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A Letter to My Children by Whittaker Chambers
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KJW
May 9, 2015, 2:51:33 PM5/9/15
to
[From the foreword to his autobiogrphy , 'Witness', 1952]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1137423/posts?page=8#8
The revolutionary heart of Communism is not the theatrical
appeal: "Workers of the world, unite, you have nothing to
lose but your chains. You have a world to gain." It is a
simple statement of Karl Marx, further simplified for handy
use: "Philosophers have explained the world; it is necessary
to change the world."
Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie
that binds them … even unto death, is a simply conviction:
It is necessary to change the world. Their power, whose
nature baffles the rest of the world, because in a large
measure, the rest of the world has lost that power, is the
power to hold convictions and act upon them. It is the same
power that moves mountains; it is also that part of mankind
which has recovered the power to live or die – to bear
witness – for its faith. And it is a simple, rational faith
that inspires men to live or die for it.
It is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith.
Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation
under the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be
as gods." It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like
all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision.
Other ages have had great visions. They have always been
different version of the same vision: the vision of God and
man's relationship to God. The communist vision is the
vision of Man without God.
[…]
The vision is a challenge and inspires a threat. It
challenges man to prove by his acts that he is the
masterwork of the Creation by making thought and act one. It
challenges him to prove it by using the force of his
rational mind to end the bloody meaninglessness of man's
history – by giving it purpose and a plan …
It is an intensely practical vision. The tools to turn it
into reality are at hand – science and technology, whose
traditional method, the rigorous exclusion of all
supernatural factors in solving problems, has contributed to
the intellectual climate in which the vision flourishes,
just as they have contributed to the crisis in which
Communism thrives. For the vision is shared by millions who
are not Communists (they are part of Communism's secret
strength). Its first commandment is found, not in the
Communist Manifesto, but in the first sentence of the
physics primer: "All of the progress of mankind to date
results from the making of careful measurements." But
Communism, for the first time in history, has made this
vision the faith of a great modern political movement.
Hence the Communist party is quite justified in calling
itself the most revolutionary party in history. It has posed
in practical form the most revolutionary question in
history: "God or Man?" It has taken the logical next step
which three hundred years of rationalism hesitated to take,
and said what millions of modern minds think but do not dare
or care to say: "If man's mind is the decisive force in the
world, what need is there for God?" Henceforth, Man's Mind
is Man's Fate.
This vision is the Communist revolution, which, like all
great revolutions, occurs in man's mind before it takes form
in man's acts. […] On the plane of faith, it summons mankind
to turn its vision into practical reality. On the plane of
action, it summons men to struggle against the inertia of
the past which, embodied in social, political and economic
form, Communism claims, is blocking the will of mankind to
make its next great forward stride.
This is Communism's moral sanction, which is twofold. Its
vision points the way to the future; its faith labors to
turn the future into present reality. It says to every man
who joins it:
"the vision is a practical problem of history; the way to
achieve it is a practical problem of politics, which is the
present tense of history. Have you the moral strength to
take upon yourself the crimes of history so that man at last
may close his chronicle of age-old suffering, and replace it
with purpose and a plan?"
The answer a man makes to this question is the difference
between the Communist and those miscellaneous socialists,
liberals, fellow travelers, unclassified progressives and
men of good will, all of whom share a similar vision, but do
not share the faith because they will not take upon
themselves the penalties of the faith. The answer is the
root of that sense of moral superiority which makes
Communists, though caught in crime, berate their opponents
with withering self-righteousness.
The vision inspires, the crisis impels. The workingman is
chiefly moved by the crisis. The educated man is chiefly
moved by the vision. The workingman … can afford few
visions -- even practical visions. An educated man, peering
from the Harvard yard, or any college campus, upon a world
in chaos, finds in the vision the two certainties for which
the mind of man tirelessly seeks: a reason to live and a
reason to die.
No other faith of our time presents them with the same
practical intensity. That is why Communism is the central
experience of the first half of the 20th century and may be
its final experience – will be, unless the free world, in
the agony of its struggle with Communism, overcomes its
crisis by discovering, in suffering and pain, a power of
faith which will provide man's mind, at the same intensity,
with the same two certainties: a reason to live and a reason
to die. If it fails, this will be the century of the great
social wars. If it succeeds, this will be the century of the
great wars of faith.
[…]
It is a fact that a man can join the Communist Party, can be
very active in it for years, without completely
understanding the nature of Communism, of the political
methods that follow inevitably from its vision. One day such
incomplete Communists discover that the Communist Party is
not what they thought it was. They break with it and turn on
it with the rage of an honest dupe, a dupe who has given a
part of his life to a swindle. Often they forget that it
takes two to make a swindle.
Others remain communists for years, warmed by the light of
its vision, firmly closing their eyes to the crimes and
horrors inseparable from its practical politics. One day
they have to face the facts. They are appalled at what they
have abetted. They spend the rest of their days trying to
explain, usually without great success, the dark clue to
their complicity. As their understanding of Communism was
incomplete and led them to a dead end, their understanding
of breaking with it is incomplete and leads them to a dead
end.
…. Not grasping the source of the evil they sincerely hate,
such ex-Communists in general make ineffectual witnesses
against it. They are witnesses against something; they have
ceased to be witnesses for anything.
Yet there is one experience which most sincere ex-Communists
share, whether or not they go only part way to the end of
the question it poses. The daughter of a former German
diplomat in Moscow was trying to explain to me why her
father, who, as an enlightened modern man, had been
extremely pro-Communist, had become an implacable
anti-Communist. It was hard for her because as an
enlightened modern girl, she shared the Communist vision
without being a Communist. But she loved her father and the
irrationality of his defection embarrassed here. "He was
immensely pro-Soviet," she said, "and then – you will laugh
at me – but you must not laugh at my father – and then one
night – in Moscow – he heard screams. That's all. Simply one
night he heard screams."
A child of Reason and the 20th century, she knew that there
is a logic of the mind. She did not know that the soul has a
logic that may be more compelling than the mind's. She did
not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the
mind, the logic of history, the logic of politics, the myth
of the 20th century, with five annihilating words: one night
he heard screams.
What Communist has not heard those screams? They come from
husbands torn from forever from their wives in midnight
arrests. They come, muffled, from the execution cellars of
the secret police, from the torture chambers of the
Lubianka, from all the citadels of terror now stretching
from Berlin to Canton. They come from those freight cars
loaded with men, women and children, the enemies of the
Communist State, locked in, packed in, left on remote
sidings to freeze to death at night in the Russian winter.
They come from minds driven mad by the horrors of mass
starvation ordered and enforced as a policy of the Communist
state. They come from the starved skeletons, worked to
death, or flogged to death (as an example to others) in the
freezing filth of sub-arctic labor camps. They come from
children whose parents are suddenly, inexplicably, taken
away from them – parents they will never see again.
What Communists has not heard these screams? Execution, says
the Communist code, is the highest measure of social
protection. What man can call himself a Communist who has
not accepted the fact that Terror is an instrument of
policy, right if the vision is right, justified by history,
enjoined by the balance of forces in the social wars of this
century? Those screams have reached every Communist's mind.
Usually they stop there. What judge willingly dwells upon
the man the laws compel him to condemn to death – the laws
of nations or the laws of history?
But one day the Communist really hears those screams. He is
going about his routine party tasks. He is lifting a
dripping reel of microfilm from a developing tank. He is
justifying to a Communist faction in a trade union an
extremely unwelcome directive of the Central Committee. He
is receiving from a trusted superior an order to go to
another country and, in a designated hour, meet a man whose
name he will never know, but who will give him a package
whose contents he will never learn. Suddenly, there closes
around that Communist a separating silence, and in that
silence he hears screams.
He hears them for the first time. For they do not merely
reach his mind. They pierce beyond. They pierce to his soul.
He says to himself, "Those are not the screams of a man in
agony. Those are the screams of a soul in agony." He hears
them for the first time because a soul in extremity has
communicated with that which alone can hear it – another
human soul.
Why does the Communist ever hear them? Because in the end
there persists in every man, however he may deny it, a scrap
of soul. The Communist who suffers this singular experience
then says to himself: "What is happening to me? I must be
sick." If he does not instantly stifle that scrap of soul,
he is lost. If he admits it for a moment, he has admitted
that there is something greater than Reason, greater than
the logic of the mind, of politics, of history, of
economics, which alone justifies the vision.
If the party senses his weakness, and the party is
peculiarly cunning at sensing such weakness, it will
humiliate him, degrade him, condemn him, expel him. If it
can, it will destroy him. And the party will be right. For
he has betrayed that which alone justifies its faith – the
vision of the Almighty Mind. He stands before the fact of
God.
