No that is a bad tyranny. The worst tyranny is one being sincerely exercised for the detriment of the citizens (serfs). Unfortunately we now are getting the latter not the former.
I would add that we are currently at the stage where they are PRETENDING that they are doing it for the good of the citizens, sort of, kinda mostly, sometimes. That stage will soon end and the next stage is where they tell us: "put up and shut up or die".
Such observations were already old when Augustine of Hippo wrote in The City of God:
What are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues people, it assumes more plainly the name of a kingdom, because reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was the apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when the king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it in a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”
when the state undertakes such acts as one citizen cannot without consent engage in against another without committing a crime, then the state has become a criminal.
democracy is a fraudulent fig-leaf behind which to hide such offenses.
the popularity of such acts has no bearing upon their fundamental nature.
"The State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men who clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation – that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class – that is, for a criminal purpose.
No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient."
~ Albert Jay Nock, The Criminality of the State, American Mercury, March 1939.
'Democracy' nowadays seems to consist of convincing enough citizens that a democracy is still in working order, rather than making it work as a democracy.
Since the latter is the more difficult of the two tasks, would-be tyrants naturally choose the former.
So far almost completely ignored in this conversation: Who is profiting from government? Not just amassing wealth, but also power? If one be honest, this is almost always the raison de etre of a government, to perpetuate itself (its power), which by extension means the protection and expansion of the rent-seeking (and power-seeking) portion controlling or supported by the regime. "Follow the money," oldest rule in the book. It doesn't explain all, but probably nearly all.
And God had a few words about trading God the King in for a man King> Boy did he nail it:
"So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men[a] and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
And that is the benevolent king Saul which God chose in love for His people. Many worse came after. And here we are today.
Much to my chagrin, I have only recently begun reading (listening while driving, really) to the old testament for the 1st real time in my life. Sure, there was some that I vaguely recalled from Sunday School, lo those many years ago, but no great appreciation for it.
While there are many deeply meaningful, timeless lessons throughout the bible, reading of Saul and God's hesitancy to appoint him, along with His chastisement about what the Israelites thought they wanted really struck a harmony with me. Truly, the feeling that was always within me and growing by the day, became entirely concrete and real. Our relationship with God and our obedience to His commands have ALWAYS been essentially personal in nature. Our forgiveness through His grace, no less so. While we may be ruled by kings and take counsel from other men, the responsibility to make an accounting for our own personal governance rests entirely with each of us.
It left no doubt in me that Christ is the fulfillment of His promise for a messiah. It wiped away any lingering notion I may have had that He was to be the savior of Israel as a people. Instead, He is my personal savior. Indeed, the personal savior of any that will accept Him.
Given the Israeli government's recent enthusiasm for administering clot-shots to the vast majority of its unsuspecting citizens, it may soon be time for Israel's saviour to step in again...
Agreed. There is great wisdom in there. I am unbeliever, so I will leave the God aspect untouched. I did want to add one point: What one learns in any organized religion will be at best, a tiny fraction of what's in the Bible. There are many reasons for that, that I won't go into here. But in essence, you are getting a very censored view, much like what one is fed by the mainstream media. It's also worth mentioning that during much of its existence, the Church strongly discouraged the laity from reading Scripture (if they could read at all, which most of them couldn't.) Possession of same in native languages, or unauthorized versions, was severely punishable, sometimes by death. Apparently becoming fully informed and thinking for oneself is the ultimate sin/crime.
Edit: it occurs to me that this is precisely the dilemma presented by the Snake to Adam and Eve. Well, we are all fallen sinners now through no fault of our own. We are capable of learning good and evil, but we aren't born with that wisdom, we must absorb it.
Nietzsche echoes much the same sentiment, Man's inquiry into unknown (not necessarily forbidden) fields of study. In his introduction to "Beyond Good and Evil" uses the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx. The hero may succeed in answering the riddle and escaping death, conquer the guardian and uncover hidden truths. But at least in Oedipus's case, they were very sorrowful truths. As Nietzsche says, there is a risk in doing this, perhaps no greater risk.
