Hail the Great Leader! Paleo-Lib article on Reagan and State-Worship

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/hail.html

Interesting article from LewRockwell.com on official mania over Reagan and the political agenda behind it. Note: from a paleo-libertarian perspective so even the more interesting for that, IMO.

Some quotes:

"If, for example, Reagan doubled the federal budget, he can't be considered as a man who cut government. If he resisted every peace overture from the Russian leader for years before finally coming around (though not fully) at Reykjavik, he shouldn't be called a man who ended the Cold War but a man who extended it by many years before it was no longer plausible to do so.


As for the spiritual cult surrounding Reagan, it is no different from that which surrounded Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Napoleon, or any forgotten Egyptian pharaoh."

Everyone should read it.

good to be here!

always trying to return to some mythical "golden and perfect past".....

Rockwell wrote:
"As for the spiritual cult surrounding Reagan, it is no different from that which surrounded Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Napoleon, or any forgotten Egyptian pharaoh.

Before you get too angry, notice what I wrote: the cult stems from the same origin (which is different from saying that Reagan is Mao). What is that origin? The Stockholm syndrome? Mass psychology? False consciousness? Ideological error? Probably some combination of the above."


Hey, Lew, the reason why this leader-worship is being pushed upon us by these at the top of the corporate/media/governmental hierarchy is because it serves their purposes to indoctrinate the young into the cult of the hierarchy. And we homo sapiens, being social pack animals, who evolved by passing along the "fittest genes", fall right into that trap because it fits neatly into the social hierarchy model of tribal/village/pack animal life, where those at the top of the hierarchy are according great social status, the better for them to pass along their "fitter" genes.

Also, Lew, there never was any lost golden past to which we must return. The front jacket of your book as depicted on the webpage linked above depicted some pastoral past from the early days of America, before the evil of centralized govt deprived us all of our "natural state" when we lived in golden splendor, free from governmental restraints. Yeah, well, uh, it was never that way. Pre-revolution America was filled with cruelty and slavery, disease etc.

The fact is that govt is a machine, created and engineered by homo sapiens, just another one of our machines. THe problem is that those who have the most power have always used this machine to maintain and further their power and wealth. They take advantage of our natural predisposition toward hierarchies. They create great propaganda ceremonies in order to inculcate these heirarchies in the young. These propaganda ceremonies are organized around events such as the death of presidents (such as we see in the Ronald Reagan propaganda blitz), and around events such as the 9-11 bombings.

We just need to engineer a better machine. Like all engineering tasks, that will take time, education, dedication and resources. Guess what? The rich and powerful have been trying to stop the anti-hierarchical society. In fact, much of the 20th Century history was centered around the efforts of those at the top of the hierarchy to stop the advance of hierarchy-less societies/governments (i.e., the wars in Asia to stop the "spread of communism" (yeah, I know, Russia/China have hierarchies, but it is the general idea behind most theoretical forms of scoialism)).