Todo, I have a feeling we are not in Kansas anymore. We must be over the rainbow! – Dorothy
The traditional way of life in America and Europe is actually quite unique when viewed alongside other models for civic society. Many of the recent changes to our laws bring us closer to Greek ideals for society which in turn share striking similarities to 19th century Socialistic theories.
Plato’s Republic:
- The Unborn / Newborn – It is lawful to expose a newborn child if it is not convenient. 1
- The Aged and Sick – Medicine is dispensed according to the value of that individual to society. Although euthanasia is not actively endorsed, medicine may be withheld. 2
- Equality of Sexes – Men and women strip naked and exercise together so that all barriers between the sexes may be destroyed. Women fight alongside men in the military. 3
- Children – Children are raised by a state appointed Nanny. 4
- Marriage – consists of temporary unions arranged by the casting of lots at a fertility festival. Philosophers rig the system in order to ensure that desirable traits are selected and propagated in the children. 5
- Sex – Sex is reduced to its purely natural and physiological functions. Homosexuality and pederasty are the norm. 6
- Education – Man is saved through education. The philosopher who serves his city is guaranteed a place on the Island of the Blessed in the next life.
- Property – Property and homes are shared among the Guardian class. 7
- Government – The city is ruled by philosophers. Honesty is taught as a virtue for commoners and the guardians but philosophers / rulers are allowed to lie for the good of the people. All natural relationships such as that between husband and wife and between child and mother must ultimately be dissolved in the State. 8
- Religion – Myths about the gods are rewritten or new myths are invented to serve the needs of the State. Religion and propaganda are indistinguishable. God is resolved into an ideal and removed far away from everyday life.
Lycurgus’ Sparta
- The Unborn / Newborn- Deformed and unwanted children are thrown over a cliff. 9
- The Aged and Sick – The elderly are killed when they are no longer useful.
- Property – All means of production are communally owned. Silver and gold money are forcibly exchanged for iron coinage.
- Marriage – Partners swapped freely. 10
- Sex – Pederasty is the norm. At the age of 13 boys are chosen by older men. 11
- Family – Children are raised by the state. No concept of family to speak of.
- Women – No distinction between women and men. Both go to war. Boys and girls danced naked together at religious festivals. 12
- Economics – The laboring caste was ruled by a warrior elite. Spartan products were known for their utility and lack of artistry.
- Government – Society ruled by a warrior class that makes perpetual war. Helots are condemned to perpetual serfdom.
19th Century Socialism in Europe (Fourier, Marx, Lenin)
- Marriage – It is a social convention that is easily annulled and ideally should disappear altogether. 13
- Sex – The suppression of natural instincts is harmful. All instincts are equally fruitful and useful for society–it is only necessary to combine them and direct them in the proper way. 14
- Equality of Sexes – The goal of communism is the withering away of hierarchies. Men and women should serve the commune without distinction.
- Family – Children should be wards of the state. 15
- Property – ‘Abolition of private property” 16
- Government – rule by technocrats who are the Absolute arbiters of truth and justice. 17
- Religion – The basic principles guiding the life of an individual and of mankind in general do not go beyond the satisfaction of material needs or primitive instincts. (I. Shafarevich, 227)
Dostoyevsky recognized that the radical 19th century social experiments undertaken in Europe would lead to disaster.
“For socialism sets itself the task of solving the fate of mankind, not according to Christ but outside God and outside Christ, and it was natural for it to arise in Europe, on the ruins of the Christian principle in proportion to the degree that this had become degenerate and lost in the Catholic Church itself.” (Dostoyevsky, A Writers Diary, February 1877) “When Catholic humanity turned away from the monstrous image in which Christ was presented to them, then after many centuries of protests. ..there finally appeared, at the beginning of this century, attempts to arrange things outside God and outside Christ. Without the instincts of bees or ants that create their beehives and ant hills faultlessly and precisely, people undertook to create something like a faultless human ant hill. They rejected the formula for salvation which proceeds from God and was revealed as ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ and replaced it by practical conclusions such as ‘chacun pour soi et Dieu pour tous’ [every man for himself and God for all] or by scientific axioms such as ‘the struggle for existence.’ Lacking the instincts of animals. ..people placed great confidence in science, forgetting that for a task like the creation of society, science was still in its infancy. Dreams appeared. The future tower of Babel became the ideal and, on the other hand, the fear of all mankind. But the visionaries were soon followed by other doctrines, simple and to the point, such as ‘rob the rich, drown the world in blood and then everything will somehow arrange itself.’ ” (Dostoyevsky, A Writers Diary, November 1877)
The rebellion of man against God must ultimately must lead to the rebellion of man against nature. One can see evidence of this rebellion all around us.