God gives the instructions for a happy and full life in Him. Man's earthly nature mostly goes another way. He works it all out in the end. Which, if you are a Bible believing Christian, takes away the fear. At least for me. He is perfect with a perfect plan. Not that I understand all the plot twists or anything. : )
I keep repeating this to my friends every time they talk about some politician or other public figure who's going to be our savior from the (other) tyrants.
I believe you are mostly correct. My limited understanding is that it is more of a façade of official government, essentially controlled or planted officials of the Mafia. But as long as the façade keeps the peace and pays the feds/govs their regional taxes (tithe?) the feds don't poke their nose in. (personally, I suspect they are more honorable and better lords than most of our "elected" governments (Sorry, Canada has been rather draconian, gettin' snarly)).
Just like when I grew up, my kids get a healthy dose of distain for our government. They heard my opinions on the covid idiocy for two years. They see what I was saying become evident. I thought my dad was a bit too conspiratorial. Now I see I was naive.
I am ashamed to admit it gatito, but there are so, so many things that humans don't tell their mancubs. They just expect that they will learn them eventually and that will be our eventual downfall. The end of real civil society (as opposed to the fake civil society 2.0 via Soros) will be traced back to the end of the nuclear family. :(
No it will be traced back to ceding control over our governments, media, legal system and bureaucracies to the Bankster psychopaths hanging out in Davos & Geneva.
For sure we have ceded control as you have described, but I think if we had kept strong families, we could have kept our American identity. I look at the degradation of the black family in order to receive government benefits, which has left millions of children without dads. This was done on purpose to destroy a very strong nuclear family that was the foundation of the black community. And it's happened across all ethnicities/races in America. No matter the reason, we are FUBAR!
Yes, destroying the nuclear family is one of their methods, as is creating a dystopian society of decrepit people dependent on the state to survive, note Canada under YGL sycophant Trudeau moving to a $2000/mo UBI. But that is only two of many strategies they are employing to create their totalitarian techno-feudal world state. Another one is destroying our energy supply under the guise of contrived wars, climate change alarmism and the covid plandemic. And of course taking over all the major media outlets was a critical step they have fully succeeded at. And also infiltrating and subverting the legal system and municipal/regional governments. Their evil tentacles have woven in to every nick and cranny or our society, including the family through dependency welfare, forcing people to live in cesspool cities and a corrupted school system. To defeat them we must begin a long process of seizing control over all institutions from the local level upwards. This is war, join the REAL army and fight back.
The hopeful outlook is that the "Major Media Outlets" [MSM] are a declining business. The pessimistic viewpoint is that "Social Media" [even including the Substack community] are displacing the traditional outlets and mouthpieces and are not managed for the benefit of the unwashed masses.
As governments are now subsidising and controlling the traditional organs, the narrative is pervasive. Look at the Pharma control of previously reputable medical publications for a comparator.
The assault has been multi-pronged, well planned, and has the appearance of succeeding. Below the surface, I have some hope for our subversive cohort, but we will need to both resist and work to suppress the tyranny.
Yes, very true. And the problem is actually far worse than that.
[Note: in the rest of this comment, "Black" could be used as a place-holder for nearly any marginalized group (other races, women, the disabled, etc.) Some of the observations made may apply to other groups. Blacks, however, are historically by far the most prevalent disadvantaged group and thus the beneficiary (?) of attempts to improve their condition.]
Since (at least) the 1960s, under various happy sounding terms like "equal opportunity" or "affirmative action," various less than honest gambits were tried ostensibly to help Blacks. Are there not enough in a university or a profession? No problem; we'll just lower standards for them so we can include more! When this produces disappointing results, just blame white supremacy, racism or some other factor. It never occurs to them that double standards does more harm than good. Ultimately it even cripples the very group they were CLAIMING to help. Result? We now have two or more generations of people who to a large extent have phony credentials, positions, and so forth. Everyone knows this is the case, and it is taboo to discuss. The truly qualified or competent Black ironically ends up being lumped in with the larger pool of people who look like him but have unearned titles or credentials. The only "winners" in this scheme are the social justice warriors who may really believe they've improved matters, or the cynical ones earning an income from the scam.
