On Oct 2, 2008, at 4:00 PM, David Brin wrote: > Bruce said: Sooner or later, an anti-democratic ideology will > emerge that leverages democracy itself to destroy the democracy that > elected it, and I'm quite convinced the Bush administration comprises > at least some pieces of that exploit. > > > DB: There are many variants, including the "largesse calumny... > that the People always ruin democracy thru overspending. A slander > that is especially ironic since it is the pseudo-feudal "nobility" > that have done this, not the people. > > see: > http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html > > The intermediate paranoid hypothesis is that the kleptos have > intentionally weakened all our institutions of accountability, while > strengthening our institutions of capricious authority, in order to > get away with more theft. Not necessarily in order to destroy the US. > > The extreme, manchurian version is simple, and chilling. A certain > foreign royal (oil) house has the means, motive and opportunity to > create and forge and hand-craft a ruling US clade and order it to > send us toward a cliff. Cicumstantial evidence abounds.
I'm not sure a foreign power is necessarily required in this equation, although I'm sure there are foreign powers that would be willing to try exactly what you're suggesting. There are domestic ideologies, not connected to foreign powers as far as I know, whose agendas center on enforcing their own doctrines as secular law, that consider our democracy an obstacle to be tolerated only as long as it can't be swept away, and while the democracy must be tolerated, followers of those ideologies follow short term and long term strategies designed to concentrate power in their own hands, with the goal of covertly obtaining enough power to carry out an ideological coup d'etat. I think "largesse" is at most a secondary concern in this particular threat. The overriding concern seems to be a view of religious freedom that is an absolute freedom, but only for followers of the "right" religion, and no freedom for anyone else, which drives the strategy of dismantling the institutions that get in their way. It's ideologically driven memetic warfare more than anything else. I'm particularly aware of it, and concerned about it, because I'm far enough from that "right" religion in terms of what I believe that this country's existing protection of religious freedom is about all that protects me from this particular set of ideologies. In their world, I'd never escape the danger of being dragged out into the street and publicly stoned to death. I take that fairly seriously. "No, I'm disagreeing with you. That doesn't mean I'm not listening to you or understanding what you're saying. I'm doing all three at the same time." -- Toby Ziegler _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