[…]
One thing most ex-Communists could agree upon: They broke
because they wanted to be free. They do not all mean the
same thing by "free". Freedom is a need of the soul and
nothing else. It is in striving toward God that the soul
strives continually after a condition of freedom. God alone
is the inciter and guarantor of freedom. He is the only
guarantor. External freedom is only an aspect of interior
freedom. Political freedom, as the Western world has known
it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and
freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies.
Without the soul, there is not justification for freedom. …
A Communist breaks because he must choose at last between
two irreconcilable opposites – God or Man, Soul or Mind,
Freedom or Communism.
Communism is what happens when, in the name of Mind, men
free themselves from God. But its view of God, it knowledge
of God, its experience of God, is what alone gives character
to a society or nation, and meaning to its destiny. Its
culture, the voice of this character, is merely that view,
knowledge, experience of God, fixed by its most intense
spirits in terms intelligible to the mass of men. There has
never been a society or a nation without God. But history is
cluttered with the wreckage of nations that became
indifferent to God and died.
The crisis of Communism exists to the degree in which it has
failed to free the peoples that it rules from God. Nobody
knows this better than the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union. The crisis of the Western World exists to the degree
in which it is indifferent to God. It exists to the degree
in which the Western world actually shares Communism's
materialist vision, is so dazzled by the logic of the
materialist interpretation of history, politics and
economics that it fails to grasp that, for it, the only
possible answer to the Communist challenge: Faith in God or
Faith in Man? is the challenge: Faith in God.
Economics is not the central problem of this century. It is
a relative problem which can be solved in relative ways.
Faith is the central problem of this age. The western world
does not know it, but it already possesses the answer to
this problem – but only provided that its faith in God and
the freedom He enjoins is as great as Communism's Faith in
Man.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1137423/posts?page=8#8
The revolutionary heart of Communism is not the theatrical
appeal: "Workers of the world, unite, you have nothing to
lose but your chains. You have a world to gain." It is a
simple statement of Karl Marx, further simplified for handy
use: "Philosophers have explained the world; it is necessary
to change the world."
Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie
that binds them … even unto death, is a simply conviction:
It is necessary to change the world. Their power, whose
nature baffles the rest of the world, because in a large
measure, the rest of the world has lost that power, is the
power to hold convictions and act upon them. It is the same
power that moves mountains; it is also that part of mankind
which has recovered the power to live or die – to bear
witness – for its faith. And it is a simple, rational faith
that inspires men to live or die for it.
It is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith.
Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation
under the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be
as gods." It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like
all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision.
Other ages have had great visions. They have always been
different version of the same vision: the vision of God and
man's relationship to God. The communist vision is the
vision of Man without God.
[…]
The vision is a challenge and inspires a threat. It
challenges man to prove by his acts that he is the
masterwork of the Creation by making thought and act one. It
challenges him to prove it by using the force of his
rational mind to end the bloody meaninglessness of man's
history – by giving it purpose and a plan …
It is an intensely practical vision. The tools to turn it
into reality are at hand – science and technology, whose
traditional method, the rigorous exclusion of all
supernatural factors in solving problems, has contributed to
the intellectual climate in which the vision flourishes,
just as they have contributed to the crisis in which
Communism thrives. For the vision is shared by millions who
are not Communists (they are part of Communism's secret
strength). Its first commandment is found, not in the
Communist Manifesto, but in the first sentence of the
physics primer: "All of the progress of mankind to date
results from the making of careful measurements." But
Communism, for the first time in history, has made this
vision the faith of a great modern political movement.
Hence the Communist party is quite justified in calling
itself the most revolutionary party in history. It has posed
in practical form the most revolutionary question in
history: "God or Man?" It has taken the logical next step
which three hundred years of rationalism hesitated to take,
and said what millions of modern minds think but do not dare
or care to say: "If man's mind is the decisive force in the
world, what need is there for God?" Henceforth, Man's Mind
is Man's Fate.
This vision is the Communist revolution, which, like all
great revolutions, occurs in man's mind before it takes form
in man's acts. […] On the plane of faith, it summons mankind
to turn its vision into practical reality. On the plane of
action, it summons men to struggle against the inertia of
the past which, embodied in social, political and economic
form, Communism claims, is blocking the will of mankind to
make its next great forward stride.
This is Communism's moral sanction, which is twofold. Its
vision points the way to the future; its faith labors to
turn the future into present reality. It says to every man
who joins it:
"the vision is a practical problem of history; the way to
achieve it is a practical problem of politics, which is the
present tense of history. Have you the moral strength to
take upon yourself the crimes of history so that man at last
may close his chronicle of age-old suffering, and replace it
with purpose and a plan?"
The answer a man makes to this question is the difference
between the Communist and those miscellaneous socialists,
liberals, fellow travelers, unclassified progressives and
men of good will, all of whom share a similar vision, but do
not share the faith because they will not take upon
themselves the penalties of the faith. The answer is the
root of that sense of moral superiority which makes
Communists, though caught in crime, berate their opponents
with withering self-righteousness.
The vision inspires, the crisis impels. The workingman is
chiefly moved by the crisis. The educated man is chiefly
moved by the vision. The workingman … can afford few
visions -- even practical visions. An educated man, peering
from the Harvard yard, or any college campus, upon a world
in chaos, finds in the vision the two certainties for which
the mind of man tirelessly seeks: a reason to live and a
reason to die.
No other faith of our time presents them with the same
practical intensity. That is why Communism is the central
experience of the first half of the 20th century and may be
its final experience – will be, unless the free world, in
the agony of its struggle with Communism, overcomes its
crisis by discovering, in suffering and pain, a power of
faith which will provide man's mind, at the same intensity,
with the same two certainties: a reason to live and a reason
to die. If it fails, this will be the century of the great
social wars. If it succeeds, this will be the century of the
great wars of faith.
[…]
It is a fact that a man can join the Communist Party, can be
very active in it for years, without completely
understanding the nature of Communism, of the political
methods that follow inevitably from its vision. One day such
incomplete Communists discover that the Communist Party is
not what they thought it was. They break with it and turn on
it with the rage of an honest dupe, a dupe who has given a
part of his life to a swindle. Often they forget that it
takes two to make a swindle.
Others remain communists for years, warmed by the light of
its vision, firmly closing their eyes to the crimes and
horrors inseparable from its practical politics. One day
they have to face the facts. They are appalled at what they
have abetted. They spend the rest of their days trying to
explain, usually without great success, the dark clue to
their complicity. As their understanding of Communism was
incomplete and led them to a dead end, their understanding
of breaking with it is incomplete and leads them to a dead
end.
…. Not grasping the source of the evil they sincerely hate,
such ex-Communists in general make ineffectual witnesses
against it. They are witnesses against something; they have
ceased to be witnesses for anything.
Yet there is one experience which most sincere ex-Communists
share, whether or not they go only part way to the end of
the question it poses. The daughter of a former German
diplomat in Moscow was trying to explain to me why her
father, who, as an enlightened modern man, had been
extremely pro-Communist, had become an implacable
anti-Communist. It was hard for her because as an
enlightened modern girl, she shared the Communist vision
without being a Communist. But she loved her father and the
irrationality of his defection embarrassed here. "He was
immensely pro-Soviet," she said, "and then – you will laugh
at me – but you must not laugh at my father – and then one
night – in Moscow – he heard screams. That's all. Simply one
night he heard screams."
A child of Reason and the 20th century, she knew that there
is a logic of the mind. She did not know that the soul has a
logic that may be more compelling than the mind's. She did
not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the
mind, the logic of history, the logic of politics, the myth
of the 20th century, with five annihilating words: one night
he heard screams.
What Communist has not heard those screams? They come from
husbands torn from forever from their wives in midnight
arrests. They come, muffled, from the execution cellars of
the secret police, from the torture chambers of the
Lubianka, from all the citadels of terror now stretching
from Berlin to Canton. They come from those freight cars
loaded with men, women and children, the enemies of the
Communist State, locked in, packed in, left on remote
sidings to freeze to death at night in the Russian winter.
They come from minds driven mad by the horrors of mass
starvation ordered and enforced as a policy of the Communist
state. They come from the starved skeletons, worked to
death, or flogged to death (as an example to others) in the
freezing filth of sub-arctic labor camps. They come from
children whose parents are suddenly, inexplicably, taken
away from them – parents they will never see again.
What Communists has not heard these screams? Execution, says
the Communist code, is the highest measure of social
protection. What man can call himself a Communist who has
not accepted the fact that Terror is an instrument of
policy, right if the vision is right, justified by history,
enjoined by the balance of forces in the social wars of this
century? Those screams have reached every Communist's mind.
Usually they stop there. What judge willingly dwells upon
the man the laws compel him to condemn to death – the laws
of nations or the laws of history?