[Late addition:] Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about:
Now, I'm not a civil rights attorney, but I thought it's been illegal since the 1950s to discriminate in education by race. That's been the case in outlawing separate schools, but apparently it's OK to use differing standards within the same school. This is far from the only example of course. This has been going on for over half a century. But does that make it right? In one instance demanding equal treatment without prejudice, yet doling out favors by race in others?
In recent years we are now seeing yet another example of double standards: the push to stop sending to prison, convicting, charging with a serious crime, or even arresting Blacks, even when they commit dangerous offenses. Again, the rallying cry is "racial equity" or some such. Blacks are disproportionately in prison? Yes. Well, then it must be due to racism! Really? Isn't it possible that they simply commit more crimes, for whatever reasons? Never mentioned is that the vast majority of the victims are of the same race and community as the perpetrator.
Nobody seems to ask what the ultimate result of all these social movements is likely to be. Far from being some socialist utopia or a Wakanda, it probably will be some flavor of Nihilism, the destruction of all values. Not a happy place, I'd guess.
I've been telling my mancub the truth about government since he was ten years old.
I started with the simple concept that taking the property of others without consent is theft, and therefore immoral, and that simply because the State confers the imprimatur of legality changes nothing. I showed him how much we pay in taxes and he was floored.
When he was twelve I gave him Hazlitt's *Economics in One Lesson* and Read's *I pencil*.
Then came Rothbard's *Anatomy of the State* and other essays.
Now that he's sixteen, it is time for The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but he is already 100% one of us. The word proud just doesn't do it justice.
Once you see it, you cannot unsee it, and rather see it everywhere.
"Government" is the repository of all the "Responsibility" that has been "Abandoned" by the "Individual".
Now some shifting of Individual Responsibility is practical and neccessary, but it is still Citizens giving to Government their rights & responsibilities with a caveat, "Consent of the Governed."
This Transfer of responsibility leads to Tyranny when the "Consent of the People" is ignored by the Government. Or the People become so insolent and worthless they don't care, or are incapable of taking care of themselves.
The flip side is We The Great Beast. We choose partisanship over character 24/7/365. Jack the butt stabber of boys or Jill the cannibal dining on infants has a partisan vetting or "Brand Name" logo. Functional illiteracy in politics enables us to trust the Logo and obey the mafia we vote in not caring much about our responsibility but insisting they are supposed to be our Nanny. Surely if citizens were not supine money grubbers out to save their skin and devil take the hindmost we would not be serfs in cubicles.
"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." https://www.ratical.org/ratville//CAH/warracket.html
Government ain't the greatest, there may be ways to avoid it, the idea would be networks rather than hierarchies. Right now we have the worst of the worst. We have a government which has been completely hijacked by a clique of Bankster Parasite Psychopaths and they are deliberately foisting the most incompetent, corruptible, sleazy politicians money can buy as our leaders using their unlimited wealth to buy the political machinery and media in every Western nation, and most Eastern nations.
Isn't it worse than that? I'm in the UK, so US politics are vague to me. At first when some claimed the vote was stolen from the Republicans it seemed possible but improbable. I could see that the media pressure was so overwhelming that many in the US who had input to the system might have acted illegally in the belief that it was their moral duty. At the time of the election, even in the UK, it was literally difficult to chat to a stranger on the street without them mentioning how ghastly Trump was. It was extraordinary, like mass brain washing. But then when the US proclaimed that anyone who claimed the vote was stolen was a terrorist, the balance of my opinion changed. That very heavily suggested that it was stolen, and the balance in my mind shifted to beyond reasonable doubt.
Goebbels, wasn't it, said that the public is easy to deceive so long as the lie is big enough.
