Mourning At A Tyrant's Grave Friday, December 28, 2007
I've heard several political conservatives (at least, that's how they think of themselves politically) lamenting the loss of the "moderate" Benazir Bhutto following her assassination in Pakistan on Thursday.Perhaps Bhutto was a "moderate" relative to Pervez Musharraf's military dictatorship. But was Bhutto a political moderate from an absolute standard?
Until her death, Bhutto chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party, whose slogan is "Islam is our faith; democracy is our politics; socialism is our economy; all power to the people."
Imagine a political party in the United States running on such a platform. Would anyone dare call it moderate? There doesn't seem to be anything principally moderate about socialism or democracy (nor Islam, for that matter, a truly totalitarian ideology much like every other major world religion)-- they both rely on violent interference in the lives of the minority polities, as well as the majority, and they both seem to always end in dictatorship.
Moderate socialism... tell that to the millions of dead Chinese, Russians, Cubans and so on who have experienced first hand this "moderate" political ideology.
Tyrants deserve no tears shed on their behalf.
Labels: absurdist society, bloodlust, communazism, democracy, politicosado-masochism, politics
[ posted by TAYLOR @ 7:16 PM | | Digg this! | del.icio.us | Permanent link | links to this post ]
2 Comments:
-
At Fri Dec 28, 10:00:00 PM EST,
saltypig said...
-
Imagine a political party in the United States running on such a platform.
you mean without using code words that mean the same thing (flipping xtianity into the islam slot)? won't be too much longer. oh wait — i forgot ron paul's going to remove socialism from the hearts of the violent majority. -
At Sat Dec 29, 01:05:00 AM EST,
TAYLOR said...
-
Well, right, I meant that bit in a tongue in cheek way. I didn't want to clutter up the post with another "(like that isn't what the two major parties in the US promote these days)" aside. My point was imagine a party declaring that in an open, non-euphemistic way.
Por ejemplo, Democrats: "The State is our religion, thinly-veiled autocratic dictatorship is our politics, socialism is our economy, all power to Bill Clinton and other people like him."
For Republicans, try: "A disturbingly deterministic, consequentialist-version of Christianity is our religion, Deciders-in-Chief is our politics, fascism is our economy, all power to the warlords."
I'm going to have to quote from Stirner again here, as I make my way through his "The Ego and His Own" I find choice quote after choice quote:
"Nay, if the interest felt in it were less passionate and dazzled, people would not so much, in looking at society, lose sight of the individuals in it, and would recognize that a society cannot become new so long as those who form and constitute it remain the old ones."
This is a brilliant point Stirner was making back in 1844, and one which Stefan Molyneux made in his last Ron Paul video at his site, the idea that Ron Paul can't come in and reform the system and society using the power of the State if everyone in the system and society have the same mindset and ideology as they did before he took office.
It's that idea underlying libertarian/voluntaryist theory that dictates that people concerned with freedom should be educating others and waiting patiently for the consensus on the State to change, not trying to force that change onto an unwilling, bewildered, still-thinks-violence-is-the-best-answer-to-the-question-at-hand populace.
