Also, Thomas Jefferson believed that bigamists, rapists, and homosexuals should be hanged (and the Virginia statutes were written by him).

Vaistinu Vaskrese!! Scott: Not a problem at all!

Eliot,

Forgive my tone above. It occured to me you might be referring to verbosity in writing in general and not blog posts.

Eliot,

Is this a literary journal or a blog? If you want to see that, read a book. Some of the articles posted here – – some, not all – – rise to that level. Most people who post comments here just do so off the tops of their heads. The forum doesn’t justify anything more.

Christos Voskrese!

Of course, how does one appreciate deep or complex thoughts without seeing them expressed in writing or “verbosity”?

I do not want to miss the deep thoughts while reading a piece of writing. That is why I prefer to see them expressed in a good solid paragraph, that covers the main points of a piece of writing.

Of course, how does one appreciate deep or complex thoughts without seeing them expressed in writing or “verbosity”? All tidy, quaint little maxims have their limitations. One man’s verbosity is another man’s . . .

Michael,

“The chaos was the direct result of the deterioration of 400 years of Czarist rule that allowed for no alternative forms or practices for the most part.”

“Oh, come on!” Is not an argument.

Yes, governments don’t allow for “alternative forms and practices” of government. All governments (including democracies) prefer – – insist even – – on having a monopoly on . . . government. Try and establish a monarchy in Tennessee and see what happens.

There are several reasons why the Russian Empire fell. First, revolution and leftist ideas were in the air all over Europe. It was a sign of the times. Second, Tsar Nicholas II was a weak ruler who insisted on absolute autocracy. You can be a strong ruler and mantain absolute autocracy. And you can be a weak (or strong) ruler and make accomodations to transform your state into a constitutional monarchy (as Alexander II was in the process of doing when radicals assassinated him carrying a draft of a constitution with him). What you can’t do is be a weak ruler and maintain an absolute autocracy.

Third, were it not for the personality of Lenin, a unique individual who bucked all the conventional wisdom of leftists and Marxists and founded a party based on a rejection of classical Marxist theory of a two stage revolution, the requirement that every party member do a specific task and contribute in order to maintain his membership, complete “need to know” secrecy, and a determination to be the only power in Russia, the Revolution could not have succeeded. It was in no sense inevitable. Those who claim it was are dead wrong and ignorant of the circumstances.

“Of course, any attempt at a non-dictatorial government under those circumstances would fail if there is a dedicated, violent opposition. Exactly why Putin and his old communist cronies have re-emerged in Russia after the fall of the Soviet state.”

That is a non-sequitur. First, your first sentence is false. A dedicated violent opposition would not have been able to prevail in Russia were it not for the utter foolish incompetence of the Kerensky government. They governed like they had no earthly idea what they were doing. They armed the Bolsheviks in response to rumors about a general who may have had aspirations to become a regent. Of course, the Bolsheviks never gave the arms back. They refused to arrest or suppress fellow leftists. Their weaknesses were a kind of amplification of the normal weaknesses of democracies.

Second, your second sentence does not make sense and does not flow logically from the first. Anyone who held any significant position in the goverment; i.e., anyone who knew how to make the infrastructure and administrative services work, was a communist. Putin may be guilty of crony capitalism (which is normal in Western democracies as well), but that doesn’t have anything to do with communism. He was elevated to a position to become President by Boris Yeltsin who stared down the communists and undertook a crash program of privatization and economic reform.

It’s an interesting narrative. It fits in with pro-democratic and anti-Orthodox propaganda. It only lacks the virtue of being true.

” . . . you don’t see that all the above are reasons given to the individual to decide for himself, not to impose through threat of financial expropriation by fine or jail time, what to do.”

There is absolutely no distinction whatsoever. God allows us to decide for ourselves whether to follow Him or not. We have free choice in that matter. But there are consequences. The law prohibits certain actions. We are free to disregard the law and commit these acts. But there are consequences.

The only difference is that the consequences of breaking laws are always more merciful than of forsaking God.

I posted those in response to this:

” . . . the whole ‘doing it because of hope of heaven or threat of punishment’ has a bit of an old testament ring to it.”

Christ had precisely the same ring.

Oh, come on Scott. In a linear, chronological sense you are correct but really. The chaos was the direct result of the deterioration of 400 years of Czarist rule that allowed for no alternative forms or practices for the most part. Of course, any attempt at a non-dictatorial government under those circumstances would fail if there is a dedicated, violent opposition. Exactly why Putin and his old communist cronies have re-emerged in Russia after the fall of the Soviet state.

The United States avoided (until lately) the same fate because:

1. English Common Law was a lot better starting point than other system.
2. We had lots of practice in governing ourselves before the Revolution (which was more about home rule than about any real change in law or philosophy)
3. A bunch of folks who actually studied the philosphy of government and how to use power without abusing it (mostly).
4. The eventually unwillingness/inability of the English Crown to project its power across the ocean consistently and ruthlessly

It was the willingness of the Bolsheviks to use naked force in an offensive manner (as opposed to the democrats and the Czarists) that allowed them to pick up the power in the street.

It could be argued that a foundation of English common law is the only system that has a chance of forming a viable, stable representative government (as opposed to a democracy). But it also requires an educated, engaged, and virtuous citizenry. The decline in the U.S. government is because of the advent of homogenized public education which trains people to be minions of the state, lack of participation in the entire process that such education tends to produce, and the concomitant decline of virtue, private and civic and the utilitarian economics of industrialization

Scott– you don’t see that all the above are reasons given to the individual to decide for himself, not to impose through threat of financial expropriation by fine or jail time, what to do.