But once you accept that the vote was stolen, everything makes sense - the lies, the rapacity, - and it's also very frightening. The US, biggest power in the world, is currently run by pirates with a deliberately picked, mentally weak, puppet president, and who knows what international forces supplying the strategy. No wonder people across the world don't want to believe that could be true.
The Craft of Power (R.G.H. Siu) …virtually unobtainable but maybe available free digitally. The best book I have ever run across, synthesizing the great thinkers on the subject of the elites keeping the subjects in their places. They should never let anyone out of Law school with out memorizing this book…but a 13 year olds version would be easy enough to distill.
I have one kid who listens (and had actually been researching FBI/CIA conspiracies on his own like their assassination habits) and one kid who is a total sucker for Establishment propaganda and says "I don't want to hear about your crazy political views."
number 2 has executive functioning issues, wish they'd picked better authorities to follow than the feds.
Generally speaking, free, semi-free, and even authoritarian governments just have the government with various administrative bodies. Totalitarian governments, on the other hand, have two parallel structures, the administrative and the political, with the political (Gestapo, KGB, Stasi, MSS, IRGJ) always watching the rest of the government making sure no one of questionable political reliability makes any decision of a questionable political nature. The United States is slowly morphing into this sort of totalitarian state except instead of the secret police being an explicit arm of the state, our secret police are private news companies and social media companies, who are more effective in some ways than the KGB or MSS at spying, and are backed up with both private force (Antifa, BLM) and public force (FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies).
Tend to agree. I would argue that there is much overlap between big government and big corporate. It's a bit of an over-simplification, but broadly speaking, they are all the same group of tightly-connected people. It goes by various names. Deep State. Etc. As is typically the case, one doesn't need to look far for evidence. While not typically broadcast on the news or the local paper, it's fairly easy to see that the most powerful are drawn mostly from certain universities and professions. In the USA, primarily Yale and Harvard. Many industries have an incestuous relationship, most dramatically big pharma or the defense industries. There is a revolving door between corporate and government employment. Nearly all major media is owned by a small handful of very wealthy entities. And so on. The evidence is there, but you have to look for it. The intelligence services are probably the hardest to track. Suffice to say they have people everywhere.
If there's any saving grace it may be this: The "Deep State" is far from monolithic. It may so appear to us ants, but the old saying "No honor among thieves" rings true. There will always be at least two, probably many more, factions vying for power. They will use any dirty tricks available to wrest wealth and power to their own advantage. Pessimistic I know, but what I've described is just human (animal) nature, operative in all times and all places. At best it can be minimized or managed. Anyone who thinks it can be wished or legislated away is, I argue, delusional.
A final "saving grace" may simply be that the scam can't continue forever. At some point the structure gets too rickety, there is nothing more to loot, whatever. A limit is reached. The whole system collapses. And then the survivors pick up the pieces, and the whole thing starts over again, from the bottom.
Indeed, there are factions among the Ruling Class all vying for more power and wealth. The first element in bringing down the scam (that we are a democracy and not an oligarchy) is for people to realize this fact. More and more people are becoming red-pilled on this issue, so that's a good sign.
Don't make me dig up that C.S. Lewis quote again, that one about the worst tyranny being the kind sincerely exercised for the good of the citizens.
No that is a bad tyranny. The worst tyranny is one being sincerely exercised for the detriment of the citizens (serfs). Unfortunately we now are getting the latter not the former.
I would add that we are currently at the stage where they are PRETENDING that they are doing it for the good of the citizens, sort of, kinda mostly, sometimes. That stage will soon end and the next stage is where they tell us: "put up and shut up or die".
I didn’t know that one… hmmm… I learn something new every day 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
Such observations were already old when Augustine of Hippo wrote in The City of God:
What are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues people, it assumes more plainly the name of a kingdom, because reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was the apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when the king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it in a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”
when the state undertakes such acts as one citizen cannot without consent engage in against another without committing a crime, then the state has become a criminal.
democracy is a fraudulent fig-leaf behind which to hide such offenses.
the popularity of such acts has no bearing upon their fundamental nature.
"The State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men who clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation – that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class – that is, for a criminal purpose.
