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Two teams face off on both sides of the field. The signal is given. The ball is in play. But in this game what's the ball? The ball is your freedom. It's your freedom that's in play here.  The game of power has been played throughout history. Kings and Prime Ministers. Queens and Viziers. It's an old timeless game that goes back into the darkest past. But our version of the game is different for two reasons. First the spectators get to help decide who plays and who wins. And Second, we make sure the game is replayed over and over again, so no team ever wins in a final way. Our system of representative government, the Bill of Rights and checks and balances, are not there to help the players for power, but to handicap them. Where many systems of government and their games of power were built on faith in governments-- ours was built on a great deal of suspicion about government power. And the ball tossed between the teams. That's our freedom. Our freedom exists only so long as the ball is in play. When the ball stops being contested, then our freedom is in danger. Because a victory by one side means that power is being concentrated. And when power is concentrated, freedom is diminished. But our unique game depends on one fundamental thing. It depends on both sides agreeing that playing the game by the rules is more important than the outcome. It requires that players on both sides believe that losing by the rules, is better than winning against the rules. And the moment one side stops believing that, the nature of the game changes fundamentally. Because a game is defined by its rules. The games we play are based on the rules that we make for them. If one team in a game no longer abides by those rules, then it's no longer a game. It's a war. The rules of a game define civilization. By playing civilized games, we agree that following the rules is more important than getting our way. That is what separates us from societies where a resort to violence is a solution to not getting your way. In politics, the rules of the game require that everyone believe that they matter more than winning. And the underlying moral logic for a politician to believe that is fallibility. A politician must believe that he is capable of being wrong, and his opponent right, in order for following the rules to be more moral, than winning by any means necessary. Without a sense of individual and ideological fallibility, the only moral logic that remains to a politician is victory at any cost. This of course is the problem with our not so nice or neat little game. Our rules are a process. By trusting the rules, we keep the process going. And the process is what protects our freedoms, because no individual team gets to keep the ball, centralize its power and gain absolute control over all our lives. But what happens when one side believes that their goal is worth more than the process? War happens. And then tyranny.  Ideology and unlimited ambition form the toxic stew in the mix here. Because both immunize one against a sense of fallibility. The more a political movement becomes submersed in an ideology, the less its followers believe in any kind of objective reality or independent process of transferring power. Because ideology propounds a polar reality, in which there is a clear and absolute truth. And the natural corollary of this is that only those who know and believe in that absolute truth may be permitted to hold power.Last week, Keith Olbermann delivered one of his patented rants against Campbell Brown on CNN, for giving some amount of equal time to views that he doesn't agree with. Airtime of course is one counter of power. And ideologues do not believe that anyone who isn't them, has any right to hold or have access to any power whatsoever. The idea of equal time or fair play makes no sense to them. They already know who's right and who's wrong. Why even bother giving the other side a chance to talk when it can only mislead the public? The same thing of course holds true for elections. Many countries have elections, and they tend to have a standard for public office which requires participants to agree with their dominant ideology. You cannot be opposed to Communist rule in China or opposed to Islamic rule in Iran or opposed to national hegemony in Turkey. One of the reasons the left was so outraged and infuriated by Sarah Palin, is that with her unlike McCain, they had no points of agreement at all. And so they predictably reacted as the Mullahs would if some infidel woman were to walk in and propose to turn Iran into a free country. They went howling mad. And they still haven't recovered from it yet. Ideologies do not play by the rules or trust objective processes. They control them instead. So the left politicizes everything it can get its hands on. Because the act of politicizing something gives them control over it, and in the process diminishes human freedom. For example the left has been politicizing culture for a long time now. Injecting political messages into culture, whether to promote right-thinking or filter out wrong-thinking (political correctness) inevitably leads to propaganda. The purpose of propaganda is to control attitudes and behavior by shaping minds. And the core principle of all propaganda is the reaffirmation of the ruling ideology that is manufacturing the propaganda. This may exist only as subtext, but it is always there. The politicization of culture thus leads to cultural tyranny. The game exists only so long as both sides agree that playing is more important than winning. Ideological fanaticism has no use for such thinking however. Its only goal is to win in order to implement the "Best Possible Way for Humans to Live" as soon as possible. Ideological purity is measured by ruthlessness. Any talk of playing fair is clear evidence of corruption and sympathies with the enemy that are to be rooted out. Such movements will exploit democracy, but have no use for it except as a tool to achieve victory. And once victory is achieved, democracy becomes redundant. The logic behind that is quite clear. It is the same logic used by those who torched the Library of Alexandria. "If what is in the books is in the Koran, they are redundant. And if it is not, they are heretical." Similarly democracy is useless. Since if the people support the ideology, then open voting is redundant. If they do not, then voting is counter-revolutionary. This same logic applies to every aspect of life. Ideological rigidity fears even allowing the question to be asked, for fear that someone will hear the wrong answer. Questions are already redundant, since the answers are available. It is better than to repeat the answers over and over again in creative ways. And that is the wallpaper of propaganda. The recirculation of the same dumbed down ideas over and over again in new and interesting ways.  