But one day the Communist really hears those screams. He is
going about his routine party tasks. He is lifting a
dripping reel of microfilm from a developing tank. He is
justifying to a Communist faction in a trade union an
extremely unwelcome directive of the Central Committee. He
is receiving from a trusted superior an order to go to
another country and, in a designated hour, meet a man whose
name he will never know, but who will give him a package
whose contents he will never learn. Suddenly, there closes
around that Communist a separating silence, and in that
silence he hears screams.
He hears them for the first time. For they do not merely
reach his mind. They pierce beyond. They pierce to his soul.
He says to himself, "Those are not the screams of a man in
agony. Those are the screams of a soul in agony." He hears
them for the first time because a soul in extremity has
communicated with that which alone can hear it – another
human soul.
Why does the Communist ever hear them? Because in the end
there persists in every man, however he may deny it, a scrap
of soul. The Communist who suffers this singular experience
then says to himself: "What is happening to me? I must be
sick." If he does not instantly stifle that scrap of soul,
he is lost. If he admits it for a moment, he has admitted
that there is something greater than Reason, greater than
the logic of the mind, of politics, of history, of
economics, which alone justifies the vision.
If the party senses his weakness, and the party is
peculiarly cunning at sensing such weakness, it will
humiliate him, degrade him, condemn him, expel him. If it
can, it will destroy him. And the party will be right. For
he has betrayed that which alone justifies its faith – the
vision of the Almighty Mind. He stands before the fact of
God.
[…]
One thing most ex-Communists could agree upon: They broke
because they wanted to be free. They do not all mean the
same thing by "free". Freedom is a need of the soul and
nothing else. It is in striving toward God that the soul
strives continually after a condition of freedom. God alone
is the inciter and guarantor of freedom. He is the only
guarantor. External freedom is only an aspect of interior
freedom. Political freedom, as the Western world has known
it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and
freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies.
Without the soul, there is not justification for freedom. …
A Communist breaks because he must choose at last between
two irreconcilable opposites – God or Man, Soul or Mind,
Freedom or Communism.
Communism is what happens when, in the name of Mind, men
free themselves from God. But its view of God, it knowledge
of God, its experience of God, is what alone gives character
to a society or nation, and meaning to its destiny. Its
culture, the voice of this character, is merely that view,
knowledge, experience of God, fixed by its most intense
spirits in terms intelligible to the mass of men. There has
never been a society or a nation without God. But history is
cluttered with the wreckage of nations that became
indifferent to God and died.
The crisis of Communism exists to the degree in which it has
failed to free the peoples that it rules from God. Nobody
knows this better than the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union. The crisis of the Western World exists to the degree
in which it is indifferent to God. It exists to the degree
in which the Western world actually shares Communism's
materialist vision, is so dazzled by the logic of the
materialist interpretation of history, politics and
economics that it fails to grasp that, for it, the only
possible answer to the Communist challenge: Faith in God or
Faith in Man? is the challenge: Faith in God.
Economics is not the central problem of this century. It is
a relative problem which can be solved in relative ways.
Faith is the central problem of this age. The western world
does not know it, but it already possesses the answer to
this problem – but only provided that its faith in God and
the freedom He enjoins is as great as Communism's Faith in
Man.
Socrates
May 9, 2015, 3:54:44 PM5/9/15
to
On 5/9/2015 11:51 AM, KJW wrote:
> [From the foreword to his autobiogrphy , 'Witness', 1952]
>
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1137423/posts?page=8#8
> [From the foreword to his autobiogrphy , 'Witness', 1952]
>
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1137423/posts?page=8#8
> Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie
> that binds them … even unto death, is a simply conviction:
> It is necessary to change the world. Their power, whose
> nature baffles the rest of the world, because in a large
> measure, the rest of the world has lost that power, is the
> power to hold convictions and act upon them.
<snip>
> that binds them … even unto death, is a simply conviction:
> It is necessary to change the world. Their power, whose
> nature baffles the rest of the world, because in a large
> measure, the rest of the world has lost that power, is the
> power to hold convictions and act upon them.
> Economics is not the central problem of this century. It is
> a relative problem which can be solved in relative ways.
> Faith is the central problem of this age. The western world
> does not know it, but it already possesses the answer to
> this problem – but only provided that its faith in God and
> the freedom He enjoins is as great as Communism's Faith in
> Man.
and the one before that. Faiths, democracies, communists, economics the
"relative problem" (surprise, surprise) is "human nature." What ever
happened to /that/ thread anyway? Oh well, life's a challenge, then you
die (regardless of whether or not you are willing to die /for/ some
belief or fall on your knees before some Deity). Sometimes a picture
(or a cartoon) paints a clearer picture than words. Mother Nature's
law/faith/economics: "To the victor goes the spoils."
http://postimg.org/image/vgfoedeq3/
KJW
May 9, 2015, 4:47:51 PM5/9/15
to
"Socrates" <empir...@wing-it.net> wrote in message
news:milok1$3ke$1...@dont-email.me...
Socrates
May 9, 2015, 5:13:00 PM5/9/15
to
On 5/9/2015 1:47 PM, KJW wrote:
> "Socrates" wrote in message
<snip disaster>
>> Sometimes a picture (or a cartoon) paints a clearer picture than
>> words. Mother Nature's law/faith/economics: "To the victor goes the spoils."
>> http://postimg.org/image/vgfoedeq3/
> A man you respect?
The point had to do with human nature. If /that/ went over your head,
what won't?
> "Socrates" wrote in message
<snip disaster>
>> Sometimes a picture (or a cartoon) paints a clearer picture than
>> words. Mother Nature's law/faith/economics: "To the victor goes the spoils."
>> http://postimg.org/image/vgfoedeq3/
> A man you respect?
what won't?
Anglo Saxon
May 9, 2015, 6:13:02 PM5/9/15
to
KJW wrote:
> [From the foreword to his autobiogrphy , 'Witness', 1952]
>
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1137423/posts?page=8#8
>
Thank you for posting this. Your contributions are very appreciated as they
> [From the foreword to his autobiogrphy , 'Witness', 1952]
>
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1137423/posts?page=8#8
>
come out of the blue and turn up my inner volume.
Anglo Saxon
May 9, 2015, 7:05:54 PM5/9/15
to
after showing him cartoons to make your brilliant points.
You have no idea whatsoever what human nature is, you have no experience with
scholarly or philosophical inquiry, reading, or meaningful discourse on the
matter. You haven't a shred of disciplined education on anything you yammer
about and you've never heard of Whittaker Chambers in your life.
You have nothing but an artesian stream of infected cyst-fluid flowing onto
your keyboard in ARAA. In other words, a pathetic idiot of wormy proportions.
Now, hurry. Rush off to Wiki and load your potato gun with whatever you can
glean.
Jesus, I love it. I can slum without having to drink a drop.
Tommy
May 9, 2015, 7:34:24 PM5/9/15
to
"Anglo Saxon" <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrotePK5001Z...
>>
>> The point had to do with human nature. If /that/ went over your
>> head,
>> what won't?
>
Cheers
Tommy
>>
>> The point had to do with human nature. If /that/ went over your
>> head,
>> what won't?
>
> You have nothing but an artesian stream of infected cyst-fluid flowing
> onto
> your keyboard in ARAA. In other words, a pathetic idiot of wormy
> proportions.
>
> Now, hurry. Rush off to Wiki and load your potato gun with whatever
> you can
> glean.
> Jesus, I love it. I can slum without having to drink a drop.
Okay, but how do you really feel ? be honest now !
> onto
> your keyboard in ARAA. In other words, a pathetic idiot of wormy
> proportions.
>
> Now, hurry. Rush off to Wiki and load your potato gun with whatever
> you can
> glean.
> Jesus, I love it. I can slum without having to drink a drop.
Cheers
Tommy
Tex
May 9, 2015, 8:07:13 PM5/9/15
to
On Sun, 10 May 2015 00:34:33 +0100, "Tommy"
<tommyle...@yohoo.com> wrote:
>
>Okay, but how do you really feel ? be honest now !
>
>Cheers
>Tommy
Talking about feeling __ how are you feeling these days Tommy?
<tommyle...@yohoo.com> wrote:
>
>Okay, but how do you really feel ? be honest now !
>
>Cheers
>Tommy
Tex
May 9, 2015, 8:10:21 PM5/9/15
to
On Sat, 9 May 2015 23:04:48 +0000 (UTC), Anglo Saxon
<inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>Jesus, I love it. I can slum without having to drink a drop.
