Welcome to Friday’s Philosophical Foray beyond Healthcare.
In today’s edition, I want to pay homage to two great American thinkers and patriots who have led the struggle against the authoritarian tendency of leaders: Frederick Douglass & Thomas Sowell.
One of Douglass’s central messages was that freedom requires a perpetual effort to push back against tyranny and injustice. He had this to say on this issue:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” –Frederick Douglass
In his book, The Vision of the Anointed Sowell lays it out this way:
“The hallmark of the vision of the anointed is that what the anointed consider lacking for the kind of social progress they envision is will and power, not knowledge.”
“The real comparison, however, is not between the knowledge possessed by the average member of the educated elite versus the average member of the general public, but rather the total direct knowledge brought to bear through social processes (the competition of the marketplace, social sorting, etc.), involving millions of people, versus the secondhand knowledge of generalities possessed by a smaller elite group.” ~ Thomas Sowell
The present-day struggle against authoritarian censorship, masquerading is science, is perpetuated largely by the unquestioning popularity propagandists of social media and MSM.
As laid out in this thoughtful piece in AIER by Barry Brownstein, we see the parallels of today’s struggles with that of historical human atrocities. The common trait is that it always starts with propaganda as a preamble, over and over until our senses are dulled to its unsettling suggestions. It is then, when the questioning stops and the debate ends, that the real damage is done.
But be careful, be careful, we are already beginning to become accustomed to thinking, that you can exclude someone, stigmatize someone, alienate someone. And slowly, step by step, day by day, that’s how people gradually become familiar with these things. Both the victims and the perpetrators and the witnesses, those we call bystanders, begin to become accustomed to the thoughts and ideas, that this minority that produced Einstein, Nelly Sachs, Heinrich Heine and the Mendelssohns is different, that they can be expelled from society, that they are foreign people, that they are people who spread germs, diseases and epidemics. That is terrible, and dangerous. That is the beginning of what can rapidly develop. ~ Marian Turski
“Today, vocal dissent doesn’t mean death, but many people self-censor as if it does. Eisenstein writes, ”
Another thing I’ve been hearing a lot of recently is that “Covid tyranny is bound to end soon, because people just aren’t going to stand for it much longer.” It would be more accurate to say, “Covid tyranny will continue until people no longer stand for it.” That brings up the question, “Am I standing for it?” Or am I waiting for other people to end it for me, so that I don’t have to? In other words, am I waiting for the rescuer, so that I needn’t take the risk of standing up to the bully?
Source: From Darkness to Light | AIER
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