Musings and rants for my own enjoyment.
Fireside Chat #2
Posted 11-12-2008 at 07:41 AM by Pandamonium
Good Evening Friends,
What a wild couple of weeks. There has been talk on some of the fora about a need for a revolution. Many point to Thomas Jefferson for justification. I wonder if it would matter if they knew that Jefferson wasn't so keen on that idea after the French Revolution.
The reason that I find this attitude so fascinating is because of the question that no one can seem to answer. And then what? Lets say one can actually have this revolution. Then what?
I happen to be reading Anwar el-Sadat's In Search of Identity. He had dreamed of a revolution for most of his life. In 1952, they got it. Unfortunately, they had not one clue what to do next. They hadn't, by his own admission, prepared for it. It was to be a military achievement and the power was to go to whom?
The last bit of "democracy" did not sit very well and so he voted, twice, for a dictatorship. Yep, he did have that hindsight thing going on. In his mind at the time, or so he says, one could accomplish in one day as a dictator what would take a year or more as a democracy.
Sadat recognized a deep flaw, or two or three, in Nassar's government. He wrote that there was something he always wanted to say to the people:
"Now that I have put an end to arbitrary arrests and detention centers forever; now what I have restored the rule of law to you; may I ask you to grant the President the right to use the detention weapon against his relatives--and only against his relatives? Power, together with the paraphernalia of power, does not turn my head, but how do I know it does not turn the heads of my family and relations? Surely they could behave unjustly towards others without my knowledge?"(p 138)
Revolutions sound cool. Hell, Che is my hero. However, unless you have a better type of government in mind and all of the "and then whats" figured out, I'll just have to take you as full of beans and overly dramatic.
What a wild couple of weeks. There has been talk on some of the fora about a need for a revolution. Many point to Thomas Jefferson for justification. I wonder if it would matter if they knew that Jefferson wasn't so keen on that idea after the French Revolution.
The reason that I find this attitude so fascinating is because of the question that no one can seem to answer. And then what? Lets say one can actually have this revolution. Then what?
I happen to be reading Anwar el-Sadat's In Search of Identity. He had dreamed of a revolution for most of his life. In 1952, they got it. Unfortunately, they had not one clue what to do next. They hadn't, by his own admission, prepared for it. It was to be a military achievement and the power was to go to whom?
The last bit of "democracy" did not sit very well and so he voted, twice, for a dictatorship. Yep, he did have that hindsight thing going on. In his mind at the time, or so he says, one could accomplish in one day as a dictator what would take a year or more as a democracy.
Sadat recognized a deep flaw, or two or three, in Nassar's government. He wrote that there was something he always wanted to say to the people:
"Now that I have put an end to arbitrary arrests and detention centers forever; now what I have restored the rule of law to you; may I ask you to grant the President the right to use the detention weapon against his relatives--and only against his relatives? Power, together with the paraphernalia of power, does not turn my head, but how do I know it does not turn the heads of my family and relations? Surely they could behave unjustly towards others without my knowledge?"(p 138)
Revolutions sound cool. Hell, Che is my hero. However, unless you have a better type of government in mind and all of the "and then whats" figured out, I'll just have to take you as full of beans and overly dramatic.
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