No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient."
~ Albert Jay Nock, The Criminality of the State, American Mercury, March 1939.
Interesting monologue by Neil Oliver about the (broken) social contract between the State and the individual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS2iU1cqqYU
'Democracy' nowadays seems to consist of convincing enough citizens that a democracy is still in working order, rather than making it work as a democracy.
Since the latter is the more difficult of the two tasks, would-be tyrants naturally choose the former.
So far almost completely ignored in this conversation: Who is profiting from government? Not just amassing wealth, but also power? If one be honest, this is almost always the raison de etre of a government, to perpetuate itself (its power), which by extension means the protection and expansion of the rent-seeking (and power-seeking) portion controlling or supported by the regime. "Follow the money," oldest rule in the book. It doesn't explain all, but probably nearly all.
very eloquent
And God had a few words about trading God the King in for a man King> Boy did he nail it:
"So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men[a] and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
And that is the benevolent king Saul which God chose in love for His people. Many worse came after. And here we are today.
Much to my chagrin, I have only recently begun reading (listening while driving, really) to the old testament for the 1st real time in my life. Sure, there was some that I vaguely recalled from Sunday School, lo those many years ago, but no great appreciation for it.
While there are many deeply meaningful, timeless lessons throughout the bible, reading of Saul and God's hesitancy to appoint him, along with His chastisement about what the Israelites thought they wanted really struck a harmony with me. Truly, the feeling that was always within me and growing by the day, became entirely concrete and real. Our relationship with God and our obedience to His commands have ALWAYS been essentially personal in nature. Our forgiveness through His grace, no less so. While we may be ruled by kings and take counsel from other men, the responsibility to make an accounting for our own personal governance rests entirely with each of us.
It left no doubt in me that Christ is the fulfillment of His promise for a messiah. It wiped away any lingering notion I may have had that He was to be the savior of Israel as a people. Instead, He is my personal savior. Indeed, the personal savior of any that will accept Him.
Given the Israeli government's recent enthusiasm for administering clot-shots to the vast majority of its unsuspecting citizens, it may soon be time for Israel's saviour to step in again...
He is coming soon. Sooner than most think.
There is much that is bad to happen before Israel is reconciled, alas.
So glad I read this before heading out. SO good and true.
Thanks for the reminder of this passage. This is us exactly. Can you imagine...a tenth?!? Would that we should be so lucky!
I have only begin reading the Bible as an adult. And been stunned to find that it is all there. Everything that I have lived & witnessed is there.
It's a book about human nature, and God's response. It's all there for those who will see.
Agreed. There is great wisdom in there. I am unbeliever, so I will leave the God aspect untouched. I did want to add one point: What one learns in any organized religion will be at best, a tiny fraction of what's in the Bible. There are many reasons for that, that I won't go into here. But in essence, you are getting a very censored view, much like what one is fed by the mainstream media. It's also worth mentioning that during much of its existence, the Church strongly discouraged the laity from reading Scripture (if they could read at all, which most of them couldn't.) Possession of same in native languages, or unauthorized versions, was severely punishable, sometimes by death. Apparently becoming fully informed and thinking for oneself is the ultimate sin/crime.
Edit: it occurs to me that this is precisely the dilemma presented by the Snake to Adam and Eve. Well, we are all fallen sinners now through no fault of our own. We are capable of learning good and evil, but we aren't born with that wisdom, we must absorb it.
Nietzsche echoes much the same sentiment, Man's inquiry into unknown (not necessarily forbidden) fields of study. In his introduction to "Beyond Good and Evil" uses the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx. The hero may succeed in answering the riddle and escaping death, conquer the guardian and uncover hidden truths. But at least in Oedipus's case, they were very sorrowful truths. As Nietzsche says, there is a risk in doing this, perhaps no greater risk.
God gives the instructions for a happy and full life in Him. Man's earthly nature mostly goes another way. He works it all out in the end. Which, if you are a Bible believing Christian, takes away the fear. At least for me. He is perfect with a perfect plan. Not that I understand all the plot twists or anything. : )
Put not your trust in princes.
