The Last Days of Socrates

Four years ago when I spent my first winter camping here, one of our ACL readers began sending me books he was scrounging out of Cambridge, MA second hand stores. Many of them are American history but he sent a bunch of philosophy and political theory too. So every now and then I open one of Jason's books that look difficult, and I'm getting down to the topics I avoid because it's something or someone I've never studied. Socrates is one of them.

Many of us know Socrates was convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens and forced to drink Hemlock. I vaguely remember that from some source at least once in my life. I didn't seek out and read anything he said though. I don't remember ever wishing I knew how exactly he corrupted them. I just always assumed Socrates would be too hard to understand even if I did want to know. But, our thesis is about Hegel, so I knew someday I'd have to buckle down, grit my teeth and suffer through a bunch of writing that's Greek to me. I thought the ancient philosophers talked the same way the modern philosophers talk, in endless circles. Now I wonder if I was taught to think that because Socrates is so accessible and so, so relevant.

"Plato The Last Days of Socrates" by translator Hugh Tredennick is the version I have. It begins with Socrates' debate with Euthyphro outside the courthouse and moves immediately to the Apology he made to the court in his own defense.

Socrates did not talk in circles to manipulate the truth, not in this version anyway. According to Plato, Socrates believed his mission in life was to challenge people who promoted themselves as wise. He devoted his entire life to exposing frauds and liars, starting with politicians, then poets and then everyone. He wasn't a teacher, he went around motivating people to think about their empty lives by rebutting the lies they told to defend their lack of spiritual growth and wisdom.

The thing that grabbed my attention first was the fact that Socrates insisted on defining every term used in debates against him. He believed that definitions were essential to getting to the heart of the argument. I immediately felt a closeness to this man, because I too believed getting the definitions from the Seattle government was the only way to begin debating their program. It was seeking their definitions that led me to the guru Dr. Amitai Etzioni, and to the exact name for the philosophy he was using to "shore up" America. I found communitarianism because I couldn't find the definitions for "quality of life" and "livability." Maybe Socrates' legacy was part of my training or heritage and I didn't even know it.

So, I thought this was very cool, the first Socrates "debate" I get to read is one where Plato used a fictional character named Euthyphro to show Socrates making him define piety. "..is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?"

I also found his views on death worth putting at the top of my list of best theories about it. He was explaining why he could never agree to stop leading the philosophic life that he believed was his purpose for living. He believed his God through the Oracle made it his job to go around challenging liars. He never claimed to be wise, he proved nobody was. And that pissed a lot of people off. I get a double whammy from him on this part. Not only have I made a lot of people mad at me, I have never felt or thought I was wise enough to be the one writing about communitarianism. I kept hoping someone more qualified would relieve me of the burden of trying to understand things out of my educational range, or for someone who could make sense out of my hundreds of confusing articles. I used to feel very, very sorry for America that I was the best one we could get to do the deep background investigation that I felt was absolutely necessary and essential to exposing these liars.

Then, more than once, I was warned to "back off" from Etzioni because his connections to the Israeli military and special forces make him a dangerous opponent. Now I've also taken on the Luciferian aspects of the plan, another group some consider dangerous. Whether it's bravery or stupidity, I have never backed down from any portion of this work, not even when I learned there were taboos against it. I believe my God wants me to live honestly, to meet each day and do whatever He puts in front of me. I might argue God's wisdom in choosing me for battles He surely could find better men to fight, but I always give in eventually. He wins every time. :)

"To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death whether it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to a man; but people dread it as though they were certain it was the greatest evil; and this ignorance; which thinks that it knows what it does not, must surely be ignorance most culpable. This I take it gentlemen, is the degree, and this the nature of my advantage over the rest of mankind, and if I were to claim to be wiser than my neighbor in any respect, it would be in this: that not possessing any real knowledge of what comes after death, I am also conscious that I do not possess it. But I do know that to do wrong and to disobey my superior, whether God or man, is wicked and dishonorable; and so I shall never feel more fear or aversion for something which, for all I know, may really be a blessing, than for those evils which I know to be evils." [p 60]

Enlightened Propaganda - the Principle of the Whopping Lie

The Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust - Nazi Propaganda
http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/ARTS/ARTprop.HTM

