In the early days of man’s history, tyranny
was ideologically crude and built upon openly seizing power and suppression of
the people. Not a lot of fancy theories were trotted out to justify it. Men
like Akhenaten, Attila, Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, and Cesare Borgia ruled
because they were brazen enough to want to rule, strong enough to recruit the
needed henchmen, and smart enough to know that most people would let them be
dictatorial.
But with the coming of modernity
(circa 1800 A.D.), tyranny has had to take on a more subtle and sophisticated
approach. It now needs to make use of perpetual propagandists and obfuscators
to sell enslavement to the people via clever sophistry. Today’s schools are the
predominant propagandists for despotism, and next in line are the media who
play the role of “Praetorian Guard” for the educational Orwellians that
dominate our children.
Truth and the requisites of freedom
must always be hidden from the people if tyranny is to prevail. Thus the
Orwellians of the media must always be ready to suppress any truths that might
threaten the collectivist zeitgeist that has been constructed. Examples of this
suppression are rife throughout the television and Hollywood milieus. Recently
a blatant example leaped off the TV screen at me.
Saving the
Republic
The movie, Gladiator, with Russell
Crowe was playing on TBS. I saw it back in 2000 when it played in the theaters,
but thought I’d tune in again for the first part because there is a very
inspiring scene in it where the emperor, Marcus Aurelius (played by Richard
Harris), is in his last few months of life. He knows he’s dying, and he is
trying to convince his trusted confidante and top general, Maximus (played by
Russell Crowe), to assume leadership of Rome after he dies. He tells Maximus
that he will pass the mantle on to him authorizing that he be his heir and
become the new Caesar. He goes into an eloquent speech about why Maximus is the
only one for the job. Maximus resists, but says he will consider it. And as
they are parting, Aurelius calls after him that his duty is to accept his
destiny, for free Rome is dying and needs men of his gallantry. Aurelius shouts
to him: “You must save the Republic, Maximus! Go back to the Republic! Promise
me that you will restore the Republic.”
Those three sentences are so
powerfully relevant to us today, for, of course, we need to do exactly the same
thing – go back to the republic. Our once free America is dying from the same
dictatorial corruption that stultified and destroyed Rome, the same bread and
circuses, the same massive welfarism, cronyism, privileges, and monetary
debasement.
But guess what! Those three
sentences were deleted from Aurelius’ speech for this particular TV version.
The scene ends with a bland generic phase out. Did the collectivists at TBS
(Turner Broadcasting System) cut out those crucial three sentences on purpose?
Of course, they did. They know, at least subconsciously, the power of the idea
of a “republic” and what it means to their rule. They know that a republic is
what the Founders meant for us to have, not the collectivist democracy that
they worship and work so assiduously to promote. They know that their ideology
of collectivism cannot abide a republic’s limited form of government. And they
certainly do not want millions of viewers to be reminded of the fact that we
have lost our republic. Such a reminder cannot be left in the movie. Thus
surely some upper level TBS censor very adroitly cut the last part of the scene
where Aurelius makes his eloquent appeal to Maximus to do the only thing that
could have saved freedom for the Romans, and the only thing that will save
freedom for modern Americans.
Big
Brother’s Apparatchiks
Not one in a hundred will notice
such a smooth suppression of truth. But it is a lucid example of how Big
Brother’s apparatchiks are always on the lookout to manipulate our politics,
our money, and our language so as to keep us from ever realizing that we are
losing our freedom. I was astounded. I tuned into the movie precisely because I
wanted to see the scene where Marcus Aurelius makes his inspiring speech to
Maximus to “Restore the Republic.” But the collectivists at TBS played Orwell’s
Winston Smith and threw the most important part of the speech down the memory
hole.
They undoubtedly gave as their
excuse that they needed to cut the movie to fit the time slot of that hour’s
programming. But the dialogue about “restoring the Republic” took less than 60
seconds. And there are at least 10-15 minutes of other totally non-essential
scenes throughout the movie that could have been deleted instead. Why would
they want to delete such a crucial dramatic scene regarding the ideological
requisites of freedom? For those who grasp the propagandistic base of all
modern tyrannies the reason is obvious. Tyranny’s collaborators must
ceaselessly play the role of thought police if they wish to run a despotic
regime in the modern world. And that is exactly what today’s political elites
and their Praetorian Guard, the media, wish to do.
This is but one small scene in one
movie, but it is immensely important because it represents the tip of a huge
iceberg of rewritten history and suppression of political-philosophical truth
that is taking place throughout our schools and our media. The manipulators at
TBS are just a fraction of the myriad Orwellians amongst us who mold our
children from the time they enter kindergarten and continue to do so through
high school and college, then into the adult world where they mold the minds of
the masses of uncritical working people. They are stealing over our society
like gangrene steals over the diseased limbs of a wounded soldier. American
citizens are wounded soldiers, and they don’t realize the septic tyranny that
is corroding them.
American patriots do realize it,
though. And we are growing more prominent as each year goes by. Critical mass
is approaching our movement spawned so hopefully in the 1940s with the works of
Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and scores of outraged intellects
who could see the inherent evil of “progressivism and mega-statism” that had
descended upon the country with the inception of the Federal Reserve and the
coming of FDR. Orwellian thought still holds power, yes, but it is a hollow
power. The political / media elites are rotted from within. They are ripe for a
challenge just as the Soviet Politburo was ripe. The days are numbered for the
Orwellians amongst us.
Nelson Hultberg is a freelance
writer in Dallas, Texas and the Director of Americans for a Free Republic www.afr.org. A graduate of
Beloit College in Wisconsin, his articles have appeared in such publications as
The American Conservative, Insight, Liberty, The Freeman, The Social Critic,
The Dallas Morning News, and the San Antonio Express-News, as well
as on numerous Internet sites.
He is the author of The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values
Email: NelsonHultberg (at) afr.org
Comments
Amen. Obama is not a moral man; he
is a Marxist “plant”, selected by evil men to ruin our country and he is
succeeding. Most of our elected
officials have not been honorable and they distain those who are. Voters should
only vote for those who will turn this around.
They should be able to recall them quickly and easily if they don’t.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party
Leader
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