1. Dictatorship is the herd instinct gone wrong in the extreme.
2. It is impossible to control another person... not a stranger, not an employee, not a friend, not a spouse, not a child. You can contain them for a while and you can make them pretend to be controlled when you're looking, but actual control is an illusion. And the more you try, the more they resist. This is why oppressive regimes always fall and why government control always fails.
3. You can't change humanity. We are creatures of our evolution and we don't change. So when your goal is to make humanity something it is not, you've already failed. Socialism, Communism, Religion, Political Correctness... none of it has been able to remake humanity. The only thing that changes humanity is experience, and even those aren't fundamental changes.
4. Judging a person on their personality rather than their actions is stupid, but it's also very liberal. Papa Doc took control in Haiti with the full support of leftist/liberal journalists because they thought he seemed like a nice guy. They were shocked SHOCKED when he started having people beheaded. This is why liberals should never be allowed any say in power. They overlooked the fact that Duvalier decided to form his own secret police because they assumed he was nice. They ignored the fact these were murderers recruited out of prison because they assumed he was nice. They ignored his harassment and murder of opponents because they assumed he was nice and wanted to do good things. By the time he had killed all his enemies and bathed with their severed heads, it finally sunk in to these liberals that he was bad. Idiots. Judge a man by his actions, not your fondest wishes for who he is deep down.
5. Ever notice that dictators kill their friends? The official line is that they worry these people might challenge them. I suspect the reality is that their friends remind them that they really can't control other people and that becomes an obsession.
6. Dictators lie. They set up fake elections. They create false economic data. They invent excuses to murder their opponents. This is why truth is so important, Farrell, and why you can't say, "well, everybody lies."
7. It amazes me how sentimental liberals get about dictators. In Cuba, many liberals point to the ice cream parlors as a reason to love Castro. They routinely fall for photogenic images. They fall for flashy wardrobes. They fall for roguish sexual behavior. Are these really reasons to overlook the murders, the oppression and the destruction?
8. Ever notice that it isn't the intellectuals who take over after a socialist revolution? It's typically the most brutal thugs and peasants who float to the top. Then they ship the intellectuals to the gulags.
9. Did you ever notice that after authoritarians fall out of favor, liberals try to dismiss them all as deviants and psychological weirdos. I guess it's hard to accept that ideas you loved so much turned out to be evil.
Thoughts?
