This is from Winston Churchill, found as the opening words of Daniel Hannan’s wonderful How We Invented Freedom & Why It Matters:
“There are few words which are used more loosely than the word “Civilization.” What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization—and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort, and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all.”
There is no culture like our Western civilisation and if it disappears it will not come back for a thousand years. None of the alternatives looking to be the replacement for our way of life will be anything other than tyranny and slavery for the vast bulk of the population. And if you don’t think our way of life is at risk, you are either completely clueless or think the past is a guarantor of the future. The totalitarian enemy is there at every turn, both outside the citadel and within. Let me just take this from (Lizzie) Beare from a previous thread, because it really is depressing how politically naive so many supposedly intelligent people are.
The ‘right’ circumstances for another ‘purge’ are upon us now; from the left. It is starting under the ‘Antifa’ thugs when ordinary people going about their business are called fascist/and or are subject to physical violence for simply attending a talk by a reputable clinical psychologist or a very clever gay young man making jokes. You see it when a prominent TV conservative is physically attacked on his way into a venue. You see it when the recently deposed Australian Prime Minister is punched in the face by a gay activist. You also see it when a man of J3wish-Yemini background tries to collect signatures at a rally supposedly in support of refugee immigration into Australia and a big loon not just yells but roars ‘Fascist’ at him three times virtually spitting in his face; simply because that J3wish man wearing a J#wish skull-cap is collecting signatures for a petition to recognize that white South African farmers facing a violent racist slow extinction are worthy of consideration as refugees. You see it when people are ‘reported’ and ‘punished’ for disagreement with current thought-police mandated thinking and you see it when the media and other cultural outlets self-censor. It is bred in our schools and our universities, this new fascism, and should be roundly called out for what it is, along with all of the other mind and thought control that political correctness is putting up for our little left Stalins of the day to play lawfare with against those who resist.
Yes, there is ‘scale’ required to see how distant some history may be to the current generation. But that’s why it’s called history. All high school children should study the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Nazi Holocaust, and Revolution of Mao in China with its later abysmal Cultural Revolution, plus the French-influenced Communism in Vietnam that ‘flowered’ in the Year Zero of Pol Pot’s Cambodia. A simple week on each would do it if necessary. And if schools are not doing it, then do it around the dinner table with your children. The lesson of history is that communist and other totalitarian societies always end with economic misery, gulags, secret police, a population turned upon itself, and eventually, piles of bodies.
What on earth is in the history curriculum today now that Marxists control it and teach the teachers?
Socialists are totalitarians. The leaders of socialist movements want what is best for the leaders of socialist movements, and the rest of us be damned. Fools every one.
And for good measure, go see The Death of Stalin, a tragic story told in a lighthearted way. Being miseducated for the most part, most won’t know who Beria was, but the movie gets the politics right. You also need to know something about the doctors’ plot to get some of the jokes. An exceptionally good movie about life in a totalitarian state, which our socialist friends continue to shield their eyes and ears from all knowledge of.
On a point of detail, I don’t know how Beria was portrayed but my information is that he was the best of a rotten lot and gross stories about him were invented by his enemies in the party to make him look more evil than them. Many innocent prisoners were released under his watch, a most unusual happening.
As to the bigger picture, what can you say. I was saved from the disaster of the radical left because when I told my supervisor that I was giving up my study of plant roots in favour of sociology he came in next day with The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies to read. Thank you Keith Barley! That was in the spring of 1968.
The Open Society condensed version.
View at Youtube or Archive.org
Agreed. Great show – my delightful wife, an extraordinarily well read history teacher of note enjoyed it immensely as she knew all of the plays.
The opinions of civilians?
HAH!!!!
In the USA almost 1/3rd of them seem to have no opinions and could care less about who or what are the Masters.
It is that portion of adults that never-ever vote in any election and have no idea who are their elected officials or what those officials are trying to do to them.
Steve,
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/hatewhitey_racists_are_poison.html
AP = Advanced Placement Textbooks
Steve and Rafe Champion, thank you
Gary K
Discussions with those steeped in politics, as well as the majority who seldom think about the tenets on which their freedom and prosperity rest, shows what a fragile thread holds those liberties intact. The political elites are close to the radicals who built the Stalinist structure – men and women who were doubtless originally well-intentioned. The common man rarely thinks about these matters but will usually vote for someone who dangles a credible benefit before him.
That way democracy destroys the liberties and prosperity that have been developed as is evident in Venezuela, is coming into place in South Africa and was temporarily checked in the 1980s by the success of Thatcher/Reagan and the obvious failures of Communist states.
You know things are getting bad when the simple act of climbing up the hill in the center of the country is banned.
You realise that you have just insulted 40,000 years of Aboriginal “Civilization”.
So Rafe, is that where Mel Brookes got the idea for the Likeable Simon character in Get Smart? You know, the most murderous, ruthless, devious and cunning agent in Kaoss’s history, but heck of a nice guy.