– The practice of feeding meat to herbivores resulted in a spectacular kind of disease – Bovine spongiform encephalopathy
– The Aswan Dam has destroyed the fertility of the soil (once the richest soil in the world), the Mediterranean sardine fishery, and Egypt’s fresh water supply.
– The demand by feminists to be treated like men has put an end to chivalry and resulted in unprecedented exploitation.
– The homosexual lifestyle has increased the risk of death from STD’s.
– The transfer of the responsibility for a child’s education from parents to the public education system has resulted in dumber and lazier kids.
– The erosion of the right to property through inflation and taxation has diminished the productivity of the average citizen and engendered a whole class of bottom feeders.
Modern man does not think twice about cooking a kid in it’s mothers milk.
Footnotes
- “…but the offspring of the inferior, and any of those of the other sort who are born defective, they will properly dispose of in secret, so that no one will know what has become of them.” (The Republic, 460c) As for a child born of unregulated sexual union, the following is indicated: “…to dispose of it on the understanding that we cannot rear such an offspring.” (The Republic, 461c) ↩
- Physicians and judges “…will care for the bodies and souls of such of your citizens as are truly well-born, but those who are not, such as are defective in body, they will suffer to die, and those who are evil-natured and incurable in soul they will themselves put to death.” (The Republic, 410a) ↩
- A man must have no more compunction about killing the advancing female enemy than the male, and he must be no more protective of the heroine fighting on his right side than of the hero on his left.” (A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind) ↩
- Parents ought not know their children: “…conducting the mothers to the pen when their breasts are full, but employing every device to prevent anyone from recognizing her own infant.” (The Republic, 460c) ↩
- “These women shall all be common to all these men, and that none shall cohabit with any privately, and that the children shall be common, and that no parent shall know its own offspring nor any child its parent.” (The Republic, 457d) ↩
- When Plato makes reference to a ‘lover’ in the Republic, he has a boy in mind and not a woman. ↩
- “none have any habitation or storage area which is not open for all to enter at will.” (The Republic, in loc.) ↩
- “It seems likely that our rulers will have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit of their subjects.” (The Republic, 459d) ↩
- And if they found the child “puny and ill-shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetae, a sort of chasm under Taygetus; as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not, from the very outset, appear made to be healthy and vigorous.” (Plutarch, Lycurgus, 80) ↩
- …the laws of other nations seemed to him (Lycurgus) very absurd and inconsistent, where people would be so solicitous for their dogs and horses… to pay money to procure fine breeding, and yet kept their wives shut up… (Plutarch, Lycurgus) ↩
- By the time they (Spartan boys) were come to this age there was not any of the more hopeful boys who had not a lover to bear him company. The old men, too, had an eye upon them, coming often to the grounds to hear and see them contend… (Plutarch, Lycurgus) ↩
- It was their custom, during certain festivals, for young men and women to dance together naked and thereby to form a natural attraction for each other, not unlike uniting a herd of stallions with the mares. (Plutarch, Lycurgus) ↩
- “In future socialist society, where the obligation for the upbringing, education and maintenance of children will be shifted from the parents to society as a whole, it is clear that the family must wither away.” (125: p. 121) “It makes little sense for us to strive for an especially stable family and to regard marriage from that angle.” (Engels as cited in Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon) ↩
- Fourier writes, “All these philosophical whims called duty have nothing to do with truth; duty proceeds from people, while attraction proceeds from God. If you want to recognize God’s intentions, study attraction, only nature, and do not accept duty.” Fourier also states, “There is not a single useless or bad passion; all personalities are good as they are.” (Fourier as cited in I. Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon, 227) ↩
- “Monogamy arose from the concentration of great riches in a single hand–that of the man–and from the need to bequeath these riches to the children of that man and not of any other…. With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the individual family ceases to be an economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of children become a public affair; society looks after all children equally, whether they are born in or out of wedlock.” (I. Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon) ↩
- “It should be made clear that I do not consider the idea of rooms necessary; I believe that it will be possible to consider a room only as the living space of an individual person. After all, isolation in a room is quite unnecessary for collective man. …The isolation needed in certain hours of love can be had in special pleasure gardens where the man and his female companion will be able to find the necessary comforts.” (Marx as cited by I. Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon) ↩
- The party may be absolutely mistaken, it is said, it might call black something that is clearly and indisputably white. To all those who try to foist this example on me, I say: Yes, I shall consider black something that I felt and considered to be white, since outside the party, outside accord with it, there is no life for me. (I. Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon) ↩