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Feb 2, 2022·edited Feb 2, 2022

Read the FT article on Russia/Ukraine and Putin's article. Clang! the first word that popped into the pea brain was Sudetenland!!

The pea brain has been pondering the Russian and Chinese for a bit and thinking they both are reverting to their old historic systems. Putin is the Tsar and Xi is the Emperor. In Putin's case he is afraid of being surrounded by democracies as they would set a bad example to the Russian peoples. Similar to Stalin's USSR fear of being surrounded by Capitaists.

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Re: Isaiah Berlin

Was reading a bit of Dan Litlle

https://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2022/01/thomas-carlyle-on-government-and.html

Carlyle has some thoughts that bordered on fascism. Or at least authoritarianism.

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It is good that Hubbard has seen the light albeit many years too late. There are still enough economists out there that still adore supply side economics and endless tax cuts. Bridges don't get build on hope alone.

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I’ve read Berlin’s essay several times in the last twenty years, and de Maistre is strong stuff indeed. One implication is that technology and science, and social progress through technology and science, are neither necessary nor desirable in the de Maistre model. Like the old joke about Baptists being against sex because they were afraid it might lead to dancing, a better shot at surviving childhood diseases and other improvements in public health, for example, are irrelevant and threatening, because such advances might encourage the questioning of society’s priors, and there can be no questioning, only obedience. A shorter or longer life for an individual is neither here nor there, as long as they are obedient. This kind of thinking is a reason why present-day integralists sometimes openly pine for the papal absolutism of the 12th century. The Malthusian Trap is a feature, not a bug.

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