Tyranny As A Tool of Social Engineering

Researched and Compiled by Bobby Garner
April 29, 2004
Updated by author May 7, 2004 - March 23, 2008

In all the problems facing the world today, there is one common factor which is often overlooked. Tyranny! Merriam Webster Online defines tyranny as "oppressive power", especially when that power is exerted by government. It could also be "the office, authority, and administration of a tyrant", or "a rigorous condition imposed by some outside agency or force". The latter of course may be the most subtle and this is the particular nature of the tyranny under consideration here.

We tend to naively think of tyranny as the product of a foreign dictator, or a rogue group of militants. Often that tendency is encouraged by active promotion of such outlandish ideas as a terrorist organization headed up by a vagabond hermit who possesses high technologies which allow him to out maneuver the military defenses of super powers and outwit the (alleged) greatest military intellectuals in all of recorded history, and to do so successfully for a period of many years.

Rarely do we consider that much of what we see and feel in our everyday lives is the result of tyranny within our own social environment. There are many tyrannies which go unnoticed simply because they are so deeply ingrained in the social fabric. There's tyranny of the mob that we otherwise know as democracy as it is shaped by opinion polls, and reflected in pressures to conform to societies rules. The tyranny of political correctness, or the tyranny of the amoral judgments of society are some examples of largely self inflicted social tyrannies. To wit: Many advocates of a cause may often come under the tyranny imposed by their own actions, but fail to recognize it as such because it comes as an unintended consequence, and one which may easily be blamed on others. The "others" however, may be of the same or similar group but coordinated by still others above each of those groups.

In addition to tyrannies imposed by interest groups, tyranny may develop spontaneously within a society which fails to successfully meet its challenges. It should also be noted that a tyranny may be developed on purpose by a dedicated group which promotes the conditions which cause it to appear to develop spontaneously, i.e. "feelings of insecurity and inadequacy". This could be done by first introducing the challenges (example: the 1960's counter-culture), and then promoting bogus, ineffective responses, such as a War On [Poverty], [Crime], [Drugs], [Terror], or better yet, all of the above.

The emergence of tyranny therefore begins with challenges to a group, develops into general feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, and falls into a pattern in which some individuals assume the role of "father" to the others, who willingly submit to becoming dependent "children" of such persons if only they are reassured that a more favorable outcome will be realized. This pattern of co-dependency is pathological, and generally results in decision making of poor quality that makes the situation even worse, but, because the pattern is pathological, instead of abandoning it, the co-dependents repeat their inappropriate behavior to produce a vicious spiral that, if not interrupted, can lead to total breakdown of the group and the worst of the available outcomes. Principles of Tyranny, by Jon Roland

"Moral busybodies" require little or no motivation and lend themselves well to the implementation of the tyranny.

Communitarianism: My Brother's Keeper

Definition - a social system in which the welfare of each person becomes the responsibility of every other person in the community.

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." — C.S. Lewis in The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, Res Judicatae (June 1953).

Example:

Etzioni concluded that the "images from Hiroshima sufficed to confirm my belief that humanity could not possibly do without my administering to it." He vowed to become a scholar and an activist, a public intellectual. "Here I stand; I can do no other," he announced to his wife, invoking Luther. It is in the sections in My Brother's Keeper on his career as a public intellectual that Etzioni's memoir is most revealing. He is clearly a man who revels in the wonkish public-policy battles that take place beyond the seminar room (which was one of the reasons he moved to DC's George Washington University). And he is clearly a man of conviction-the "conviction" typically being that he is correct, his ideas on "the side of the angels." But it isn't enough to be right; it drives him crazy when he isn't credited for his insights. A review of Amitai Etzioni's "My Brother's Keeper"

If you aren't mad yet, may I suggest Communitarianism: Anatomy of a Stupid Idea

The prime smokestack for Communitarianism is Norton Garfinkle (at George Washington University Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies) who was of course educated at Columbia University.  He is a darling of News Hour (via Yale), Bloomberg and NPR.  He frequently teams up with other New School for Social Research (Greenwich Village) experts and others from the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute.  Garfinkle is also Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Lamaze Institute for Family Education, showing his need to be a meddling middleman in the human condition from the fetal stage up to the world political stage, telling people everything from how to breathe to how to participate in civilization.

The dubious Communitarian mission is to "build the good society based upon the core values of the American people as defined by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights."  That should strike the reader as an weak alloy of Platonism and Americanism.  One should, if he has his wits, also be struck by the thought that the phrase "The Good Society" must have been ripped off from somewhere.  Here:

"The focus of The Good Society is on the institutions of America, or on the patterned way in which Americans live their lives together, and how they can be used and altered to encourage a better way of life." That is a quote from The Good Society. (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton).  It oozes long-winded neo-Marxist sociology.  It smacks of Things to Come. One might also think of the weirdos at Johns Hopkins University. 