Another area of world history that's never been a big part of my studies is Nazi Germany. I was raised to feel the collective guilt for everything the Nazis did, and just because I learned that was a bunch of bs doesn't mean it left my psyche forever. Effective propaganda stays with the victims for life, unless we make a focused effort to destroy it, piece by piece. When we are tearing out these lodged pieces of bs deep inside our minds, these severely emotional and irrational pieces that were implanted by evil genuises, it leaves a gaping hole in our heads that's kind of vulnerable to alternate forms of propaganda waiting to jump into the gaps.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/propaganda_in_nazi_germany.htm

One of the earliest forums I was invited to join ended up being a racist site and I quickly left it. I personally think it's a little late to focus on racial purity in my country because most Americans are already of mixed blood. There are those who are convinced the US was established for this purpose. But it's not just Americans. Even my German/Norwegian ancestry has to have some Asian in it because some of us Friedrich's have very Asian facial features. Just as I have refused to allow my ACL work to change my core belief that everyone has value in the eyes of God, I have tried to respect other people's beliefs. And yes, part of the big plan is to destroy all cultures and races into one big homogenized melting pot. The racial purists appear to be convinced the only way to stop the eradication of entire races (like the Indians, the Prussians and every other dead race) is to fight for their race, and I can admit there is substance to the cultural and racial arguments for nationhood, no matter how much I disagree with racism on principle.

Minister of Propaganda and National Enlightenment.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/propaganda_in_nazi_germany.htm

We have a nation that already has many different cultures and our law is supposed to protect us all now, equally. Our constitutions were living documents that changed over time to include women, non property owners and people of color. This is what I honored in our system, and this is what we have today regardless of how we arrived here. I cannot as an American fight for "white" anything, because that would be to deny the blood flowing in my veins, my childrens's veins, and it would thoroughly disrespect all the people of color I love. Plus, I'm sorry, but this whole body of racial propaganda against "inferior" races, including eugenics, has been just as well used by the imperialists against American Indians and the Africans.

http://www.eugenics.net/

Racial propaganda is always under the layer in many online discussions about national independence. I guess it's time I faced this part. How can we study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if we cannot at least acknowledge that the Israelis call the Palestinans "dogs." How can I continue to ignore all these patriot calls for returning America to white Christian values? To write racism off as another aspect of the communitarian dialectic is my lazy way of avoiding studying it or forming an educated opinion. In our manifesto we briefly touched on the ideas for not assimilating with the American Indians and why US public policy changed to genocide from the early friendly trader colonial ties to the Cherokees and other eastern tribes. Much of that neocon policy was based on Charles Darwin and HenryLewis Morgan.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Lewis_Henry_Morgan

From what I can tell so far, this whole white nationalist versus jewish nationalist mentality expanded into a white nationalist versus Arab immigrants in the UK and Europe. In the US, it's going beyond black v white and growing into white nationalists against Mexican, South American, former USSR, etc. immigrants. Racial dialectics are almost more effective at dividing people than religion; people don't get to choose their skin color or heritage.

Lately I've seen my blog linked to white racist sites and someone even added my email address to a white nationalist group on google. Anyone with gmail should know they have to go into their account and change their default setting from anyone can add me to nobody can add me.

There are two kinds of propaganda - rational propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with the enlightened self-interest of those who make it and those to whom it is addressed, and non-rational propaganda that is not consonant with anybody's enlightened self-interest, but is dictated by, and appeals to, passion. Were the actions of individuals are concerned there are motives more exhalted than enlightened self-interest, but where collective action has to be taken in the fields of politics and economics, enlightened self-interest is probably the highest of effective motives. If politicians and their constituents always acted to promote their own or their country's long-range self-interest, this world would be an earthly paradise. As it is, they often act against their own interests, merely to gratify their least credible passions; the world, in consequence, is a place of misery. Propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with enlightened self-interest appeals to reason by means of logical arguements based upon the best available evidence fully and honestly set forth. Propaganda in favor of action dictated by the impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete evidence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scapegoats, and by cunningly associating the lowest passions with the highest ideals, so that atrocities come to be perpetrated in the name of God and the most cynical kind of Realpolitik is treated as a matter of religious principle and patriotic duty.

http://deoxy.org/huxley1.htm

Who is Aldos Huxley? http://www.crossroad.to/Excerpts/books/transformation/brave-revisited.htm

Does enlightenment change with the propagandist?
http://enlightened-american.com/2009/02/26/cnbcs-propoganda

"Hitler himself, in Mein Kampf, laid down his rules for dictatorship. He stated the “principle of the whopping lie... See More” and of the gullibility of the masses. If you are going to tell a lie, he said, and nobody doubts that he intended to, don’t tell a little one, because it will be recognized as a lie. Tell the biggest and most unlikely lie you can think of, keep on telling it, and the people will think it must be the truth and believe it. “The greater the lie, the more effective it is as a weapon,” said the master of the alleged “master race.”"
http://www.historians.org/projects/giroundtable/Propaganda/Propaganda2.htm

Sure was a lot going on when McKinley died in the Harriman's attorney's home, wasn't there?

