Friday, October 24, 2003

Is Australia Really Moving Toward Dictatorship?

Sheriff of Steel
Man of Steel, one of the most extraordinary praises I’ve ever heard!
If Bush would like an idea of what it was like to live under Man of Steel, especially in Ukraine, where Stalin deliberately starved 30 million people to death to make these very independent people conform to collectivism in agriculture, reading first chapter of my book would be enlightening. Stalin did it to his own people...not just some aliens from foreign countries!
Jozef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, Man of Steel, a.k.a. 'Koba', a.k.a. 'Uncle Joe' rose to power in 1922 as secretary general of the Communist Party. Using administrative skills and ruthless maneuvering, Stalin rid himself of all potential rivals in the party, first by having many of them condemned as "deviationists," and later by ordering them executed.
· How To Be a Good Dictator: One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is statistic [Age, The]

Orwellian... (In A Good Way?)
Political reporters constantly employ the word 'Orwellian.' Though it stands for the kind of oppressive totalitarian regime he created in Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is now used chiefly to mean political manipulation of language to deceive the public. But we need to reclaim the term’s positive meaning, to suggest the bravery and idealism, the stubborn effort to be honest, in Orwell’s life and art.
· Saving Idealism [New Criterion 10/03 via About Last Night]
· The metrosexual revolution, at a media outlet near you [Sun Times]