It is a no-brainer to say that "The Good Society" is a critical meme which quickly segues into economic and specifically socio-economic criticism, and more specifically Platonist Utopianism and the belief that modern civilization must be changed radically in line with a Marxist-Spartan hybrid.  In keeping with Platonist Utopianism two things must be conserved: 1) Fantasy must take precedence over reality, 2) Philosophers must be tyrannical idea-idiot kings ex machina.

Communitarians as hermaphrodites meld the masculine and the feminine desires, one, to insert something (in this case 'community') into all politics, and two, to harmonously resolve, albeit irrationally individualism and the needs of mother hen to ensure the safety of the brood.

The roots of Communitarianism are found in the Utopian ideology of Martin Buber who was a mentor to Amitai Etzioni, accepting him at his university when other universities were turning him away:

Martin Buber (1878-1965) was, arguably, the most important Jewish religious philosopher of the 20th century and one of the most important modern representatives of the human spirit. He wrote widely in the fields of art, education, sociology, philosophy, politics, religion, biblical interpretation, Judaism and Zionism. His work, I and Thou, has been universally recognized as one of the major classics of 20th century thought. Buber was concerned with the question of how to bring the reality of the Divine into the contemporary secular world. Through his writing and activism he was able to bear witness to the continued existence of the Holy. Throughout his mature life he translated the message of the Bible in ways that would matter to modern men and women. Buber also discovered the 18th century Jewish mystical movement called Hasidism; and, through his work, these marvelous tales and spiritual teachings were revealed to the Western world for the first time. Buber believed that spiritually-grounded human relationships between individuals needed to be the core of any genuine community. In political and economic terms this meant that small intentional communities were the ideal forms of social existence. This has been called utopian or communitarian socialism.

Buber was critical of the excessive individualism of capitalist countries and the excessive authoritarianism of communist nations. Buber became a Zionist in 1898, believing that European anti-Semitism made it necessary for Jews to have their own homeland. He soon became disenchanted with Theodore Herzl's brand of nationalistic political Zionism. Instead, he favored the form of Zionism developed by Ahad Ha'am, based on the fundamental moral and spiritual values of Judaism. Zionism was to be no less than a Jewish path to bring about tikkun olam -- redemption of the world-- through establishment of truth and justice in all of the institutions and activities of the Jewish settlement in Palestine. In this way Zionism could contribute to human civilization as a whole and avoid self-centered nationalism. Thus, it becomes clear why Buber became an early advocate for Jewish-Arab cooperation. How could the Jewish people establish a state that did not provide justice and security for all of its inhabitants, Jews and non-Jews? He hoped for deep and continuing solidarity of genuine interests between the two peoples. When friction did arise, he wrote that the Arab question would be the moral litmus test of Zionism. In 1921 he proposed a federation of Middle Eastern states to link the Jewish community with its Arab neighbors.

Buber was still living in Germany in 1925 when a number of his followers in Palestine started an organization called Brit Shalom (A Covenant of Peace). The founders of Brit Shalom based their ideology on Buber's writings, advocating a democratic bi-national state in which Jews and Arabs would be completely equal. Buber became the leading Zionist leader in Germany in the 1930's. When Hitler came into power, Buber traveled to different Jewish communities and worked to strengthen the people's spirits. In 1938 he finally came to Palestine, where he became a professor at the Hebrew University. He and his comrades, including Rabbi Judah Magnes, worked with moderate Arabs to try to forge links between the two peoples. They tried to influence the direction of Zionism, but very unfortunately they never received a fair hearing. Had Buber's views been taken seriously, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might have been averted.
[...]
Martin Buber, Zionism and the Palestinians

Where Buber's ideas failed to take root in Zionism, Etzioni found fertile ground for them by appealing to the natural human social behavior of living peacefully with our neighbors. We aren't supposed to notice that loving one's neighbor as oneself is outwardly directed by self motivation from each individual to the community, while communitarianism is the exact opposite and forces the individual to forgo his personal choice and submit to the will of the community. This is the equivalent of forced servitude to the community.

For more on communitarianism see What The Communitarians Stand For

The Tyranny of the Opposition

"Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it." (unknown) The effectiveness of such groups can be greatly amplified if their goal becomes, or can be turned into a political agenda to gain control of government. Politicians are always eager to seize upon the opportunity to promote such groups which have demonstrated the power to manipulate people (Civil Rights following Martin Luther King Jr.'s death for example). Voting for them will likely increase the intensity of the very thing which brings them into power.

C.S. Lewis wrote about "moral busybodies" which he associated with Christian Morality as it had been the foundation of American society since early colonial days. His assertion that "a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive" was of course quite accurate enough. However, Lewis was of the Progressive political orientation which has gradually morphed into todays New Age, Communitarian Movement, and perhaps was intended for that purpose from the outset. At least the progressive movement provided the fertile ground for change to accommodate and popularize what has become known as the "Radical Middle" or the "Third Way" which is the sole domain of the Communitarian/New Age coercive "Reinvention" of American government.

