Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Re: Required Reading for the Anti-War crowd

Re: Freedom won
Mary Anne — (archived)

Money won.

Freedom may win eventually. I agree that it has a better chance with the open Western model. But that's because we in the West are such a bunch of mouthy cusses. Letting a hundred flowers bloom in the West doesn't confine them to a garden where they may be killed or uprooted and sent to flower re-education camps. Our flowers seed themselves everywhere, blown by the hot air of 300 million wagging tongues. We are a culture of dandelions -- hardy, maddening, beautiful, and even edible, but impossible to uproot.

You can't keep a country on its feet, let alone on the march, if you have to spend a lot of time and effort shutting up the troublemakers. That's why dissent is so often depicted as disloyalty. It takes away from the unfettered ability to exercise power by those who have it.

The Western political philosophy that allows us to continue to stand is one of not shutting people up, retaining energy and capital for other things. When the West shuts people up as a political strategy, the quest for freedom is in jeopardy.

Regards--
Mary Anne

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (43 posts)