Kind of how I feel about getting to hob nob with brilliant
<inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>Jesus, I love it. I can slum without having to drink a drop.
intellectual assholes. :-)
Socrates
May 9, 2015, 8:43:15 PM5/9/15
to
On 5/9/2015 4:04 PM, Anglo Saxon wrote:
> Socrates wrote:
>> On 5/9/2015 1:47 PM, KJW wrote:
>>> "Socrates" wrote in message
>>
>> <snip disaster>
>>>> Sometimes a picture (or a cartoon) paints a clearer picture than
>>>> words. Mother Nature's law/faith/economics: "To the victor goes the
>>>> spoils."
>>>> http://postimg.org/image/vgfoedeq3/
>>> A man you respect?
>> The point had to do with human nature. If /that/ went over your head,
>> what won't?
> You'd argue with Hume and walk away thinking yourself the winner.
Would I?
> Socrates wrote:
>> On 5/9/2015 1:47 PM, KJW wrote:
>>> "Socrates" wrote in message
>>
>> <snip disaster>
>>>> Sometimes a picture (or a cartoon) paints a clearer picture than
>>>> words. Mother Nature's law/faith/economics: "To the victor goes the
>>>> spoils."
>>>> http://postimg.org/image/vgfoedeq3/
>>> A man you respect?
>> The point had to do with human nature. If /that/ went over your head,
>> what won't?
> You'd argue with Hume and walk away thinking yourself the winner.
> Especially after showing him cartoons to make your brilliant points.
> You have no idea whatsoever what human nature is, you have no experience with
> scholarly or philosophical inquiry, reading, or meaningful discourse on the
> matter. You haven't a shred of disciplined education on anything you yammer
> about and you've never heard of Whittaker Chambers in your life.
> You have nothing but an artesian stream of infected cyst-fluid flowing onto
> your keyboard in ARAA. In other words, a pathetic idiot of wormy proportions.
of how an expression of /your/ scholarly/philosophical/stream would read.
> Jesus, I love it. I can slum without having to drink a drop.
Socrates
May 9, 2015, 8:56:22 PM5/9/15
to
turn up your inner volume." That's what meds are for.
How about you turn down your receiver long enough to do what King James
Wizard couldn't, (this time or with his silly "human nature" post that
he also cut and pasted) summarize the ideas, the basic philosophy (if
any) behind the ideas.
Charlie M. 1958
May 9, 2015, 9:15:23 PM5/9/15
to
On 5/9/2015 7:10 PM, Tex wrote:
>
> Kind of how I feel about getting to hob nob with brilliant
> intellectual assholes. :-)
>
tedw says you're welcome!
>
> Kind of how I feel about getting to hob nob with brilliant
> intellectual assholes. :-)
>
Tex
May 9, 2015, 10:44:04 PM5/9/15
to
Skeezix LaRocca
May 9, 2015, 11:19:29 PM5/9/15
to
On 05/09/2015 07:04 PM, Anglo Saxon wrote:
>
> You have nothing but an artesian stream of infected cyst-fluid flowing onto
> your keyboard in ARAA. In other words, a pathetic idiot of wormy proportions.
>
Been waiting with anticipation to use that line for a long time ?
>
> You have nothing but an artesian stream of infected cyst-fluid flowing onto
> your keyboard in ARAA. In other words, a pathetic idiot of wormy proportions.
>
Socrates
May 9, 2015, 11:29:01 PM5/9/15
to
crafted into words.
Tex
May 9, 2015, 11:33:01 PM5/9/15
to
On Sat, 09 May 2015 20:27:38 -0700, Socrates <empir...@wing-it.net>
wrote:
Even longer for the words to become visualizations. But there is a
measure of credit due for __ infected cyst-fluid. Hah ha!
wrote:
measure of credit due for __ infected cyst-fluid. Hah ha!
Skeezix LaRocca
May 9, 2015, 11:35:02 PM5/9/15
to
On 05/09/2015 11:27 PM, Socrates wrote:
>
> Creative genius has to percolate awhile before the visualizations can be
> crafted into words.
My over-active imagination provides me with an image of this guy that
>
> Creative genius has to percolate awhile before the visualizations can be
> crafted into words.
screams fat guy eating hot pudding out of a pan with a ladle.
Tex
May 9, 2015, 11:39:38 PM5/9/15
to
them.
Socrates
May 9, 2015, 11:41:10 PM5/9/15
to
Socrates
May 9, 2015, 11:42:27 PM5/9/15
to
On 5/9/2015 8:39 PM, Tex wrote:
> On Sat, 09 May Skeezix LaRoccawrote:
> On Sat, 09 May Skeezix LaRoccawrote:
>> On 05/09/2015 11:27 PM, Socrates wrote:
>>> Creative genius has to percolate awhile before the visualizations can be
>>> crafted into words.
>> My over-active imagination provides me with an image of this guy that
>> screams fat guy eating hot pudding out of a pan with a ladle.
> Me -- I see a classy guy eating his roller dogs with cream cheese on
> them.
Wearing dirty underwear and a bra.
>>> Creative genius has to percolate awhile before the visualizations can be
>>> crafted into words.
>> My over-active imagination provides me with an image of this guy that
>> screams fat guy eating hot pudding out of a pan with a ladle.
> Me -- I see a classy guy eating his roller dogs with cream cheese on
> them.
Skeezix LaRocca
May 9, 2015, 11:51:43 PM5/9/15
to
On 05/09/2015 11:39 PM, Tex wrote:
>
> Me -- I see a classy guy eating his roller dogs with cream cheese on
> them.
>
Hey, there ain't but one Roller Dog King of Barstow and thats me.
>
> Me -- I see a classy guy eating his roller dogs with cream cheese on
> them.
>
Skeezix LaRocca
May 9, 2015, 11:53:00 PM5/9/15
to
On 05/09/2015 11:39 PM, Socrates wrote:
>
> In his dirty underwear and a bra.
With a noisy butt plug inserted.
>
> In his dirty underwear and a bra.
Socrates
May 10, 2015, 12:03:09 AM5/10/15
to
Skeezix LaRocca
May 10, 2015, 12:10:26 AM5/10/15
to
On 05/10/2015 12:01 AM, Socrates wrote:
>
> Noisy?
Why of course...Battery operated, with 7 erotic, detachable
sleeves...You know how kinky those Brits are.
>
> Noisy?
Why of course...Battery operated, with 7 erotic, detachable
sleeves...You know how kinky those Brits are.
dav...@agent.com
May 10, 2015, 1:11:55 AM5/10/15
to
by Ludwig von Mises
[This is the major part of a lecture delivered in Orange County,
California, in October 1944. It was published by the Foundation for
Economic Education in 2004.]
War is a primitive human institution. From time immemorial, men were
eager to fight, to kill, and to rob one another. However, the
acknowledgment of this fact does not lead to the conclusion that war
is an indispensable form of interpersonal relations and that the
endeavors to abolish war are against nature and therefore doomed to
failure.
We may, for the sake of argument, admit the militarist thesis that man
is endowed with an innate instinct to fight and to destroy. However,
it is not these instincts and primitive impulses that are the
characteristic features of man. Man's eminence lies in his reason and
in the power to think, which distinguishes him from all other living
creatures. And man's reason teaches him that peaceful cooperation and
collaboration under the division of labor is a more beneficial way to
live than violent strife.
I do not want to dwell on the history of warfare. It is enough to
mention that in the 18th century, on the eve of modern capitalism, the
nature of war was very different from what it had been in the age of
barbarism. People no longer fought one another with the aim of
exterminating or enslaving the defeated. Wars were a tool of the
political rulers and were fought with comparatively small armies of
professional soldiers, mostly made up of mercenaries. The objective of
warfare was to determine which dynasty should rule a country or a
province. The greatest European wars of the 18th century were wars of
royal succession, for example, the wars of the Spanish, Polish,
Austrian, and finally the Bavarian successions. Ordinary people were
more or less indifferent about the outcomes of these conflicts. They
were not much concerned about the question of whether their ruling
prince was a Habsburg or a Bourbon.
Nevertheless, these continuous struggles placed a heavy burden upon
mankind. They were a serious obstacle to the attempts to bring about
greater prosperity. As a result, the philosophers and economists of
the time turned their attention to the study of the causes of war. The
result of their investigation was the following:
Under a system of private ownership of the means of production and
free enterprise, with the only function of government being to protect
individuals against violent or fraudulent attacks on their lives,
health, or property, it is immaterial for the citizens of any nation
where the frontiers of their country are drawn. It is of no concern
for anyone whether his country is big or small, and whether it
conquers a province or not. The individual citizens do not derive any
profit from the conquest of a territory.
It is different with the princes or ruling aristocracies. They can
increase their power and their tax revenues by expanding the size of
their realms. They can profit from conquest. They are bellicose, while
the citizenry is peace loving.
Hence, the old liberals concluded, there would be no more wars under a
system of economic laissez faire and popular government. Wars would
become obsolete because the causes for war would disappear. Since
these 18th- and 19th-century classical liberals were fully convinced
that nothing could stop the movement toward economic freedom and
political democracy, they were certain that mankind was on the eve of
an age of undisturbed peace.
