From: hal@finney.org
Date: Mon Jun 18 2001 - 12:46:09 MDT
Waldemar Inghdahl, <waldemar.ingdahl@eudoxa.se>, writes:
> It is a tragic irony of our times that the two worst, bloodiest regimes in
> history, the Nazis of Germany and the Communists of Soviet Russia, both
> of whom were motivated by brute power- lust and a crudely materialistic
> greed for the unearned, showed respect for the power of philosophy and
> spent billions of propaganda and indoctrination. Today, when looking
> back we are appalled. Their ideas were so openly morally debased and
> unpractical, they were nuts! But even so millions followed and died for
> those ideas. In the US and other Western countries who claim to believe
> in the superiority of the human spirit over matter, you often find that
> its citizens neglect philosophy, despise ideas, starve the best minds of
> the young, offer nothing but the stalest slogans of cyncial pragmatism,
> and wonder why they are losing the world to the thugs.
Can't you draw the opposite lesson from this, though? It is a bad sign if
you find yourself resorting to propaganda in order to make your policies
acceptable. If the most successful propaganda states were Nazi Germany
and Communist Russia, are you sure you want to advocate joining them?
With effective policies and ideas, you don't need propaganda. People
will come to see the value in them using their own powers of reason
and perception. The West neglects philosophy because its ideas work,
and it doesn't need fancy rhetoric to fool people.
Propaganda is the last resort of a failed ideology. Better to let the
facts speak for themselves.
Hal
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