Our Rulers: Wrong in Theory, Incompetent in Practice

September 19, 2023 By Christopher Chantrill

 The big takeaway from the western ruling class's war on the rising populist movement is ruling-class failure. Rulers typically don't feel the need to take out the opposition unless they have fluffed it. Or muffed it: I'm not sure which applies here. Hello Fluffy Joe Stalin in the 1930s and Muffy Mao in the 1960s. Frankly I'd prefer if Muffy and Buffy would stick to playing beach volleyball.

Experts agree that Stalin and Mao succumbed to The Totalitarian Temptation, courtesy of Jean-François Revel. But I think the experts are missing the point. The totalitarians weren't so much tempted to go political to the max as carefully taught to do so. That was the Thing in the 19th century: get the politics right and justice will ensue. Fundamental transformation, dontcha know.

Let's tell it like it is. First the educated ruling class was wrong on its theory that politics could lead to justice. Second, the educated ruling class failed when it put its theory of politics-with-everything into action.

The basic error in the Enlightenment was the absurd faith that politics could ever be more than a necessary evil. I get that the educated class needed a political philosophy to justify its overthrow of the old feudal and monarchical order. But I declare that, by 1850 at the latest after nearly a century of revolutions and constitutions, any educated-class thinker with half a brain should have admitted: politics is a very blunt instrument; use only in emergency....................To Read More....