What was needed to make the world safe for peace, they argued, was to
implement economic freedom, free trade and goodwill among the nations,
and popular government. I want to stress the importance of both of
these requirements: free trade at home and in international relations,
and democracy. The fateful error of our age has consisted in the fact
that it dropped the first of these requirements, namely free trade,
and emphasized only the second one, political democracy. In doing so,
people ignored the fact that democracy cannot be permanently
maintained when free enterprise, free trade, and economic freedom do
not exist.
President Woodrow Wilson was fully convinced that what was needed to
make the world safe for peace was to make it safe for democracy.
During the First World War it was believed that if only the German
royal house of the Hohenzollern and the privileged German landed
aristocracy, the Junkers, could be removed from power, a durable peace
could be achieved. What President Wilson did not see was that within a
world of growing government omnipotence this would not be enough. In
such a world of growing government power, there exist economic causes
of war.
Does the Citizen Profit from Conquest?
The eminent British pacifist, Sir Norman Angell, repeats again and
again that the individual citizen cannot derive any profit from the
conquest of a province by his own nation. No German citizen, says Sir
Norman, profited through his nation's annexation of Alsace-Lorraine as
a result of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. This is quite
correct. But that was in the days of classical liberalism and free
enterprise. It is another thing in our day of government interference
with business.
Let us take an example. The governments of the rubber-producing
countries have entered into a cartel arrangement in order to
monopolize the market for natural rubber. They have forced the
planters to restrict production in order to raise the price of rubber
far above the level it would have attained on a free market. This is
not an exceptional case. Many vital and essential foodstuffs and raw
materials have been subject to similar policies implemented by
governments around the world. They have imposed compulsory
cartelization on numerous industries, as a result of which their
control was shifted away from private entrepreneurs to the hands of
government. Some of these schemes, it is true, have failed. But the
governments concerned have not abandoned their plans. They are eager
to improve the methods applied and are confident that they will be
more successful after the present Second World War.
The individual citizens do not derive any profit from the conquest of
a territory. … Hence, the old liberals concluded, there would be no
more wars under a system of economic laissez faire and popular
government.
There is a lot of talk nowadays about the necessity for international
planning. However, no planning, whether it be national or
international, is required to make planters grow rubber, coffee, and
any other commodity. They embark upon the production of these
commodities because it is the most advantageous way for them to make a
living. Planning in this connection always means government actions
for the restraint of output and the establishment of monopoly prices.
Under such conditions it is no longer true that a nation may not
appear to derive a tangible profit from a victorious war. If the
nations dependent on the importation of rubber, coffee, tin, cocoa,
and other commodities could force the governments of the producing
countries to abandon their monopolistic practices, they would improve
the economic welfare of their citizens.
To mention this state of affairs does not imply a justification for
aggression and conquest. It only demonstrates how utterly mistaken are
pacifists like Sir Norman Angell, who base their arguments in favor of
peace on the unstated assumption that all nations are still committed
to the principles of free enterprise.
Sir Norman Angell is a member of the British Labour Party. This party
stands for the outright socialization of business. But the members of
the Labour Party are too dull to realize what must be the economic and
political consequences of the socialization of business.
The Case of Germany
I want to explain these consequences by referring, first of all, to
the situation in Germany.
Like all other European nations, Germany is poor in natural resources.
It can neither feed nor clothe its population out of its own available
domestic resources. Germans must import huge quantities of raw
materials and foodstuffs, and must pay for these badly needed imports
by exporting manufactures, most of which are produced out of those
imported raw materials. Under free enterprise, Germany brilliantly
adjusted itself to this circumstance. Sixty or seventy years ago, in
the 1870s and 1880s, Germany was one of the world's most prosperous
nations. Its entrepreneurs succeeded extremely well in building up
very efficient manufacturing plants. Germany's industry was foremost
on the European continent. Its products triumphantly swept the world
market. The Germans — all classes of the German population — became
more prosperous from year to year. There was no reason to alter the
structure of German business.
But most of the German ideologists and political writers, the
government-appointed professors and the socialist party leaders, as
well as the government bureaucrats, did not like the free-market
system. They disparaged it as capitalist, plutocratic, bourgeois, and
as Western and Jewish. They lamented the fact that the free-enterprise
system had incorporated Germany into the international division of
labor.
All these groups and political parties wanted to substitute government
management of business for free enterprise. They wanted to do away
with the profit motive. They wanted to nationalize business and to
subordinate it to the commands of the government. This is a
comparatively simple thing in a country that by and large can live in
economic self-sufficiency. Russia, occupying one-sixth of the earth's
surface, can do without almost any imports from abroad. But it is
different with Germany. Germany cannot eschew imports and consequently
must export manufactures. This is precisely what a government
bureaucracy can never achieve. Bureaucrats are only able to flourish
in sheltered domestic markets. They are not fit to compete on foreign
markets.
Most people in Nazi Germany today want the government to control
business. But the fact is that government control of business and
foreign trade are incompatible. A socialist commonwealth must aim at
autarky. This is where aggressive nationalism — once referred to as
Pan-Germanism, and today called National Socialism — comes into the
picture. We are a powerful nation, the National Socialists say; we are
strong enough to crush all other nations. We must conquer all those
countries whose resources are essential for our own economic
well-being. We need autarky and therefore we must fight. We need
Lebensraum (living space) and Nahrungs freiheit (freedom from a
scarcity of food).
Both terms mean the same thing, the conquest of a territory so large
and rich in natural resources that the Germans could live without any
foreign trade at a standard of living not lower than that of any other
nation. The term Lebensraum is fairly well known abroad. But the term
Nahrungs freiheit is not. Freiheit means freedom; Nahrungs freiheit
means freedom from a state of affairs under which Germany must import
foodstuffs. It is the only "freedom" that matters in the eyes of the
Nazis.
Both the Communists and the Nazis agree that the essence of what they
mean by democracy, liberty, and popular government lies in the
establishment of full government control of business. Whether one
calls this system socialism or communism or planning is immaterial.
Regardless of what it is called, this system requires economic
self-sufficiency. But while Russia can, by and large, live in economic
self-sufficiency, Germany cannot. Therefore a socialist Germany is
committed to a policy of Lebensraum or Nahrungs freiheit, that is, to
a policy of aggression.
The pursuit of a program of government control of business must
finally result in a rejection of the international division of labor.
From the viewpoint of Nazi philosophy, the only proper mode of
international relations is war. Their most eminent men take pride in
referring to a dictum of Tacitus. This Roman historian, almost two
thousand years ago, said that the Germans consider it shameful to
acquire by hard work what could be acquired by bloodshed. It was not a
slip of the tongue when Kaiser Wilhelm II, in 1900, raised the Huns as
a model for his soldiers. It was the encapsulation of a conscious
policy.
Dependent on Imports
Germany is not the only European country depending on foreign imports.
Europe — excluding Russia — has a population of about 400 million
people, more than three times the population of the continental United
States. But Europe does not produce cotton, rubber, copra, coffee,
tea, jute, and many essential metals. And it has a quite insufficient
production of wool, fodder, cattle, meat, hides, and of many cereals.
In 1937, Europe produced only fifty-six million barrels of crude
petroleum, as compared with the US production of 1,279 million
barrels. Besides, almost all of Europe's petroleum production is
located in Romania and in eastern Poland. But as a result of the
present war, these areas will come under the control of Russia.
Manufacturing and exporting manufactures are the essentials of
Europe's economic life. However, exporting manufactures is almost
impossible under government control of business.
Such is the stark reality which no socialist rhetoric can conjure
away. If the Europeans want to live they must cling to the well-tried
methods of free enterprise. The alternative is war and conquest. The
Germans have tried it twice and failed both times.
However, the politically most influential groups in Europe are far
from realizing the indispensability of economic freedom. In Great
Britain and France, in Italy and in some smaller countries there is a
powerful agitation for full government control of business. The case
for economic freedom is almost a hopeless cause with the governments
of these countries. The British Labour Party and those British
politicians who wrongly still call their party the Liberal Party look
upon this war not only as a fight for their nation's independence, but
no less as a revolution for the establishment of government control of
business. The third British party, the Conservative Party, by and
large sympathizes with these endeavors. The British want to defeat
Hitler, but they are eager to adopt his economic methods for their own
country. They do not suspect that state socialism in Great Britain
spells the doom of the British masses. Britain must export
manufactures in order to buy raw materials and foodstuffs from abroad.
Any drop in British exports lowers the standard of living of the
British masses.
Conditions in France and Italy and in most other European countries
are similar to those in Great Britain.
