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> "How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it a
by awb 6y ago
> "How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice — ‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.
The problem is the road to hell and heaven are both paved with good intentions.
History is littered with so many warnings of false positives and false negatives, it's hard to be know what to resist and what to accept.
But power corrupts absolutely and I think it's safe to fear unchecked power and those who are loyal to people instead of loyal to ideas. Ideas don't change when they gain or lose power, but people always do.
- amirkdv 6y agoGenuinely curious: what are some historically significant examples of "false positives"? By which I assume you mean a time when people rose to resist something they didn't really have to.
- aazaa 6y agoHistory is written by the victors. From this perspective, every successful resistance was necessary and every failed resistance was not. Take the American Civil War, for example. If you (still) believe in the cause, it was a true positive. If you don't, then it was a false positive. Or, to be less inflammatory, consider the French Revolution. Was that a true positive or false positive, especially considering the aftermath?
- gfodor 6y agoI think this is probably true for armed conflict, but for civil conflicts in liberal societies, I think it's fair to assume that over time things converge to a more moral and just society over time. (So, the "victors" can be presumed legitimately moral.) However, this has an assumption that a society is liberal, and provides the free exchange of ideas, which is something that seems to ebb-and-flow itself.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoThe free exchange of ideas falls prey to the paradox of tolerance.
- gfodor 6y agoOnly if you don't understand the paradox.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoWould you mind explaining it then? I feel like this is a major problem in society today and I'd be edified by exposure to a solution.
- svrb 6y agoThe paradox of tolerance demonstrates a fatal flaw in the concept of "tolerance", not in the free exchange of ideas. I have become increasingly convinced that the concept of "tolerance" has been corrupted over time until it became susceptible to the paradox, and thus able to act as a strawman of (classical) liberal beliefs. You will find absolutely nothing in "equality before the law" which falls victim to the paradox.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoThe paradox is that you can exchange ideas freely until someone uses your openness to new ideas to argue against the free exchange of ideas; whereas people who don’t believe in the free exchange of ideas will not allow you to advocate for the free exchange of ideas because they don’t believe in the free exchange if ideas and the free exchange of ideas is one of the ideas they prohibit.
- watwut 6y agoAfaik, no serious historian is talking about French revolution in terms of single good side vs single bad side.
- awb 6y agoThe anti Women's right to vote movement, anti Civil Rights movement, anti Gay marriage movement, etc. A vocal minority was stoking fears of the implications of recognizing the rights of the disenfranchised as the imminent breakdown of society, family and law and order. Turns out they were just bigoted.
- malinens 6y agoall of the anti things You just wrote had quite popular support in society at that time
- nostrademons 6y agoTo elaborate on aazaa's comment: think of the labels "patriot" and "terrorist" and think of how frequently they correlate with "winner" and "loser". The Founding Fathers were patriots, because America is now the dominant world superpower. But there are a number of groups that attempted to do to America exactly what America did to the British. Daniel Shay, Tecumseh, Sitting Bull, the entire Confederacy, the Anarchist movement of the early 1900s, the Business Plot of 1933, McCarthy, Vietnamese nationalism, Osama bin Laden. How does history remember them now?
- justinator 6y agoSitting Bull is in interesting company.
- alavesto 6y agoThis isn't to be taken as a show of support at all, but I had similar thoughts when the story of the kidnapping plot against Michigan gov Gretchen Whitmer broke. The militia had been heavily encouraged by multiple undercover FBI agents-provocateur who themselves were integral in engineering the plot - and it's really unclear whether the militia would have even considering doing such a thing without these agents egging them on and offering to provide explosives. If the British Empire had the technology and infrastructure of today's intelligence agencies, the founding fathers would have been arrested as terrorists before they could get 10 people in a room together. There would have been some undercover agent of the Crown showing up to meetings trying to convince George Washington that they needed to go kill the king - and history would remember them all as nothing more than evil terrorists justly apprehended for plotting violence against the state.
- ip26 6y agoI'm not deeply versed in the Whitmer case, but Federal agents are supposed to follow a set of guidelines to avoid entrapment, which is what you're describing & is supposed to cause the case to be thrown out.
