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The gulag archipelago
13 years ago
This is what I am reading right now.
Oh boy...
I do not know what kind of twisted cognitive dissonance the whole tumblr communist brigade is running on, but even among those you can self proclaimed "Leninists" or even "Stalinists".
The only reason why Stalin is not as denounced as Adolph is because he happened to win the war, and share a table with Churchill, De Gaulle and the american guy.
I think, reading this even more, that even the slightest infringement on our liberties (which are, after all, according to 1920s soviet socialist thinking, only "relative" in their being "rights" anyway) is a little too much.
All that is wrong and can go wrong with human thinking happened at the beginning of the 20th century, and was carried through it with flying banners right up til the end, and in some states (ie North Korea) is still persisting.
The Idea that any Ideology or Belief devalues the life of a fellow human being completely is rubbish.
An interesting book series, and should at least be read at a basic level by anyone interested in freedom and how to loose it.
Oh boy...
I do not know what kind of twisted cognitive dissonance the whole tumblr communist brigade is running on, but even among those you can self proclaimed "Leninists" or even "Stalinists".
The only reason why Stalin is not as denounced as Adolph is because he happened to win the war, and share a table with Churchill, De Gaulle and the american guy.
I think, reading this even more, that even the slightest infringement on our liberties (which are, after all, according to 1920s soviet socialist thinking, only "relative" in their being "rights" anyway) is a little too much.
All that is wrong and can go wrong with human thinking happened at the beginning of the 20th century, and was carried through it with flying banners right up til the end, and in some states (ie North Korea) is still persisting.
The Idea that any Ideology or Belief devalues the life of a fellow human being completely is rubbish.
An interesting book series, and should at least be read at a basic level by anyone interested in freedom and how to loose it.
It´s interesting though, I think Ideology is a great motivator for bloodshed, but ultimately the colour of ideology doesn´t matter one bit. A group I am paying attention to a lot are far, far right, religious (mostly christian) outlets (such as liberty counsel) who are doing a lot of anti-gay rights polemic.
And the words they use are so terrifyingly reminiscent of things that were said in other places in time, during the 30s in germany, for example, or during the 90s in Rwanda or former Yugoslavia, that it is stunning to me how these people are still out there and free to say whatever they please.
The kind of freedom of speech the US has is sometimes to the point of being intimidating to me, as a german. We put extremely tight lids on things like that. There are banned songs, there are banned books, there are banned symbols. Usually, i don´t agree with those, but seeing how there´s no real criticism of these people (aside from things like right wing watch.), I am not sure what to think anymore.
Are they so low profile and unimportant that it´s simply not worth paying attention? (Not just liberty counsel or cindy roberts, but glenn beck and pat robertson.)
This brings us to the question what should be permissible to say (and, by extension, think. Dangerous thinking here.), and how to define that. One reason the Gulag Archipelago states for the Russian prison system being so overloaded between 1917 and ~1960 is that the laws were written so you could be put in the locker for literally anything you said, or didn´t say. There were people given ten years hard labour for being the first to stop applauding at rural party congresses (after the applause had been going on for half an hour already because nobody dared to stop.).
Also looking at my recent posts I feel like I am turning into a goat on a soapbox :I
Soap Goat.