“Most important, and of greatest concern, was how intelligents thought. An intelligent signed on to a set of beliefs regarded as totally certain, scientifically proven, and absolutely obligatory for any moral person.”
“A strict intelligent had to subscribe to some ideology—whether populist, Marxist, or anarchist—that was committed to the total destruction of the existing order and its replacement by a utopia that would, at a stroke, eliminate every human ill.”
“The mentality of the intelligentsia constituted a cruel parody of religion, preserving “the external features of religiosity without its content.”
Still worse, intelligentsia “science” entailed an assertion that the world worked by blind, purposeless force and yet, as if guided by providence, was guaranteed to progress in human terms and reach moral perfection. (As people say today, the arc of history bends toward justice.)
If there was one “philosopheme” shared by intelligents it was the assumption that all questions must be judged politically. Thus, one could discredit a scientific theory not by logic or evidence but by calling its implications “reactionary” (“and what don’t we call reactionary!”)
For the Woke, “there is no other foot.”
“Socialized to regard anything conservative as reprehensible—and still worse, as a social faux pas—they contrived ways to justify radical intolerance and violence as forced, understandable, and noble.”
“Educated society knew that one could not just abolish the police, as the anarchists demanded, and that socialism would not instantly cure all ills, but they assured themselves that progressive opinion must be right:”
“Could its validity be doubted, when it was accepted by all progressive minds?”
“Only people with an exceptionally strong spirit could resist the hypnosis of a common faith. . . . Tolstoy resisted, and so did Dostoevsky, but the average person, even if he did not believe, dared not admit it.”
“One sometimes hears that “the pendulum is bound to swing back.” But how does one know there is a pendulum at all, rather than—let us say—a snowball accelerating downhill? It is unwise to comfort oneself with metaphors.”
WHEN A PARTY IS WILLING TO PUSH ITS POWER AS FAR AS IT CAN GO, IT WILL KEEP GOING UNTIL IT ENCOUNTERS SUFFICIENT OPPOSITION.
WHAT MEETS NO RESISTANCE DOES NOT STOP.
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“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
This is easily shown to be FALSE.
Thus: A accuses B of wronging her. C does not know whether A’s accusation is true or false.
If B did wrong A in the manner accused, there is a situation of injustice.
If not, then A has falsely accused B, and there is a situation of injustice.
C being neutral is not unjust.
The neutrality of C is the foundation of DUE PROCESS. Neither A nor B have any claim on C’s allegiance, so long as C is in a state of ignorance regarding the particulars, even though C knows that EITHER A OR B has acted unjustly, and so there is ‘a situation of injustice.'
“What is it? It is, I’d argue, the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation.”
“It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of “white supremacy,” which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history.”
Nothing so far has made America accept Communism — but a race war might.
Well, most of us won’t accept it, but our elites might.
If America falls to Race Communism, it will achieve what Communism always achieves: totalitarian terror, misery, mass murder, the end of freedom, and incalculable human suffering — for a century or so, until it collapses under its own evil weight.
Even Verne — who is wrong to say that anything that can be imagined can be done — subordinates imagination to “what can be done,” or reality.
Verne is obviously wrong: we can *imagine* all sorts of things we cannot do, e.g. squaring the circle in Euclidean geometry, building a perpetual motion machine, implementing a happy, non-tyrannical Communism, and so on.