- awb 6y agoIf the FBI did that, that's entrapment and might be an eligible defense. However, if the FBI assisted or even encouraged an existing plot, then I don't think it would qualify. > Entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent or agent of the state induces a person to commit a "crime" that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit > Depending on the law in the jurisdiction, the prosecution may be required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not entrapped or the defendant may be required to prove that they were entrapped as an affirmative defense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment
- mongol 6y agoSweden in the past 30-40 years. Perhaps not historically significant, yet, but clear as night and day when you have lived here over the course of that time. What has happened in Sweden during this time? It was until very recently almost impossible to have any public, critical opinion about migration without risking being labeled racist. Why? Not sure. But seems to me, a reaction due to fear that Sweden could evolve to something like Nazi Germany. Which of course was not going to happen.
- BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y agoBeen in Sweden last year. Couldn't buy almost anything with cash. People have not noticed how an important liberty has been taken from them. Once cash is gone, government has complete information about you, and complete control over you, no shackles needed.
- mturmon 6y agoHow about the people who thought UN troops in black helicopters would take over the US? Eg, US Congressman Helen Chenoweth, from Idaho. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_helicopter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_helicopter
- mensetmanusman 6y agoArab Spring has been a disaster.
- frenchyatwork 6y ago> I think it's safe to fear unchecked power and those who are loyal to people instead of loyal to ideas For all its many failings, I think this is one of the benefits that religion (an particularly the form of religion popular in Europe during the the last 2000 years) can provide. By having a notion of some god, and a cannon, you can have a list of ideas that everyone considers good, and it makes such demagoguery a little more difficult. The US Constitution is a similar sort of cannon, but the ideas it proscribes are much more limited.
- pantalaimon 6y agoI don't see that at all. You can still end up in a theocracy with an inquisition for everyone who doesn't follow the dogma. Religion is perfectly exploitable for this and has been more often than not in history.
- lostcolony 6y agoIt's exploitable, sure, same as any shared ideology (twist it to your purposes, burn the heretics). But unlike ideologies that don't purport to be objective from humanity, religion carries the seed of its own undoing. Much like Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door, an abuse of the ideal can be countered by the ideal. I can't think of any non-religious ideology that has done that; countering those abusive ideologies requires ascribing to a different ideology. Nazism didn't defeat or replace Nazism, but Christianity has defeated Christianity before. But that said, I agree that someone saying "God is on my side" is inherently problematic in a different way than just "I have the most power to enforce my will". Of course, I don't see that as a value judgement on the existence of religion; after all, regardless of my, or society's, beliefs, the power behind the individual is still there, or not, regardless of their claim of God's support.
- jessaustin 6y agos/cannon/canon/g Most scoundrels throughout the history you invoke, clung tightly to their Christian identity. The millions of peasants subject to the predations of the Church over scores of generations didn't praise the Lord for their good fortunes. That Hitler wasn't particularly Christian himself, probably was because Christianity was already a tarnished brand in early 20c central Europe.
- clarkmoody 6y ago> power corrupts The full quote is worth repeating here. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.
- sonofhans 6y ago> But power corrupts absolutely ... Even accounting for the misquote (no hate :) I disagree. History furnishes us with examples aplenty of people who were powerful yet uncorrupted. I believe Frank Herbert was closer to the truth when he wrote: > “All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.”
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoThe problem is, more of us are corruptible than we think.
- lostcolony 6y agoWell, per Herbert's quote, I think the attractiveness of power is directly and inversely proportional to how corrupt(ible) a person is. The best leaders are the servant ones, who see leadership as a burden to bear, and to assume only begrudgingly as need thrusts it upon them. Those who look to it for the ability to change the world, even with the best intentions, are imminently corruptible; they're already approaching it with the idea that they know best, and others who disagree are wrong and need to be kept subservient.
- Tarsul 6y agoThat's why we need more women in power.
- lostcolony 6y agoI agree that we need more women in power; I don't really agree that that's the reason why. If women are generally more disinclined to pursue power I suspect it's cultural, and liable to change.
- watwut 6y agoOut of curiosity, who had unchecked power and was not corrupted by that?