Beria oversaw the execution of millions of people during his 15 year leadership of the NKVD. So not exactly “the best of a rotten lot”. Yes he slightly eased the criteria for those locked up in Gulags, but he remained a significant and murderous part of the problem.
Hence, in small organisations without discipline you get narcs like Rudd and Turnbull ‘ruling the ruins’ of the organisation.
You know things are bad when a quantitative argument is no longer based on metrics.
The totalitarian enemy is there at every turn, both outside the citadel and within.
The enemies within are the Narxists: the narcissistic, virtue-signalling neo-Marxists rampant in the media, corporate business and education who seek to extinguish liberty and enforce a one party state with themselves as the elite and the masses impoverished and submissive out of fear.
Feminism a the diversity and inclusion commissars now embedded in HR departments is the new battle front in corporations. They are waging a gender and race war against white men.
The funniest thing will be watching the 97% of collectivist imbeciles screeching when they’re purged due to the fact that the Nomenklatura can only ever be a tiny minority.
Sorry counter revolutionary comrades, it’s death or starvation and/or labour camp time for you.
You wanted it, you got it. Enjoy!
“The leaders of socialist movements want what is best for the leaders of socialist movements, and the rest of us be damned. Fools every one.”
Not exactly, the cultural marxist foot soldiers and even some of their elites do it because they are convinced that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is immoral. In their eyes, killers of baby harp seals. Sure, there’s also the carpetbagging wing.
Additionally they can’t bear the concept of a sovereign individual. Too much room for non compliance there.
*Smacks of Grig’s ignorance.
Feminism a the diversity and inclusion commissars now embedded in HR departments
Diversity and inclusion: Newspeak for discrimination against white males.
The early Chekists were a bunch of murdering psychopaths , Dzerzhinsky the renegade Polish aristocrat ,Yagoda and Yezhov a pair of mad Jews who took revenge for the pogroms deep in their psyches ,then Beria ,the only reason the politburo scum would assasinate Dzhugashvilli would be to save their own miserable lives ,not improve conditions for the workers ,they were like the present day alp they despise hate and fear the workers ,they are to be just used as voteherds like the illiterate peasants and refugees they bring in in hordes to give the illusion of megalith to their lust for control over others.
Not holocaust deniers of course, but the ‘deniers’ who question the government-funded science of climate change!
Don’t know what these muppets at spellcheck are doing , my last posting they put “megalith” in instead of “legality” ! What in the name of Gaia has megalith got to do with it looks like the commo fascists are practicing for total speech control.
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
― Milton Friedman
Here in Australia we get near enough to a 100% turnout to the polls. Are we any better off than America where only 65% turn out?
It’s not the numbers that turn out that matter, it’s the systems in place that matter. The left have been dismantling our systems for over 50 years. So we need the following…
A Shorten government of say 6 years, might be long enough to produce that change. A Barack Obama regime of 8 years was enough to produce change in America.
Australian democracy would function a lot better if about a third of the people stayed home on voting day rather than have compulsory preferential voting see their vote end up with either branch of the Uniparty.
Your point, though unintentional, is well made Gary K. A real democracy gives the citizen the right to vote, not compel them to cast one.
Just on the Stalin flick, I had the misfortune to see Madge Melanoma and Alvin Purple discussing it on their fillum review slot on Showcase last night. Didn’t even know either of them were still around.
What’s happened to ol’ Greybeard?
Beria and Khrushev were in absolute horror of each other, but still bound to the stinking living corpse that was Stalin in the last 3 days of its existence….. Socialists deserve their fates, including the citizenry.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Any system with large government funding will head towards creating a culture that encourages more government and more government funding.
We let the government fund our schools and universities, the end is unavoidable…
Psssh…whats the point if the majority of those ‘citizens’ vote to steal my wealth?
Nice article, but in terms of “The Death of Stalin” – that movie is not really historically accurate (and not really that funny actually).
It’s clearly a propaganda piece whose subtext is to mock and lampoon Russians in general and obviously associate the current ruling powers with the Stalinist nightmare. That is quite absurd. It’s one thing to take a swipe at the Stalinist lunacy but the movie seems to besmirch Russians as a people, which is clearly stupid and insulting.
Stalin. Holmodor. Comedy?
OK, I imagine tbe play wasn’t about that at all.
And it is only theatre.
Entertainment?
Suppose it’s better than public hangings.
The crony corporate (and lucky) Russian oligarchs who fell on their feet when the state went a gutza are a civil mafia type of business model with Don Vlad as godfather. They are not exporters of USSR communism.
They don’t care what you think as long as you don’t threaten the business model. Good.
So who gives a rat’s what happens inside Russia.
Rregarding the 1/3 who do not care who is in charge. What about starting a movement whose principle aim is to advocate “no. Representation without Taxation” exclude all who cannot show a positive tax contribution from voting. That would fix things in the Big and small sections of our society.
I’ve watched the preview of the movie if they are the best parts I wouldn’t waste my money on it, it looks like crap.
