The high-minded man must care more for truth...

...than for what people think. - Aristotle, Ethics

An Every Day Deception
For Everyman

  By J.R. Nyquist

Askar Askarov, in an article titled "The Empire of Tyranny ," recently stated that Russia's "current economic output" is less than that of Los Angeles County. A clarification is always in order when such things are written. Wealth is only one dimension, one aspect of life. Another dimension is the number of nuclear weapons you've got. 

When judging men or nations be careful not to confuse real power with wealth. The two things are not the same. If you're a billionaire who has everything invested in having a good time, a carjacker who invested $650 in a 9mm pistol has the power to take your car if not your life.

Don't fool yourself with monetary comparisons. And don't fool yourself with democratic labels. Once upon a time we accepted the authenticity of the "democratic" revolutions in one Communist country after another. But now we find that the revolutions weren't authentic after all. People are worried about the KGB lieutenant colonel who presently leads Russia. And so they cheered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the fall of "former" democrat, Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia, forgetting that these countries had been accepted as "democracies" more than a decade earlier. Now we accept them again. 

Ross Hedvicek is one of those who suspects the worst with regard to his native Czechoslovakia (now divided into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia). Ross has written for this Web site, and a Czech reader recently sent me the following comment: "I do not know where Mr. Hedvicek came up with those 'facts' about the Czech Republic not being a democratic country." The reader went on to call himself "a proud citizen of the Czech Republic," asserting that the Velvet Revolution overthrew the Communist regime: "and I have seen a great amount of democracy so far."

The reader continued: "being a member of the Communist Party was the prerequisite to get any reasonable job, higher education, be an actor or represent your own country at any sporting event. So getting a person untarnished by communist membership is 'kind of hard.'" The reader goes on to explain how his parents resisted joining the Communist Party. But they wanted him in a good school, so his parents became Communist Party members. "Trust me," he explains, "most of the people with any communist background had very little to do with it, if anything at all...."

Of course, this is perfectly reasonable (and naively sinister). Someone's parents joined the Communist Party to get them into a better school. Let us choke back our surprise at man's willingness to accept and to join. Most people join a club for the benefits. Does that make the club any less effective? (Would the Nazi Party be less evil if your mom joined it?) Here is a point to consider: In politics it doesn't matter what you believe. It only matters what you do. A dictator couldn't care less what you think as long as you go along with his plans. 

Those who believe in scientific socialism (i.e., the scientific management of human affairs) have demonstrated that their methods work, and those who control the state apparatus in Eastern Europe today are the same personalities that controlled it under Communism. In this context, what would it mean to say that Communists are pretenders who don't really believe in Marx and Lenin? Should it give us any comfort that they now pretend to be democrats? What could be more nominal than this sort of nominal democracy?  

Every totalitarian state relies on the cooperation of people who don't believe in it. One might call it "the hypocrisy of getting things done." It is the same hypocrisy that enabled Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the other dictators to make mischief. Those who compromise and collaborate think themselves practical and adaptive. Hannah Arendt once wrote that such people are the raw stuff out of which totalitarian regimes are fashioned. The criminals and thugs that run every government from the Czech Republic to Uzbekistan (regardless of "velvet" or "orange" revolutions) can call elections whenever they like. The candidates are all creatures of the red maw, fully digested over many years. They've passed through the innards of the system and they smell of the system. By necessity Havel, Yushchenko and Saakashvili had to make compromises. Not merely compromises, I might add. They were open or secret creatures of the Communist regime. So what does that make of Czech or Ukrainian democracy? It was the same with Yeltsin's Russia. In the Kremlin under drunken Boris we find a temporary expedient of international politics; a requirement in advance of certain military preparations. Those who do not understand the larger game that is being played will not grasp that democracy in the former satellite countries was and is an NEP-style maneuver, Leninist to the core. The logic of this maneuver is simple. The Soviet Union could not win an open war with the United States. Therefore, apparent enmity was laid to rest. In this way -- and only in this way -- could an indirect assault break America's economic and military superiority. The ongoing cooperation between various rogue states, terrorists and "former" communist countries is not accidental. Four years ago Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez went to Moscow and Beijing (one after the other) because he knew that the old centers of Communist power were yet ready to support an emerging Communist leader in South America. And so, when America is on its knees, when officials in Moscow no longer have to impress the Western public with the idea of democratic change in the former Communist Bloc, how long will freedom last for Czechs or Poles or Hungarians? 

A prisoner can be released for a whole day. For years at a time. But if his jailer decides to end his liberty, the whole thing can be over as quickly as it began. 

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