From: Randall Parker 

In , note these
cogitations from blucy{at}mediaone.net Bill Lucy:
> > The way to get people to give up on real freedom is to confuse them
> > about what the term means. A very good technique for obliterating the
> > knowledge of a concept is to take the words that refer to that concept
> > and create new meanings for those words and promote those meanings.
>
> So you would agree that we are not free?

I think there are degrees of freedom. There are plenty of people in this
country who'd like to restrict freedom in various situations in order to
achieve other goals that they seek. They've been partially successful in
this. Yet still the degree of freedom we have here is so much greater than
in, say, Cuba that we are enormously more free than they are.

I agree with Rand that without property rights no other rights are
possible. A Russian friend who has never read Rand recently sent me a
message that I an excerpting here. We were discussing the intellectual
appeal of communism:

<<<<<

We already talked about that. I think I said that I see one of the core
reasons of the Russian revolution was that the intellectuals promoting it
were not allowed to the property. Should they be more involved in the
development of a capitalist society they had better ways to satisfy their
ego and gain a personal wealth.

....

I think the most awful aspect of communism is its deceptiveness. People who
promote it follow their personal goals. What they say about it is just the
reverse of the reality. Take a look at the books by philosopher Alexander
Zinoviev (a non-Jew emigrated to Germany in 1974 writing about communism)
to understand this better. Every thesis in the communism is the reverse of
the reality. Take this one example - "in the communist state people
have total control over their economy and their politics". In reality
they have no property and therefore can't control the economy, and they are
oppressed ideologically and therefore have no control over politics.

At the same time look how many common stock shares are owned by the US
population. Isn't it the real control over the economy available to the
masses?

>>>>>


> Help me out here, Randall. You seem to be saying two things -- one is that
our
> government allows us to be free, but also that government (acting through
> schools) is not (by redefining terms).

It isn't just government and it isn't just happening thru schools. There is
an on-going intellectual battle to define what words mean.

By the extent to which they can confuse the issue they can make headway.
They've been only partially successful so far.

> 


V and C? Sorry, I'm being slow today.

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