeping one set of values for use, and another for display, they combine, without conscious insincerity, the moral satisfaction of idealistic principles with the material advantages of realistic practice.
Posted by Gothic Lolita Kei