Simon Montefiore’s book is an excellent potted history of Stalin’s rule from the death of his second wife by suicide or murder to his own death.
It’s written in a grimly humorous style because Stalin his family and his various lackeys were at times ridiculous in a ‘Goodfellas’ vein; Stalin Beria and many of their henchman were Georgians Montefiore compares to Sicilians, clannish and prone to blood feuds.
His book is available in audio read beautifully by British actor John Nettles (Midsomer Murders).
‘What on earth is in the history curriculum today now that Marxists control it and teach the teachers?’
You can go from around 14yo to the end of university, and be told every year, direct from curricula, that political violence is desirable and/or necessary. As you get older, the violence referred to becomes more and more psychopathic. It starts with things like Eureka, and ends with writers such as the Maoist Foucault – who favoured heads on pikes displayed around the village.
‘A Shorten government of say 6 years, might be long enough to produce that change. A Barack Obama regime of 8 years was enough to produce change in America.’
Well, we are usually a few years behind USA, and usually don’t go to the extremes it does. Three years of Shorten’s piling of socialism upon existing socialism should be enough. I even hope that by next fed. election time the current AGW/electricity debacle will have played itself out, with a new PM, and new hope for a new dawn.
I held back on judgement of the current PM, but sadly, the handling of the electricity issue says ‘go’. Electricity really is a case where Reagan’s warning about the words ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’ are absolutely true.
SA, for example, should have the value of the power station they BLEW UP deducted from its GST receipts as punishment for its destruction of national wealth. At least they’ve lost a seat in the federal parliament. I guess as time passes they will lose more.
Droog #2688907, posted on April 17, 2018 at 3:36 pm: ‘ “The Death of Stalin” – that movie is not really historically accurate’
Indeed.
Never, never, never, not even for one tiniest moment, get your history from Hollywood. That’s a seriously bad mistake. Entertainment, yes; historical entertainment, yes – but never as fact. Read a book or two as an antidote (and not a book of the film!).
socialism is evil
Good work, Kates and Beare.
Rafe re ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies,’ by Karl Popper.
How many times have I reread it… devastating critique of Plato, Hegel, Marx,
influential apostles of closed, totalitarian society. My own post, Popper versus
Soros, interpretations of open society, (and Soros’ behind the scenes funding.)
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/50th-edition-serf-under_ground-journal/
The Road To Serfdom and William Blackstone: Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769) should be, according to me, compulsorily taught. Lest We Forget the reasoning for the ultimate sacrifice made to keep our liberty and freedom intact, such as that is in this era of overwhelming Statute Law, mindless wannabe multinational totalitarians and the hideous totality of pussy politics.
As Stalin lay on his death bed, he summonsed Krushchev in order to hand over the reins of power. He was concerned though that the people would not switch allegiance, so asked Krushchev how he could ensure that the people will follow him. “Well if they don’t follow me I will ensure that they follow you!”. Stalin was reassured, but said that it was still possible that things can turn sour, so here are two letters. If things start to turn bad, open the first letter. If things still do not improve over time, open the second letter.
Well Stalin passes on and things go well for a while then start to turn pear shape, so Krushchev digs up the first letter which says, “Blame everything on me”. Krushchev does as instructed and matters improve for a while. When things start to go bad again Krushchev decides to open the second letter which reads “Write two letters”.
Thanks for the link to the Doctor’s Plot, Steve. I had heard about the denigration of Jewish doctors by Stalin but realise on reading the details in the link that there was much more to it than that. The ‘special’ camps set aside for Jewish populations in Siberia and other details are completely chilling. Given Stalin’s state of mind at the time of the planning, the outcome of this extensive scapegoating doesn’t bear thinking on should he have survived beyond 1953.
“issues of local, global and cultural significance” are not going to save western civ and that is exactly what the global ed assessments like PISA are looking for. They drive the vision for education globally. https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/columnists/andreas-schleicher/assessing-global-competence
AS FAR as what they are teaching in history, apart from lots of role playing exercises. the pushes to Think like a Historian or Read Like a Historian emphasize Ideas and concepts deemed relevant to solving current problems. Without an underlying body of knowledge though students are at the mercy of Ideas that are pushed by people wishing to change their consciousness so they feel and are ready to act on a need for transformational change.
The term used in the US is DCIs–Disciplinary Core Ideas and again these are supplied to all students, not developed through a body of factual knowledge. When the students get lied to, they become like the Parkland students–rallying against Ideas they do not actually understand.
Interesting, Beth, your linked account of Soros’s take on some of the concepts about the ‘Open Society’. I could observe that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I can’t give Soros that much leeway, and see you don’t either. The basis of the intentions was always corrupting, interfering, subverting and power-seeking.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.”
Lord Alexander Tytler
On: “The Fall of the Athenian Republic.”
“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
James Bovard (1994)
Thanks to advances in technology and the clear disregard of parliaments to enact laws the people actually want its time to move to direct democracy.