In supplying the domestic consumer with various necessities a
socialist government is sovereign. The citizen must take what the
government gives him. But it is different with any export trade. The
foreign consumer buys only if both the quality and the price of the
commodity offered for sale are attractive to him. In this
international arena of serving foreign consumers, capitalism has shown
its greater efficiency and adaptability. The high level of prewar
Europe's economic well-being and civilization was not the outcome of
the activities of government bureaus and agencies. It was an
achievement of free enterprise. Those German cameras and chemicals,
those British textiles, those Paris dresses, hats, and perfumes, those
Swiss watches, and Vienna leather fancy goods were not the product of
government-controlled factories. They were the products of
entrepreneurs indefatigably intent upon improving the quality and
lowering the price of their merchandise. Nobody is bold enough to
assume that a government agency could successfully replace the private
entrepreneurs in this function.
Privately conducted foreign trade is the private affair between
private firms of various countries. If some disagreements result, they
are the conflicts between private firms. They do not create conflicts
in the political relations between nations. They concern a Mr. Meier
and a Mr. Smith. But if foreign trade is a matter of government, such
conflicts are transformed into political issues.
Suppose the Dutch government prefers to buy coal from Great Britain
rather than from the German Ruhr. Then the German nationalists may
think, Why tolerate such behavior on the part of a small nation? It
took the Third Reich precisely four days to smash the armed forces of
the Netherlands in 1940. Let us try it again! Then we will enjoy all
the products of the Netherlands, but without having to pay for them.
"Fair" Distribution of Resources
Let us analyze the frequently expressed demand of the Nazi and Fascist
aggressors for a new and fair distribution of the natural resources
around the globe. In a world of free enterprise, a man who wants to
drink coffee and is not himself a coffee planter must pay for it.
Whether it is a German or an Italian or a citizen of the Republic of
Colombia, he must render some services to his fellow men, earn a money
income and spend part of it on the coffee he desires. In the case of a
country that does not produce coffee within its own borders, this
means exporting goods or resources to pay for the coffee that is
imported. But Messrs. Hitler and Mussolini do not imagine such a
solution to the problem. What they would want is to annex a
coffee-producing country. But since the citizens of Colombia or Brazil
are not enthusiastic about becoming the slaves of either the German
Nazis or the Italian Fascists, this means war.
Another striking example is provided by the case of the cotton
industry. For more than a hundred years, one of the main industries of
all European countries was the spinning of cotton and the manufacture
of cotton goods. Europe does not grow any cotton. Its climate is
unfavorable. But the supply was always sufficient, with the only
exception being the years during the American Civil War in the 1860s,
when the conflict interrupted the supply of cotton from the Southern
states. The European industrial countries acquired enough cotton not
only for the needs of their own domestic consumption, but no less for
undertaking a considerable export trade in cotton goods.
But in the years just preceding the start of the Second World War,
conditions changed. There was still an ample supply of raw cotton on
the world market. But the system of foreign exchange controls that was
adopted by most European countries prevented private businessmen from
buying all the cotton they needed for their production processes.
Hitler's contribution to the decline of the German cotton-goods
industry consisted in restricting their production and making them
discharge a large part of their workforce. Hitler did not worry much
about the fate of these discharged workers. He sent them to work,
instead, in the munitions factories.
As I already point out, there are no economic causes for armed
aggression within a world of free trade and free enterprise. In such a
world, no individual citizen can possibly derive any advantage from
the conquest of a province or a colony. But in a world of totalitarian
states, many citizens may come to believe in an improvement of their
material well-being from the annexation of a territory rich in
resources. The wars of the 20th century have been, to be sure,
economic wars. But they have not been caused by capitalism, as the
socialists would have us believe. They are wars caused by governments
aiming at complete political and economic omnipotence, and have been
supported by the misguided masses of these countries.
The three main aggressor nations in this war — Nazi Germany, Fascist
Italy, and Imperial Japan — will not attain their ends. They have been
defeated, and they know it already. But they may try it again at a
later date, because their counterfeit philosophy — their totalitarian
creed — does not know of any other method of trying to improve the
material conditions of the people other than war. For the
totalitarian, conquest is the only viable political means to attain
their economic ends.
Economic Mentality
I do not say that all wars of all nations and in all ages were
motivated by economic considerations, that is, by the desire to make
the aggressors rich at the expense of the defeated. There is no need
for us to investigate the root causes of the crusades or the religious
wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. What I want to say is that, in
our age, the great wars have been the outcome of a specific economic
mentality.
The Second World War is certainly not a war between the white and the
colored races. No racial differences separate the British, Dutch, and
the Norwegians from the Germans, or the French from the Italians, or
the Chinese from the Japanese. It is not a war between Catholics and
Protestants. After all, there are Catholics and Protestants in both
belligerent camps. It is not a war between democracy and dictatorship.
The claim of several of the United Nations (Soviet Russia in
particular) to the appellation "democratic" is rather questionable. On
the other hand, Finland (which is allied with Nazi Germany) is a
country with a democratically elected government.
My argument that recent wars have been motivated by economic
considerations is not meant to be a justification of the aggressor's
policies. Viewed as an economic means for the attainment of certain
economic benefits, the policy of aggression and conquest is
self-defeating. Even if technically successful in the short run, it
would never attain in the long run the ends at which the aggressors
are aiming. Under the conditions of modern industrialism, there cannot
be any question of a social system such as the Nazis plan under the
name of a "New Order." Slavery is not a method for industrial
societies. If the Nazis had conquered their adversaries, they would
have destroyed civilization and brought back barbarism. They would
certainly not have erected a thousand-year New Order, as Hitler
promised.
Thus, the main problem is how to avoid new wars. The answer is not to
be found in setting up a better League of Nations; neither is it a
question of the establishment of a better World Court, nor even in the
implementation of a World Police Force. The real issue is to make all
nations — or at least the most populous nations of the world — peace
loving. This can be achieved only by going back to free enterprise.
If we want to abolish war, we must remove the causes of war.
The great idol of our time is the State. The State is a necessary
social institution, but it should not be deified. It is not a god; it
is a device of mortal men. If we make it an idol, we must sacrifice to
it the flower of our youth in coming wars.
What is needed to make a lasting peace is much more than new offices
and a new court for the League of Nations in Geneva, or even a new
international police force. What is needed is a change in political
ideologies and a return to a sound free-market economic system.
Anglo Saxon
May 10, 2015, 2:46:39 AM5/10/15
to
dav...@agent.com wrote:
>
>
> Economic Causes of War
> by Ludwig von Mises
>
> [This is the major part of a lecture delivered in Orange County,
> California, in October 1944. It was published by the Foundation for
> Economic Education in 2004.]
>
>
Thanks, David.
>
>
> Economic Causes of War
> by Ludwig von Mises
>
> [This is the major part of a lecture delivered in Orange County,
> California, in October 1944. It was published by the Foundation for
> Economic Education in 2004.]
>
>
It was fun hearing Tacitus's crack again about the Germans, lol. But to the
point, isn't it amazing that these bodies of work all down the ages are now
available for practically, if not literally, free, yet so rarely turned to by
the individual, to think for himself out of what is presented?
I think the last truly free man was Mahatma Gandhi. I remember so well his
declaration to anyone who would demand his obedience.
When I read Wlm. Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich', I was
instantly turned on and that light has never turned off. Imagine how it felt
to to see Shirer's book on Gandhi, travelling with him, watching him... then
*that* light turned on and it's been incredible ever since.
The symbolism of Gandhi's spinning wheel. The March to the Sea. The letter
from Sir Charles Innes to his fellows about no longer being able to rule India
by the sword.
I read every single word Gandhi wrote over his long life. Then came the
assassination. His words coming to life, "They will only have my dead body".
And that's what they got. But as he forewarned, they never got his obedience.
Putin
May 10, 2015, 3:42:54 AM5/10/15
to
On Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 2:51:33 PM UTC-4, KJW wrote:
> [From the foreword to his autobiogrphy , 'Witness', 1952]
>
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1137423/posts?page=8#8
>
> The revolutionary heart of Communism is not the theatrical
> [From the foreword to his autobiogrphy , 'Witness', 1952]
>
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1137423/posts?page=8#8
>
> appeal: "Workers of the world, unite, you have nothing to
> lose but your chains. You have a world to gain." It is a
> simple statement of Karl Marx, further simplified for handy
> use: "Philosophers have explained the world; it is necessary
> to change the world."
>
> Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie
> that binds them ... even unto death, is a simply conviction:
> It is necessary to change the world. Their power, whose
> nature baffles the rest of the world, because in a large
> measure, the rest of the world has lost that power, is the
> power to hold convictions and act upon them. It is the same
> nature baffles the rest of the world, because in a large
> measure, the rest of the world has lost that power, is the
> power that moves mountains; it is also that part of mankind
> which has recovered the power to live or die - to bear
> witness - for its faith. And it is a simple, rational faith
> that inspires men to live or die for it.
