Quote of the day—Vladimir Lenin

An oppressed class which did not aspire to possess arms and learn how to handle them deserve only to be treated as slaves.

Vladimir Lenin
Via Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume Three)
[The natural extension of this is, “Those who do not possess arms and know how to handle them are at risk of becoming slaves.”

That is how many oppressors view those they oppress. If they cannot overthrow or defend against their oppressors then they deserve to be oppressed. It’s the natural order of things.

These people have different principles than I. In their world view there are no natural rights. There is only power. And as Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book) said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

These are the same people who say the Bill of Rights grants us rights. It does not. It guarantees them. This concept is apparently too subtle or too alien for some people. If you attempt to have a discussion with such a person you will end up talking past each other. It is better to get this point settled before moving on to other issues. If they cannot accept this fundamental principle then simply move on. There is nothing more for you to discuss with them.—Joe]

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7 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Vladimir Lenin

  1. “A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.” — Lenin
    “If the opposition disarms, all is well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.” — Stalin

    So on the one hand, Lenin correctly pointed out that being disarmed means being a slave. (And indeed the centuries-old distinction between a freeman and a slave is the possession of arms; see Halbrook’s mention of the law of William the Conqueror on manumission.) But on the other hand Lenin and Stalin also announced they were going to enslave everyone, starting by disarming them.

  2. Different life strategies. They know how amazingly low-skilled and uncompetitive they are, really, deep down. They know the only way that they can hope to compete is use the power of the state. They are not able to take control of the state organs directly, but they support state power because (a) the first thing state power targets is threats to itself, which mean the independent and capable, and (b) random violence will take out sheep, but it will also kill sheepdogs, which the sheep see as a larger threat than other sheep.
    Yeah, in the end killing the sheepdogs off is counter-productive for the whole group, but the sheep have very short time preferences so they don’t care (they see the productive classes producing vastly more than they can possibly take, so they think in terms of unlimited supply), and they use the buddy system: they don’t have to be faster than the wolf, only the slowest sheep.
    I had a school principal say, in so many words, that competitiveness was not a virtue to be celebrated. That’s the sort of person teaching your kids in elementary school. I told my kids she was wrong, and why, and emphasized that they need to ask me any time they hear an “authority figure” say something questionable.

  3. Or as Col. Cooper put it so well; The non-copers are pitted against the copers.

    UNDERLYING all of this is the yearning for an earthly authority, a surrogate father figure to guide, protect and care for the non-coper. Hence the cry, coming down through the ages, for a “strong man”, someone who will cut through all the taboo (ignore the constitution in our case) and the disagreement and “get things done”. You occasionally see the proof of this as a leftist here and there blurts out something like “Our Lord and Savior” referring to Obama. Psychopaths are always ready, willing and eager to take advantage of such emotional dysfunction, though we usually refer to them as “politicians”. Where they fail to find enough of this dysfunction (inability to cope) to suit their purposes, they’ll attempt to foster it. Hence we have public education and the FCC, group identity programs, unions, et al.

    • Our Stalinist wanna-bes would argue otherwise. “It’s for the chiiiiiilrun!”

  4. Never argue with idiots. Every creature in the universe has the fundamental right to defend its life. That is a fact and nothing any government or society can change that !

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