The game was designed to prevent this very state of affairs. To stop power from being invested in one faction and one ideology. Because the Framers understood that laws could easily be rewritten by a dominant faction or ideology. Only by keeping the ball in play, could that be prevented. But the left has no interest in abstract rules designed to prevent the monopolization of power, because their driving objective is to monopolize power in the name of the public good. It wants to get the ball and hold on to it. To end the game for good, so it can get down to building the perfect society, without any pesky rules to get in their way. And the spectators won't have any say in it. All they will be allowed to do is stand and cheer, when prompted by their betters. Thus the radicalization of one faction dramatically changes the game, and endangers freedom. A radical faction will free to ignore the rules or make them up as it goes along. The game spins out of control. And the ball. The ball will end up in the radical faction's hands, unless perhaps one of the spectators catches it first.  |
(the following are auto-translations of an article and a livejournal post of the events. Some of the photos and linked photos contain obscene language)  At the end of Saturday, June 5, several thousand left wing activists staged a demonstration to protest against the government in connection with the detention of "peacekeeping" flotilla Free Gaza. Amongst them the Knesset faction Hadash, Dov Hanin and Mohamed Baraka, head of the organization "Peace Now, Yariv Oppenheimer, a veteran activist Uri Avnery. However, the pro-Israel protesters infiltrated the heart of the procession without the knowledge of the activists of the left. Only an hour after the rally began did the organizers realize something was wrong. About a dozen Russian-speaking young men, aged 25-35 years, created mocking posters in English and Russian languages, to show by their words, the moral squalor of the left wing camp. At their own expense they printed banners reading: We Made the World Abandon Reason (a quote from the now popular We Won the World parody video), We'll Stab for Peace, What the Hell Am I Doing Here. And Do Not Mess with the Zohan (a recent movie about an Israeli counter terrorist operative.)  One participant of this action, the 31-year-old Arthur Krupp told the portal IzRus : "People who came to the left wing demonstration, can in no way represent the views of most Israelis. This is a screaming group of rogue agents provocateurs, political clowns, and radical fanatics. I came to show the squalor and folly of this sad circus, where citizens are protesting against the right of the army to protect their own hides from Islamic terrorists. The left think only they know how to create a provocative situation, but this time we have shown that sarcasm and humor can be an excellent weapon against their deranged fanaticism." 28-year-old Mark Layngold supported him: "For me to confront those present at this orgy of depravity and treason were a debt to my nation. People who do not see the world through rose-colored glasses must confront the madness of the left wing camp. I, like my friends who share general views on the situation in the country, decided to show how this bunch of so-called champions of the world is immoral. "  Autotranslated by Google Translate from the original article A first hand account from the organizers of the infiltration (again autotranslated) Given: A rally of leftist bastards protesting in favor of the flotilla, against the occupation and the whole "AllahAkhbar" Dozens of young, strong and incredibly beautiful representatives of the right wing An equal number of idiotic signs Objective: Penetration of the enemy camp Creating a circus  We decided to make posters in English in order to reach a wider audience and Russian for the Russian language press On the way to the left wing rally, we were stopped by the police and forced to show posters who did not realize their significance, and we jauntily told them that we are left wingers and that we need to go there. In general, I drew attention to the fact that I looked like a a young Castro. At the site there had already gathered the "cream of the nation": Balad (Arab nationalists), Hadash (communist Arabs), Meretz (radical left wing Party), Peace Now, Gush Shalom and other filth. We were very much isolated in their background - a dozen healthy men. As it turned out, near the left-hand demonstration was a sad bunch of the miserable, the pathetic, the blind and the despicable. As we approached the rally, they asked us in trembling voices, "Are you on our side? You do not believe in violence?" We nodded very convincingly. Eventually some in the rally began to look around and read the writing on our signs. Some took pictures. Others tried to engage us in argument. An American activist on vacation to protest against the Zionists demanded to know why we have such posters and why we are not taking what happened seriously. Then he started yelling that I should shave my head because clearly I was feeling above myself because of my race, skin and gender identity. Another left winger, after I accidentally bumped into him, spent a few minutes screaming hysterically that he would see me in court. Another demanded that we leave the rally because we are making them all look stupid and observers will think that we are part of the left. I smiled at him with all my teeth and told him that we had the right to protest with any posters we wanted.  We went all the way from the assembly point at Kings of Israel Square (known to the left as Rabin Square) to the Tel Aviv Museum. There was a major rally there where the main bastards were shouting anti-israel garbage into the microphone to the cheers of the vermin in the crowd. Finally the latest complainant brought the police and we were escorted to the other side of the street. As they escorted us, the police told us exactly what they thought of the left, and our Zohan poster met with their approval.  |
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