>
> It is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith.
> Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation
> under the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be
> as gods." It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like
> all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision.
> Other ages have had great visions. They have always been
> different version of the same vision: the vision of God and
> man's relationship to God. The communist vision is the
> vision of Man without God.
>
> [...]
>
> The vision is a challenge and inspires a threat. It
> challenges man to prove by his acts that he is the
> masterwork of the Creation by making thought and act one. It
> challenges him to prove it by using the force of his
> rational mind to end the bloody meaninglessness of man's
> history - by giving it purpose and a plan ...
>
> It is an intensely practical vision. The tools to turn it
> into reality are at hand - science and technology, whose
> traditional method, the rigorous exclusion of all
> supernatural factors in solving problems, has contributed to
> the intellectual climate in which the vision flourishes,
> just as they have contributed to the crisis in which
> Communism thrives. For the vision is shared by millions who
> are not Communists (they are part of Communism's secret
> strength). Its first commandment is found, not in the
> Communist Manifesto, but in the first sentence of the
> physics primer: "All of the progress of mankind to date
> results from the making of careful measurements." But
> Communism, for the first time in history, has made this
> vision the faith of a great modern political movement.
>
> Hence the Communist party is quite justified in calling
> itself the most revolutionary party in history. It has posed
> in practical form the most revolutionary question in
> history: "God or Man?" It has taken the logical next step
> which three hundred years of rationalism hesitated to take,
> and said what millions of modern minds think but do not dare
> or care to say: "If man's mind is the decisive force in the
> world, what need is there for God?" Henceforth, Man's Mind
> is Man's Fate.
>
> This vision is the Communist revolution, which, like all
> great revolutions, occurs in man's mind before it takes form
> in man's acts. [...] On the plane of faith, it summons mankind
> to turn its vision into practical reality. On the plane of
> action, it summons men to struggle against the inertia of
> the past which, embodied in social, political and economic
> form, Communism claims, is blocking the will of mankind to
> make its next great forward stride.
>
> This is Communism's moral sanction, which is twofold. Its
> vision points the way to the future; its faith labors to
> turn the future into present reality. It says to every man
> who joins it:
>
> "the vision is a practical problem of history; the way to
> achieve it is a practical problem of politics, which is the
> present tense of history. Have you the moral strength to
> take upon yourself the crimes of history so that man at last
> may close his chronicle of age-old suffering, and replace it
> with purpose and a plan?"
>
> The answer a man makes to this question is the difference
> between the Communist and those miscellaneous socialists,
> liberals, fellow travelers, unclassified progressives and
> men of good will, all of whom share a similar vision, but do
> not share the faith because they will not take upon
> themselves the penalties of the faith. The answer is the
> root of that sense of moral superiority which makes
> Communists, though caught in crime, berate their opponents
> with withering self-righteousness.
>
> The vision inspires, the crisis impels. The workingman is
> chiefly moved by the crisis. The educated man is chiefly
> moved by the vision. The workingman ... can afford few
> visions -- even practical visions. An educated man, peering
> from the Harvard yard, or any college campus, upon a world
> in chaos, finds in the vision the two certainties for which
> the mind of man tirelessly seeks: a reason to live and a
> reason to die.
>
> No other faith of our time presents them with the same
> practical intensity. That is why Communism is the central
> experience of the first half of the 20th century and may be
> its final experience - will be, unless the free world, in
> the agony of its struggle with Communism, overcomes its
> crisis by discovering, in suffering and pain, a power of
> faith which will provide man's mind, at the same intensity,
> with the same two certainties: a reason to live and a reason
> to die. If it fails, this will be the century of the great
> social wars. If it succeeds, this will be the century of the
> great wars of faith.
>
> [...]
>
> It is a fact that a man can join the Communist Party, can be
> very active in it for years, without completely
> understanding the nature of Communism, of the political
> methods that follow inevitably from its vision. One day such
> incomplete Communists discover that the Communist Party is
> not what they thought it was. They break with it and turn on
> it with the rage of an honest dupe, a dupe who has given a
> part of his life to a swindle. Often they forget that it
> takes two to make a swindle.
>
> Others remain communists for years, warmed by the light of
> its vision, firmly closing their eyes to the crimes and
> horrors inseparable from its practical politics. One day
> they have to face the facts. They are appalled at what they
> have abetted. They spend the rest of their days trying to
> explain, usually without great success, the dark clue to
> their complicity. As their understanding of Communism was
> incomplete and led them to a dead end, their understanding
> of breaking with it is incomplete and leads them to a dead
> end.
>
> .... Not grasping the source of the evil they sincerely hate,
> such ex-Communists in general make ineffectual witnesses
> against it. They are witnesses against something; they have
> ceased to be witnesses for anything.
>
> Yet there is one experience which most sincere ex-Communists
> share, whether or not they go only part way to the end of
> the question it poses. The daughter of a former German
> diplomat in Moscow was trying to explain to me why her
> father, who, as an enlightened modern man, had been
> extremely pro-Communist, had become an implacable
> anti-Communist. It was hard for her because as an
> enlightened modern girl, she shared the Communist vision
> without being a Communist. But she loved her father and the
> irrationality of his defection embarrassed here. "He was
> immensely pro-Soviet," she said, "and then - you will laugh
> at me - but you must not laugh at my father - and then one
> night - in Moscow - he heard screams. That's all. Simply one
> night he heard screams."
>
> A child of Reason and the 20th century, she knew that there
> is a logic of the mind. She did not know that the soul has a
> logic that may be more compelling than the mind's. She did
> not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the
> mind, the logic of history, the logic of politics, the myth
> of the 20th century, with five annihilating words: one night
> he heard screams.
>
> What Communist has not heard those screams? They come from
> husbands torn from forever from their wives in midnight
> arrests. They come, muffled, from the execution cellars of
> the secret police, from the torture chambers of the
> Lubianka, from all the citadels of terror now stretching
> from Berlin to Canton. They come from those freight cars
> loaded with men, women and children, the enemies of the
> Communist State, locked in, packed in, left on remote
> sidings to freeze to death at night in the Russian winter.
> They come from minds driven mad by the horrors of mass
> starvation ordered and enforced as a policy of the Communist
> state. They come from the starved skeletons, worked to
> death, or flogged to death (as an example to others) in the
> freezing filth of sub-arctic labor camps. They come from
> children whose parents are suddenly, inexplicably, taken
> away from them - parents they will never see again.
>
> What Communists has not heard these screams? Execution, says
> the Communist code, is the highest measure of social
> protection. What man can call himself a Communist who has
> not accepted the fact that Terror is an instrument of
> policy, right if the vision is right, justified by history,
> enjoined by the balance of forces in the social wars of this
> century? Those screams have reached every Communist's mind.
> Usually they stop there. What judge willingly dwells upon
> the man the laws compel him to condemn to death - the laws
> of nations or the laws of history?
>
> But one day the Communist really hears those screams. He is
> going about his routine party tasks. He is lifting a
> dripping reel of microfilm from a developing tank. He is
> justifying to a Communist faction in a trade union an
> extremely unwelcome directive of the Central Committee. He
> is receiving from a trusted superior an order to go to
> another country and, in a designated hour, meet a man whose
> name he will never know, but who will give him a package
> whose contents he will never learn. Suddenly, there closes
> around that Communist a separating silence, and in that
> silence he hears screams.
>
> He hears them for the first time. For they do not merely
> reach his mind. They pierce beyond. They pierce to his soul.
> He says to himself, "Those are not the screams of a man in
> agony. Those are the screams of a soul in agony." He hears
> them for the first time because a soul in extremity has
> communicated with that which alone can hear it - another
> human soul.
>
> Why does the Communist ever hear them? Because in the end
> there persists in every man, however he may deny it, a scrap
> of soul. The Communist who suffers this singular experience
> then says to himself: "What is happening to me? I must be
> sick." If he does not instantly stifle that scrap of soul,
> he is lost. If he admits it for a moment, he has admitted
> that there is something greater than Reason, greater than
> the logic of the mind, of politics, of history, of
> economics, which alone justifies the vision.
>
> If the party senses his weakness, and the party is
> peculiarly cunning at sensing such weakness, it will
> humiliate him, degrade him, condemn him, expel him. If it
> can, it will destroy him. And the party will be right. For
> he has betrayed that which alone justifies its faith - the
> vision of the Almighty Mind. He stands before the fact of
> God.
>
> [...]