~Psalm 146:3
I keep repeating this to my friends every time they talk about some politician or other public figure who's going to be our savior from the (other) tyrants.
Nevertheless, kings with conscience who obey God do good to the people. There don't seem to be many of those around.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
I love this board.
Fascinating. I learn something new every day. Did not realize Saint Augustine was the first anarchist. LOL! Strange new respect.
He wasn’t the first. The prophets of the Old Testament were very anarchist in many ways.
When he says "running in parallel with," shouldn't it be, "running the official government"?
(Sorry, el gato, I see that was your point—I guess I sometimes struggle with shape rotation myself 😹)
"The state is the mafia pretending to be a human rights organization."
~ Dave Smith
I believe you are mostly correct. My limited understanding is that it is more of a façade of official government, essentially controlled or planted officials of the Mafia. But as long as the façade keeps the peace and pays the feds/govs their regional taxes (tithe?) the feds don't poke their nose in. (personally, I suspect they are more honorable and better lords than most of our "elected" governments (Sorry, Canada has been rather draconian, gettin' snarly)).
I protested Fauci at Princeton last week.
https://markoshinskie8de.substack.com/p/protesting-fauci-at-princeton?s=w
Awesome! Thank you
Yes and as always a thoughtful and insightful post MO!
Just like when I grew up, my kids get a healthy dose of distain for our government. They heard my opinions on the covid idiocy for two years. They see what I was saying become evident. I thought my dad was a bit too conspiratorial. Now I see I was naive.
I am ashamed to admit it gatito, but there are so, so many things that humans don't tell their mancubs. They just expect that they will learn them eventually and that will be our eventual downfall. The end of real civil society (as opposed to the fake civil society 2.0 via Soros) will be traced back to the end of the nuclear family. :(
No it will be traced back to ceding control over our governments, media, legal system and bureaucracies to the Bankster psychopaths hanging out in Davos & Geneva.
For sure we have ceded control as you have described, but I think if we had kept strong families, we could have kept our American identity. I look at the degradation of the black family in order to receive government benefits, which has left millions of children without dads. This was done on purpose to destroy a very strong nuclear family that was the foundation of the black community. And it's happened across all ethnicities/races in America. No matter the reason, we are FUBAR!
Yes, destroying the nuclear family is one of their methods, as is creating a dystopian society of decrepit people dependent on the state to survive, note Canada under YGL sycophant Trudeau moving to a $2000/mo UBI. But that is only two of many strategies they are employing to create their totalitarian techno-feudal world state. Another one is destroying our energy supply under the guise of contrived wars, climate change alarmism and the covid plandemic. And of course taking over all the major media outlets was a critical step they have fully succeeded at. And also infiltrating and subverting the legal system and municipal/regional governments. Their evil tentacles have woven in to every nick and cranny or our society, including the family through dependency welfare, forcing people to live in cesspool cities and a corrupted school system. To defeat them we must begin a long process of seizing control over all institutions from the local level upwards. This is war, join the REAL army and fight back.
The hopeful outlook is that the "Major Media Outlets" [MSM] are a declining business. The pessimistic viewpoint is that "Social Media" [even including the Substack community] are displacing the traditional outlets and mouthpieces and are not managed for the benefit of the unwashed masses.
As governments are now subsidising and controlling the traditional organs, the narrative is pervasive. Look at the Pharma control of previously reputable medical publications for a comparator.
The assault has been multi-pronged, well planned, and has the appearance of succeeding. Below the surface, I have some hope for our subversive cohort, but we will need to both resist and work to suppress the tyranny.
If/When the heavy hand of the Censor comes to Substack and similar presently (relatively) free sites, you will know that end is that much closer.
Yes, and the fight begins with educating our mancubs! as gatito bueno suggests! :)
Yes, very true. And the problem is actually far worse than that.
[Note: in the rest of this comment, "Black" could be used as a place-holder for nearly any marginalized group (other races, women, the disabled, etc.) Some of the observations made may apply to other groups. Blacks, however, are historically by far the most prevalent disadvantaged group and thus the beneficiary (?) of attempts to improve their condition.]
