American Leningrad – UPDATED

You’ll want to read neo-neocon today.

She’s got quotes by Lenin and thoughts on Dostoevsky and yes, it’s all relevant, relevant, relevant.

The quotes from Lenin are chilling and you will be able to relate all of them to what is happening in America, today, even though President Obama insists it’s not, and that he’s no socialist, nope, not him! Bush was the socialist, yep, yep, yep.

Bush made his mistakes, and the damn bailout in October was a biggie, but he was no deliberate socialist.

A sampling of Neo:

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

Democracy is indispensable to socialism.

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

The goal of socialism is communism.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience.

No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.
…
I’ve quoted the following excerpt before on this blog. I’m quoting it again now. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I have reason to quote it in the future.

In this excerpt Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor is addressing Christ, who has returned to earth but is arrested and imprisoned again:

Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?

Read what’s in between.

Btw, socialism does not work, except in monasteries and the reason it works in monasteries is because it is voluntary. When you voted for Obama – if you did – did you think you were voting for socialism? When Obama talked to you about “remaking America” was socialism and “not wasting a good crisis” what you had in mind? Do you really think the US Constitution is fundamentally flawed, and not a bit of genius?

UPDATE: I wrote earlier today:

No wonder [Church] scares off so many. In our age, the self is everything to be celebrated and never to be diminished. Church subsumes; you become not the lone worker bee, but the very buzz of the hive. And what sweetness is found, therein.

But the thing is…being subsumed by something greater than oneself is only glorious when one is at liberty to assent to it, when one volunteers to be absorbed into the collective. That is, in fact, the ultimate expression of liberty. Being compelled into the collective – or herded there – against ones will, against one’s liberty, against one’s declared choice – even against one’s constitution, has nothing to do with glory and everything to do with tyranny. One is an ultimate human freedom and a good. The other is the antithesis of human freedom. And that is evil.