Disagreement with the Radical Middle of the Communitarian New Age, is to reject both the Left and the Right, because it encompasses them both and all points between. "The whole road" as explained by Marilyn Ferguson who introduced the concept in her book The Aquarian Conspiracy in 1980. That resulting broad scope of society has no become C.S. Lewis' "moral busybodies" on steriods which renders it amoral, because they see morals as a leftover from the hated Establishment. The Radical Middle rejects both the Christian Morality as Lewis did, and the "natural moral law" which he advocated. The result is the "Moral Relativism" of the New Age.

"Rejecting the notion of a peculiarly "Christian" morality, Lewis argued for the existence of a natural moral law known by all through human reason. This natural moral code cannot be escaped; it is the source from which all moral judgments come. Its fundamental truths--maxims like good should be done and evil avoided, that caring for others is a good thing, that dying for a righteous cause is a noble thing--are known independently of experience. They are grasped in the same way that we know that 2+2=4." - John G. West, Jr., commenting on C. S. Lewis. http://cslewis.drzeus.net/papers/politics.html

The other political carrot which has been offered is best represented by the "Moral Majority" which produced the phenomenon of Neo-Conservatism, the right half of the new Radical Middle

Already, following EIR's lead, major American and European newspapers have identified such putschists as Paul Wolfowitz, Abram Shulsky, William Kristol, John Ashcroft, Steve Cambone, and Gary Schmitt as the offspring of the late University of Chicago Prof. Leo Strauss. Strauss, in turn, was the life-long collaborator and promoter of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, official Nazi philosopher and Nietzsche revivalist Martin Heidegger, and French Synarchist Alexandre Kojeve —all unabashed advocates of tyranny as the only appropriate form of government.  Synarchism: The Fascist Roots of the Wolfowitz Cabal

In the name of fighting terrorism a new kind of government is being implemented in Washington, D.C. We are witnessing the birth of a powerful multi-billion dollar surveillance lobby consisting of an army of special interest groups, Washington lawyers, lobbyists, and high-tech firms with wares to sell.  TOTAL SURVEILLANCE EQUALS TOTAL TYRANNY by Tom DeWeese

"All legitimate law is based on the natural law of the sovereignty of individual human rights, politicians who make up their own "laws" are in reality criminals who are at war against human rights, people who impose the evil of democracy, which is mob rule are also criminals at war against human rights, anyone who tries to impose one's political opinions or values on others by covering it in the shroud of democratic law are deceivers and tyrants. Just law exists independently of any political body and is manifest in the sovereignty of the individual." - http://www.libertocracy.com/Webessays/tyrannyodemocracy.htm

Here are some more examples of common sense wisdom going unheeded.

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism. — John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), On Liberty, The Library of Liberal Arts edition, p.7.

From the Introduction to "No Treason" by Lysander Spooner

The question of treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have been, if free States, instead of slave States, had seceded.

On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union.

The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.

No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle --- but only in degree --- between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and [*iv] asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.

Previous to the war, there were some grounds for saying that --- in theory, at least, if not in practice --- our government was a free one; that it rested on consent. But nothing of that kind can be said now, if the principle on which the war was carried on by the North, is irrevocably established.

If that principle be not the principle of the Constitution, the fact should be known. If it be the principle of the Constitution, the Constitution itself should be at once overthrown.

Inasmuch as the [U.S.] Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain--that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist. — The Appendix in its entirety to Lysander Spooner's treatise, No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority, published in 1870. - http://www.lysanderspooner.org/notreason.htm

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travelers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave. — From Lysander Spooner's treatise, No Treason No. VI http://www.lysanderspooner.org/notreason.htm

The questions concerning the constitution have been well addressed by better and more thoughtful men than most living today. It seems to me that it would be a terible thing to come under the authority of the majority of today's morally bankrupt society who have rejected all the above offered advice. Yet that is precisely what appears to be taking place right before the eyes of a sleepy public who would prefer a sports game or a nature film over real life. Thus they escape the reality of it all like the proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand, hoping against hope that their ignore-ance will soon make it all go away. However, "ignorance is no excuse" and as The New Age Movement and its Communitarian "Brave New World" Order marches unimpeded on the way to its objective, the complicity of silence will deliver its just reward when this counterfeit New World goes down like the Utopian Atlantis before it, to be remembered no more in all of future time. (Revelation 18)

Bobby Garner is a researcher on the phenomenon of One-Worldism with an emphasis on the methods and techniques employed in it's attendant deception without which the New World Order cannot happen. He welcomes your comments and may be reached via E-mail. Visit his website at www.congregator.net This article may be posted in it's entirety on any website provided this statement remains attached.