Getting the deep thought St. Issac mentions from one head into another’s– aye, thar’s the rub.

Harry:

So, there’s me trying to develop Fr. Hans pointer: work on writing less while saying more.

Saint Isaac the Syrian

The more a man’s tongue flees verbosity, the more his intellect is illumined so as to be able to discern deep thoughts; for the rational intellect is befuddled by verbosity.

For our masters will not be using the concepts of Desert and Punishment but those of disease and cure. We know that one school of psychology already regards religion as a neurosis. When this particular neurosis becomes inconvenient to government, what is to hinder government from proceeding to ‘cure’ it? […] The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, […] every prominent Christian in the land may vanish overnight into Institutions for the Treatment of the Ideologically Unsound, […] Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident; the intention was purely therapeutic.

What C.S. Lewis describes here is something that has already happened: “the experiment of terror was performed on the young generation, on students from the age of eighteen to twenty five …”.
I wonder when did C. S Lewis write “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”. Perhaps it was written while the “new Nero with the silky manners of a doctor” was already applying his “therapy”.

Between 1944-1945, Communism took over the Christian country of Romania. An experiment of terror was performed on the young generation, on students from the age of eighteen to twenty five. Among those students was a man who is alive today after surviving sixteen years in the anti-human communist prison system. His name is Father George Calciu. After His release from prison, he was exiled to America in 1984. Below follows part of an interview by Nun Nina from this year.(1998)
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Fr. George: Communism wanted to make a gap between the generations. The most dangerous category for them was the students, the young people. We had inherited a Christian education, family values, and basic Christian principles. The older generation was a generation that had to die, but this generation had to be transformed. So they tried to experiment in a very concentrated medium. They wanted to break the people, the whole country.
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We believed in Christian values. Therefore, they wanted to do this special experiment with the young people, to create a gap between the children and the older generation, to make this generation of students a communist one. They wanted to build a new world – a communist world; a new man—the communist man and so on. Se the arrested the young people – the students – and put them in a special prison for this very experiment.
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They took very distinct steps. The first was to destroy the personality of the youth. For example, the guards would come together with a group of young prisoners who had converted to communism in a cell where there were perhaps twenty young students and try to intimidate them. They would beat without mercy. They could even kill somebody. Generally they would kill one of them – the one who opposed them the most; the most important one. Generally he was a leader. They would beat him and even kill him. Thus, the terror began.
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After that, they began to “unmask.” They wanted to force you to say: “I lied when I said, ‘I believe in God.’ I lied when I said, ‘I love my mother and my father.’ I lied when I said, ‘I love my country.’” So everyone was to deny every principle, every feeling he had. That is what it means to be “unmasked.” […]It was done in order to prove that Christian principles we not principles, that we lied when we said we loved Jesus Christ, we loved God, mother, father, and so on. It was to show that I lied when I said that I was a chaste man, when I held the ideal of nation and family. Everything had to be done to destroy out souls! This is the second step.
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After this came a declaration against everybody who was in touch with us, everybody who believed as we believed. I was to make a declaration against everybody who knew about my organization or my actions, to denounce everybody—even father, mother, sister. We were to sever completely any Christian connection and moral people.
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The final step was to affirm that we had given up all the principles of our faith and any connection we had with it. With this we began to be “the new man,” “the communist man,” ready to torture, to embrace communism, to denounce everybody, ready to give information, and ready to blaspheme against God.
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[..] So there were four steps: the instillation of terror, the unmasking, the denouncement of other people, and, afterwards, the changing of our souls. These four steps were strictly thought out and planned. It could not be only in the images of the mind. They had long experiences of this in Russia and were now bringing it to Romania.[…]
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Many times we were quite angry with God—if you exist why did you allow this? But there was one moment when the mercy of God would come upon you and you could say, “God forgive me; God help me.” It was enough to help you. For another day, another day, another day.
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We were freed and we were very happy to be free, but we had a kind of nostalgia about the prison. And we could not explain it to others. They said we were crazy. How could you miss prison? Because in prison, we had the most spiritual life. We reached levels that we are not about to reach in this world. Isolated, anchored in Jesus Christ, we had joys and illuminations that this world cannot offer us. http://blakemb.wordpress.com/

Harry,

1. I didn’t equate the Golden Rule to libertarianism. The purpose of my post was to show that they are utterly incompatible.

2. You asserted that the standard for establishing legislation should be the Golden Rule:

“I notice even the most well meaning folk just aren’t as good at doing this as they think they are, the result being greater suffering.

That, over against the clearer and more attainable use of compulsion to prevent the doing un-to-others that which we’d find hateful/unwelcome if done to us.”

3. In pointing out that you would not want to be aborted, left by a wife for no reason other than lust or boredom, or have a daughter fall into a promiscuous lifestlyle because of her immersion in a sick culture, I was applying the Golden Rule. Most all libertarians would not legislate against any of those things, taking their cue from the cliche you referenced in 1.1.1.1.2 above:

“The government is not in the business of determining should and ought, merely getting clear about the extent to which you’re allowed to swing your fist — right up but not including when it hits my nose.”

If you would not want those things I mentioned above to happen to you, and if you believe that the Golden Rule is a good basis for legislating responsibly, obviously you’re for legislating against abortion and no-fault divorce, etc. Of course, most libertarians would find that objectionable.