Wednesday, September 06, 2006
BARBARIANS AT THE HUSTINGS
"Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don't understand civilization & wouldn't like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing and who don't appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they have to do is enjoy what they can understand of it - luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What have they got a government for?.....
"And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they're going to grab the controls"
from Space Viking by H Beam Piper c 1963*
This clearly applies to Tommy Sheriden of the Judean People's Liberation Front & to his opponents of the People's Liberation Front of Judea**. However it also applies to Greens & many respectable & mainstream politicians. The ones who believe, or claim to believe, that windmills & wishing will keep the lights on & insist that scientists will just have to invent "innovative new renewable" energy sources for them to judge. David Cameron, Ming Campbell, Michael Meecher (former environment Minister!) etc either are or (which would be worse) are deliberately acting like barbarians.
Note that I would not apply this term to people like Lenin & Trotsky who, at the very least, were not hitchhikers & were trying to build a civilization in very difficult circumstances (& tools that didn't work). It might not even apply to Stalin.
The current generation of "socialists" such as Sheriden, who, to quote the SSP's European election candidate believe "The SSP exist to destroy all the economic progress that has been made in the last 200 years because it was achieved by capitalism" (stated at an EU hustings meeting, albeit one run by environmentalists - I later, during audience questions described this as obscene)*** should remember that nobody had a greater appreciation of industrial civilization than early Marxists**** on whose metaphorical graves the eco-Marxists are trampling.
*Despite the title, designed for the audience available to early science fiction, this is a deeply thought out piece of politics that would not dishonour the writing of Machiavelli, who did write some fiction of the same kind (except without spaceships). Most of his other stuff is not greatly inferior.
**For non-Scots readers the charismatic Tommy Sheriden, leader of our populist socialist party committed, to a minimum wage of £8 per hour, has managed, though sexualshenaniganss to split his small party (his own section, without deliberate irony being called Solidarity) in the manner lampooned in the film Life of Brian.
*** As partially described in my Scotsman letter of 31/5/4
****Leninn said that communism would be achieved by "Soviet power & the electrification of the whole country" which,naivee though it may sound, is infinitely more sensible than the policy of closing electricity generators pursued by "Marxist, Liberal Democrat & Conservative" politicians.
"And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they're going to grab the controls"
from Space Viking by H Beam Piper c 1963*
This clearly applies to Tommy Sheriden of the Judean People's Liberation Front & to his opponents of the People's Liberation Front of Judea**. However it also applies to Greens & many respectable & mainstream politicians. The ones who believe, or claim to believe, that windmills & wishing will keep the lights on & insist that scientists will just have to invent "innovative new renewable" energy sources for them to judge. David Cameron, Ming Campbell, Michael Meecher (former environment Minister!) etc either are or (which would be worse) are deliberately acting like barbarians.
Note that I would not apply this term to people like Lenin & Trotsky who, at the very least, were not hitchhikers & were trying to build a civilization in very difficult circumstances (& tools that didn't work). It might not even apply to Stalin.
The current generation of "socialists" such as Sheriden, who, to quote the SSP's European election candidate believe "The SSP exist to destroy all the economic progress that has been made in the last 200 years because it was achieved by capitalism" (stated at an EU hustings meeting, albeit one run by environmentalists - I later, during audience questions described this as obscene)*** should remember that nobody had a greater appreciation of industrial civilization than early Marxists**** on whose metaphorical graves the eco-Marxists are trampling.
*Despite the title, designed for the audience available to early science fiction, this is a deeply thought out piece of politics that would not dishonour the writing of Machiavelli, who did write some fiction of the same kind (except without spaceships). Most of his other stuff is not greatly inferior.
**For non-Scots readers the charismatic Tommy Sheriden, leader of our populist socialist party committed, to a minimum wage of £8 per hour, has managed, though sexualshenaniganss to split his small party (his own section, without deliberate irony being called Solidarity) in the manner lampooned in the film Life of Brian.
*** As partially described in my Scotsman letter of 31/5/4
****Leninn said that communism would be achieved by "Soviet power & the electrification of the whole country" which,naivee though it may sound, is infinitely more sensible than the policy of closing electricity generators pursued by "Marxist, Liberal Democrat & Conservative" politicians.
