Toward Moral Maturity

“Wherever we find terror in the past, it is rooted in the use of force that originates outside the law and in many cases is consciously applied to tear down the fences of law that protect human freedom and guarantee citizen’s freedoms and rights. From history, we are familiar with the mass terror of revolutions in whose furor the guilty and the innocent die, until the bloodbath of the counter-revolution suffocates the furor in apathy or until a new reign of law puts an end to the terror. If we single out the two forms of terror that have been historically the most effective and politically the bloodiest—the terror of tyranny and the terror of revolution—we soon see that they are directed toward an end and find an end. The terror of tyranny reaches an end once it has paralyzed or even totally dispensed with all public life and made private individuals out of all citizens, stripping them of interest in and a connection with public affairs. And public affairs are concerned, of course, with much more than we generally circumscribe with the term ‘politics.’ Tyrannical terror has come to an end when it has imposed a graveyard peace on a country. The end of a revolution is a new code of laws—or counter-revolution. The terror finds its end when the opposition is destroyed, when nobody dares lift a finger, or when the revolution has exhausted all reserves of strength.”

“Totalitarian terror is so often confused with the intimidation measures of tyranny or the terror of civil wars and revolutions because the totalitarian regimes we are familiar with developed directly out of civil wars and one-party dictatorships and in their beginnings, before they became totalitarian, used terror in precisely the same way as other despotic regimes we know of from history. The turning point that decides whether a one-party system will remain a dictatorship or develop into a form of totalitarian rule always comes when every last trace of active or passive opposition in the country has been drowned in blood and terror.” p298 Essays in Understanding, Hannah Arendt, 1930-1954




The citizens of this country believe that they live under a democratic government, whereas their ancestors thought they were enacting a Limited Republic, and got a Democratic Oligarchy with the appointment of a popular and incompetent militarist as President. But they all attribute immutable and unlimited powers to the President, and flail him for not acting the benevolent despot. They expect him to cure all the social ills, enforce his will upon Congress and the Judiciary, and be Johnny-on-the-Spot, catering to the whims of the People, the Pentagon, Corporate interests, Foreign interests and threats, political interests, the Supreme Ruler of Planetary Affairs. A person who is all things to all people is a person who is nothing to anyone--least of all themself. We have become a nation of whining, indulged, and snotty souls who deserve more than ever to have our collective asses kicked back to Man’s original hovels. Whenever the People expect so much of others, of their appointed leaders SERVANTS, they are ripe for totalitarianism and the blood bath that inevitably follows. It won’t appear from without, but creeps by day unawares within until critical mass has been attained.

The more disrespect people have for others, the more they are possessed of it within themselves. People manifest from within that which they project upon others.


Coincident with the belief that the political figurehead should be all-powerful, is the inability of the electorate to find Unity. They share no common vision among them except one: the impotency of their leaders. Gravitating toward one great mass of impotent malcontents, the only thing left to unify them is the installation of the absolute tyrant. The chief aspect of such unity is unabated fear.


Many in this nation believe that it was formed by adherents to Christian tenets. But the fundamental mandate of Christianity as Jesus invoked, was to love others. For where love prevails, fear fails. In truth and fact, we are a nation of fearful hypocrites, incapable of moderating our own passions.


When Barney Ross in The Expendables declared "The man who can get along best with women is the man who can get along without them.” he stated a universal truth applied to heterosexual relations. In political terms in can be rightly stated "The man who can get along best with government (or the State), is the man who can get along without one.


That was the experiment in self-government. What do you think? Was it successful?

SethSmee