>
> One thing most ex-Communists could agree upon: They broke
> because they wanted to be free. They do not all mean the
> same thing by "free". Freedom is a need of the soul and
> nothing else. It is in striving toward God that the soul
> strives continually after a condition of freedom. God alone
> is the inciter and guarantor of freedom. He is the only
> guarantor. External freedom is only an aspect of interior
> freedom. Political freedom, as the Western world has known
> it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and
> freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies.
> Without the soul, there is not justification for freedom. ...
> A Communist breaks because he must choose at last between
> two irreconcilable opposites - God or Man, Soul or Mind,
> Freedom or Communism.
>
> Communism is what happens when, in the name of Mind, men
> free themselves from God. But its view of God, it knowledge
> of God, its experience of God, is what alone gives character
> to a society or nation, and meaning to its destiny. Its
> culture, the voice of this character, is merely that view,
> knowledge, experience of God, fixed by its most intense
> spirits in terms intelligible to the mass of men. There has
> never been a society or a nation without God. But history is
> cluttered with the wreckage of nations that became
> indifferent to God and died.
>
> The crisis of Communism exists to the degree in which it has
> failed to free the peoples that it rules from God. Nobody
> knows this better than the Communist Party of the Soviet
> Union. The crisis of the Western World exists to the degree
> in which it is indifferent to God. It exists to the degree
> in which the Western world actually shares Communism's
> materialist vision, is so dazzled by the logic of the
> materialist interpretation of history, politics and
> economics that it fails to grasp that, for it, the only
> possible answer to the Communist challenge: Faith in God or
> Faith in Man? is the challenge: Faith in God.
>
> Economics is not the central problem of this century. It is
> a relative problem which can be solved in relative ways.
> Faith is the central problem of this age. The western world
> does not know it, but it already possesses the answer to
> this problem - but only provided that its faith in God and
> Economics is not the central problem of this century. It is
> a relative problem which can be solved in relative ways.
> Faith is the central problem of this age. The western world
> does not know it, but it already possesses the answer to
> the freedom He enjoins is as great as Communism's Faith in
> Man.
RAZE Harvard and beat the professors to death with baseball bats
> Man.
Socrates
May 10, 2015, 7:23:32 PM5/10/15
to
On 5/9/2015 11:45 PM, Anglo Saxon wrote:
> dav...@agent.com wrote:
>> Economic Causes of War
>> by Ludwig von Mises
>>
>> [This is the major part of a lecture delivered in Orange County,
>> California, in October 1944. It was published by the Foundation for
>> Economic Education in 2004.]
> Thanks, David.
>
> It was fun hearing Tacitus's crack again about the Germans, lol. But to the
> point, isn't it amazing that these bodies of work all down the ages are now
> available for practically, if not literally, free, yet so rarely turned to by
> the individual, to think for himself out of what is presented?
Well, Anglo Saxton, how about you go a little beyond just thinking for
> dav...@agent.com wrote:
>> Economic Causes of War
>> by Ludwig von Mises
>>
>> [This is the major part of a lecture delivered in Orange County,
>> California, in October 1944. It was published by the Foundation for
>> Economic Education in 2004.]
> Thanks, David.
>
> It was fun hearing Tacitus's crack again about the Germans, lol. But to the
> point, isn't it amazing that these bodies of work all down the ages are now
> available for practically, if not literally, free, yet so rarely turned to by
> the individual, to think for himself out of what is presented?
yourself and share what you get from what was written 70 year ago. Tell
us how it fits or does not fit with current global policies and theories.
I know there is a lot to digest, certainly much caught /my/ eye. How
about this:
"My argument that recent wars have been motivated by economic
considerations is not meant to be a justification of the aggressor’s
policies. Viewed as an economic means for the attainment of certain
economic benefits, the policy of aggression and conquest is
self-defeating. Even if technically successful in the short run, it
would never attain in the long run the ends at which the aggressors are
aiming. Under the conditions of modern industrialism, there cannot be
any question of a social system such as the Nazis plan under the name of
a “New Order.” Slavery is not a method for industrial societies. If the
Nazis had conquered their adversaries, they would have destroyed
civilization and brought back barbarism."
the most populous nations of the world — peace loving. This can be
achieved only by going back to free enterprise." [end quotes]
Very interesting stuff, all the more so due to the conditions in the
world when it was written. Looking forward to your analysis. For
example, can free enterprise make most of the nations "peace loving?"
Tommy
May 11, 2015, 7:07:49 PM5/11/15
to
"Tex" <svi...@springvillewireless.com> wrote in message
news:v78tkatmb4co8anff...@4ax.com...
A bit uppy and downy, thanks for asking Tom :-)
Healthwise I'm okay, aint going to get any better than I am, or any
worse either. Did I tell youse I'm on the 6 monthly injection and
finally got signed in to the National health hospital outpatient clinic.
It ain't half bad in there - I'm quite surprised that they re-did all
the tests and sent me for DX scans and MRIs and xrays. No expense
spared :-) [it just happens to be called the Care for the Elderly
Department - so I have to mix with old people :) ]
In the past 10 days we've had a Communion, a Christening (great
grandaughter), 2 confirmations (grandsons) and my older brothers 70th
birthday bash. It was the first time all 5 brothers were together at
the same time in over 50 years. 2 came back from the states - only
stayed the weekend and went back Sun night for work Mon morning :-)
You all know me, I don't talk much, but jaysus I'm wore out and hoarse,
what a 3 days of celebrating... Every one of the brothers is madder
than me and set out to prove it :-))
Other than that I can honestly say I feel grand thanks :-)
Cheers
Tommy
news:v78tkatmb4co8anff...@4ax.com...
Healthwise I'm okay, aint going to get any better than I am, or any
worse either. Did I tell youse I'm on the 6 monthly injection and
finally got signed in to the National health hospital outpatient clinic.
It ain't half bad in there - I'm quite surprised that they re-did all
the tests and sent me for DX scans and MRIs and xrays. No expense
spared :-) [it just happens to be called the Care for the Elderly
Department - so I have to mix with old people :) ]
In the past 10 days we've had a Communion, a Christening (great
grandaughter), 2 confirmations (grandsons) and my older brothers 70th
birthday bash. It was the first time all 5 brothers were together at
the same time in over 50 years. 2 came back from the states - only
stayed the weekend and went back Sun night for work Mon morning :-)
You all know me, I don't talk much, but jaysus I'm wore out and hoarse,
what a 3 days of celebrating... Every one of the brothers is madder
than me and set out to prove it :-))
Other than that I can honestly say I feel grand thanks :-)
Cheers
Tommy
Tex
May 12, 2015, 12:51:31 AM5/12/15
to
hell if the price is right why not hang-out with those old ones! Hah
ha! Just think of it __ you will have all that experience when you
actually do become one of the old ones. Hah ha!
Hope the injections do there thing! Hope they make you feel better
without giving you some silly idea you are a young horny goat. Hah ha!
Like Charle says __
Life is good.
Socrates
May 12, 2015, 2:05:00 AM5/12/15
to
On 5/11/2015 9:51 PM, Tex wrote:
> Hope the injections do there thing! Hope they make you feel better
> without giving you some silly idea you are a young horny goat. Hah ha!
Second that.
> Hope the injections do there thing! Hope they make you feel better
> without giving you some silly idea you are a young horny goat. Hah ha!
Tex
May 12, 2015, 6:14:05 PM5/12/15
to
On Tue, 12 May 2015 22:35:19 +0100, "Tommy"
<tommyle...@yohoo.com> wrote:
>"Socrates" <empir...@wing-it.net> wrote in message
>news:mis549$471$1...@dont-email.me...
>Thanks guys... ahem ahh horny goat yey, I could do that :-)
>
>Cheers
>Tommy
Twenty years ago maybe! :-)
<tommyle...@yohoo.com> wrote:
>"Socrates" <empir...@wing-it.net> wrote in message
>news:mis549$471$1...@dont-email.me...
>
>Cheers
>Tommy
Twenty years ago maybe! :-)
Tommy
May 12, 2015, 5:35:01 PM5/12/15
to
abou...@gmail.com
May 16, 2017, 10:12:44 PM5/16/17
to
KJW,
Your quotation is overlong and constitutes a copyright violation. Please pare it down to less than 2 pages from the +20-page foreword.
Here is a sample of what is acceptable, after we contacted the site's owner (a professor of law): http://famous-trials.com/legacyftrials/hiss/chambersletter.html
Please confirm removal to the family of Whittaker Chambers at info at WhittakerChambers.org .
Thank you - David Chambers
Your quotation is overlong and constitutes a copyright violation. Please pare it down to less than 2 pages from the +20-page foreword.
Here is a sample of what is acceptable, after we contacted the site's owner (a professor of law): http://famous-trials.com/legacyftrials/hiss/chambersletter.html
Please confirm removal to the family of Whittaker Chambers at info at WhittakerChambers.org .
Thank you - David Chambers
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