Wholesale editing again?
"A Technocracy member is expected to have no private opinions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and selfabasement before the power and wisdom of the Technocracy. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline.
The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Doubletalk, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Laissezfaire, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."
Ayn Rand said it much better...
The Nature of Government, by Ayn Rand
We need a government to enforce rules. Men gain enormous benefits from dealing with each other. In social existence they gain knowledge and trade. But they must first acecpt the principle of individual rights. It is a moral imperative to retaliate against those who initiate physical force. Otherwise you reward evil. Now, if the government didn't organize itself into protective forces, individuals would have to fearfully protect themselves. We'd have chaos. People would be prone to family feuds, arbitrary punishments, and lynch mobs if they didn't have a court system that objectively observed the evidence. "A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control--i.e., under objectively defined laws." (109) "Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government offical may do nothing except that which is legally permitted." (109-110) The reverse situation, where the government is free and the citizens must receive special permission to act, is a rule by brute force. The proper functions of the government are: police, armed services, and law courts. The courts serve in part to mediate capitalist disagreements. |
