We explore real-life reformation here in this informed, online community.
The original, altruistic intentions and noble-sounding slogans of [Socialists] are irrelevant. Once they are no longer constrained by law, it’s just a matter of time—and usually a very brief time—before they become tyrants. Initially their tyrannical actions will be directed at their political opposition, and then at anyone who criticizes or even questions them.
At the end of Arthur Koester’s 1940 novel Darkness at Noon, the protagonist Rubashov is so worn down with the interrogations that he accepts his fate with the following rationalization and resignation.
"And so every leap of technical progress brings with it a relative intellectual regression of the masses, a decline in their political maturity. At times it may take decades or even generations before the collective consciousness gradually catches up to the changed order and regains the capacity to govern itself that it had formerly possessed at a lower stage of civilization."
John Leake
...there was a sober silence in the room. Samuel Adams, a key figure in the American Revolution and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, spoke up to say,
“We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.”
Colonel Douglas MacGregor predicts a continuation of the Iran war soon, once all sides have replenished missile stocks.
"Washington’s political class manifests much less regard for the long-term strategic interests of its own citizens—their security and prosperity. As a result, Washington pays an exorbitant price in reputation and treasure for policies that confront Palestinians with the choice of death or expulsion from their homelands.
"Assumptions of tacit acceptance or rapid capitulation are implicit and dangerous.
[The Muslims will not 'do a deal.']
"When Hitler was briefed on the expected Soviet reaction to Operation Barbarossa, Major General Ernst Koestring, a Prussian officer fluent in Russian from a family that had lived in Moscow since the reign of Catherine the Great, advised: “Initially, German forces will advance rapidly. The various peoples on the Soviet periphery will likely welcome the German forces. Resistance will be weak. But when the Germans advance into ...