Since (at least) the 1960s, under various happy sounding terms like "equal opportunity" or "affirmative action," various less than honest gambits were tried ostensibly to help Blacks. Are there not enough in a university or a profession? No problem; we'll just lower standards for them so we can include more! When this produces disappointing results, just blame white supremacy, racism or some other factor. It never occurs to them that double standards does more harm than good. Ultimately it even cripples the very group they were CLAIMING to help. Result? We now have two or more generations of people who to a large extent have phony credentials, positions, and so forth. Everyone knows this is the case, and it is taboo to discuss. The truly qualified or competent Black ironically ends up being lumped in with the larger pool of people who look like him but have unearned titles or credentials. The only "winners" in this scheme are the social justice warriors who may really believe they've improved matters, or the cynical ones earning an income from the scam.
[Late addition:] Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about:
https://adnamerica.com/en/united-states/chicago-high-school-rolls-out-woke-plan-grade-based-race-not-merit
Now, I'm not a civil rights attorney, but I thought it's been illegal since the 1950s to discriminate in education by race. That's been the case in outlawing separate schools, but apparently it's OK to use differing standards within the same school. This is far from the only example of course. This has been going on for over half a century. But does that make it right? In one instance demanding equal treatment without prejudice, yet doling out favors by race in others?
In recent years we are now seeing yet another example of double standards: the push to stop sending to prison, convicting, charging with a serious crime, or even arresting Blacks, even when they commit dangerous offenses. Again, the rallying cry is "racial equity" or some such. Blacks are disproportionately in prison? Yes. Well, then it must be due to racism! Really? Isn't it possible that they simply commit more crimes, for whatever reasons? Never mentioned is that the vast majority of the victims are of the same race and community as the perpetrator.
Nobody seems to ask what the ultimate result of all these social movements is likely to be. Far from being some socialist utopia or a Wakanda, it probably will be some flavor of Nihilism, the destruction of all values. Not a happy place, I'd guess.
I've been telling my mancub the truth about government since he was ten years old.
I started with the simple concept that taking the property of others without consent is theft, and therefore immoral, and that simply because the State confers the imprimatur of legality changes nothing. I showed him how much we pay in taxes and he was floored.
When he was twelve I gave him Hazlitt's *Economics in One Lesson* and Read's *I pencil*.
Then came Rothbard's *Anatomy of the State* and other essays.
Now that he's sixteen, it is time for The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but he is already 100% one of us. The word proud just doesn't do it justice.
Once you see it, you cannot unsee it, and rather see it everywhere.
"Government" is the repository of all the "Responsibility" that has been "Abandoned" by the "Individual".
Now some shifting of Individual Responsibility is practical and neccessary, but it is still Citizens giving to Government their rights & responsibilities with a caveat, "Consent of the Governed."
This Transfer of responsibility leads to Tyranny when the "Consent of the People" is ignored by the Government. Or the People become so insolent and worthless they don't care, or are incapable of taking care of themselves.
The flip side is We The Great Beast. We choose partisanship over character 24/7/365. Jack the butt stabber of boys or Jill the cannibal dining on infants has a partisan vetting or "Brand Name" logo. Functional illiteracy in politics enables us to trust the Logo and obey the mafia we vote in not caring much about our responsibility but insisting they are supposed to be our Nanny. Surely if citizens were not supine money grubbers out to save their skin and devil take the hindmost we would not be serfs in cubicles.
"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." https://www.ratical.org/ratville//CAH/warracket.html
If you wait to talk until he graduates from a government school, the mancub will think you are a crazy maniac.
Government ain't the greatest, there may be ways to avoid it, the idea would be networks rather than hierarchies. Right now we have the worst of the worst. We have a government which has been completely hijacked by a clique of Bankster Parasite Psychopaths and they are deliberately foisting the most incompetent, corruptible, sleazy politicians money can buy as our leaders using their unlimited wealth to buy the political machinery and media in every Western nation, and most Eastern nations.