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.
http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/93/6/images/apl_93_6_1314_tbl4a.gif

http://magicnegrowatch.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html

The Quiet Revolution - New Republic

Every US communitarian law I've studied started in an administrative agency. Violations of these new community codes were "tried" in administrative courts. Seattle's Administrative Hearng and Review Boards had what's called "quasi-judicial" authority over city residents, but somehow we kept getting charged and fined under their newly expanded full judicial authority.

Our experiences with Seattle's new regulatory powers, powers the City claimed "balanced" our Fourth and Fifth Amendment Rights, were the motivator for all my early ACL research. Over the years my research naturally expanded to these progressive agency workers' belief in their being "more enlightened" than me and my podunk neighbors. It took ten years before I finally researched what they mean by enlightenment in Enlightened Rule by scientists and experts. I am completely convinced there is nothing "disinterested" about these trained individuals.

The success of the regulatory agencies, he wrote, depended upon “a sufficient popular confidence in the ability of enlightened and trained individuals … and the actual existence for their use of a body of sufficiently authentic social knowledge.” John B. Judis, Senior Editor, The New Republic

Last March I wrote an article called Join the Quiet Revolution, about the global-to-local policing revolution. I gave a summary of the history of community oriented policing and the ideology used to implement the global program. A month prior I wrote an article called How Communitarians Change the US Legal System with Federal Regulators, about the advance of Administrative Law and it's role in creating a more communitarian nation.

In both the above mentioned articles I based much of my slant on our ACL Manifesto, which includes the possibility that President William McKinley was saved from an assassination attempt and then murdered by attorneys working for Harriman Brothers (From dialectic2.html: "McKinley was moved to the home of Expo Board Director John G. Milburn, where he died a week later. Milburn was one of the attorneys for HARRIMAN v. INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION, 211 U.S. 407 (1908). More here.")

So how interesting is this Feb 1, 2010 article in The New Republic, which tells us the "three great reform periods" began right after McKinley was killed and Harvard's own Teddy Roosevelt was crowned First King of the British American Colonies. The New Republic, like every other expert source, curiously leaves out the part about McKinley's murder as part of how all this progressive reform started. Look in most any book that claims to "tell all" about the FED, the banker's schemes to control America, and "real" American history and you'll find few (if any) references to President William McKinley. If there are references to him, they usually claim that McKinley was responsible for the expansion of the American Imperialist designs. Yet even a quick study of McKinley proves that to be blatantly false. And it should come as no suprise to learn that VP Roosevelt eventually took credit for McKinley's trustbusting efforts. That McKinley died under very mysterious circumstances in the home of one of the attorneys defending the Harriman's monopoly of the railroads doesn't seem to bother anyone besides me.

The regulatory agencies, most of which date from one of the three great reform periods (1901–1914, 1932–1938, and 1961–1972) of the last century, were intended to smooth out the rough edges (the “externalities,” in economic jargon) of modern capitalism--from dirty air to dangerous workplaces to defective merchandise to financial corruption. With wide latitude in writing and enforcing regulations, they have been described as a “fourth branch of government.”

That wide latitude could invite abuses of power, but the old-time progressives who fashioned the regulatory state rested their hopes on what could be called “scientific administration.” Louis Brandeis and Herbert Croly--to name two of the foremost turn-of-the-century progressives--believed that the agencies, staffed by experts schooled in social and natural science and employing the scientific method in their decision-making, could rise above partisanship and interest-group pressure. Brandeis’s famous concept of states as “laboratories of democracy” comes out of his defense of state regulation of industry and was meant to conjure an image of states basing their regulatory activities on the scientific method. For his part, Croly often made the progressive case for disinterested expertise. The success of the regulatory agencies, he wrote, depended upon “a sufficient popular confidence in the ability of enlightened and trained individuals … and the actual existence for their use of a body of sufficiently authentic social knowledge.” The Quiet Revolution, Obama has reinvented the state in more ways than you can imagine, by John B. Judis, Senior Editor, The New Republic, http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-quiet-revolution?page=0,0

Can the EPA really become the substitute for Climate Change legislation? http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-substitute