Isn't it worse than that? I'm in the UK, so US politics are vague to me. At first when some claimed the vote was stolen from the Republicans it seemed possible but improbable. I could see that the media pressure was so overwhelming that many in the US who had input to the system might have acted illegally in the belief that it was their moral duty. At the time of the election, even in the UK, it was literally difficult to chat to a stranger on the street without them mentioning how ghastly Trump was. It was extraordinary, like mass brain washing. But then when the US proclaimed that anyone who claimed the vote was stolen was a terrorist, the balance of my opinion changed. That very heavily suggested that it was stolen, and the balance in my mind shifted to beyond reasonable doubt.
Goebbels, wasn't it, said that the public is easy to deceive so long as the lie is big enough.
But once you accept that the vote was stolen, everything makes sense - the lies, the rapacity, - and it's also very frightening. The US, biggest power in the world, is currently run by pirates with a deliberately picked, mentally weak, puppet president, and who knows what international forces supplying the strategy. No wonder people across the world don't want to believe that could be true.
The Craft of Power (R.G.H. Siu) …virtually unobtainable but maybe available free digitally. The best book I have ever run across, synthesizing the great thinkers on the subject of the elites keeping the subjects in their places. They should never let anyone out of Law school with out memorizing this book…but a 13 year olds version would be easy enough to distill.
Yeah, Paul definitely got that reversed. Wish I was your neighbor, el gato. Interesting thoughts 24/7.
I have one kid who listens (and had actually been researching FBI/CIA conspiracies on his own like their assassination habits) and one kid who is a total sucker for Establishment propaganda and says "I don't want to hear about your crazy political views."
number 2 has executive functioning issues, wish they'd picked better authorities to follow than the feds.
Generally speaking, free, semi-free, and even authoritarian governments just have the government with various administrative bodies. Totalitarian governments, on the other hand, have two parallel structures, the administrative and the political, with the political (Gestapo, KGB, Stasi, MSS, IRGJ) always watching the rest of the government making sure no one of questionable political reliability makes any decision of a questionable political nature. The United States is slowly morphing into this sort of totalitarian state except instead of the secret police being an explicit arm of the state, our secret police are private news companies and social media companies, who are more effective in some ways than the KGB or MSS at spying, and are backed up with both private force (Antifa, BLM) and public force (FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies).
Tend to agree. I would argue that there is much overlap between big government and big corporate. It's a bit of an over-simplification, but broadly speaking, they are all the same group of tightly-connected people. It goes by various names. Deep State. Etc. As is typically the case, one doesn't need to look far for evidence. While not typically broadcast on the news or the local paper, it's fairly easy to see that the most powerful are drawn mostly from certain universities and professions. In the USA, primarily Yale and Harvard. Many industries have an incestuous relationship, most dramatically big pharma or the defense industries. There is a revolving door between corporate and government employment. Nearly all major media is owned by a small handful of very wealthy entities. And so on. The evidence is there, but you have to look for it. The intelligence services are probably the hardest to track. Suffice to say they have people everywhere.
If there's any saving grace it may be this: The "Deep State" is far from monolithic. It may so appear to us ants, but the old saying "No honor among thieves" rings true. There will always be at least two, probably many more, factions vying for power. They will use any dirty tricks available to wrest wealth and power to their own advantage. Pessimistic I know, but what I've described is just human (animal) nature, operative in all times and all places. At best it can be minimized or managed. Anyone who thinks it can be wished or legislated away is, I argue, delusional.
A final "saving grace" may simply be that the scam can't continue forever. At some point the structure gets too rickety, there is nothing more to loot, whatever. A limit is reached. The whole system collapses. And then the survivors pick up the pieces, and the whole thing starts over again, from the bottom.
Indeed, there are factions among the Ruling Class all vying for more power and wealth. The first element in bringing down the scam (that we are a democracy and not an oligarchy) is for people to realize this fact. More and more people are becoming red-pilled on this issue, so that's a good sign.