An expert torturer always reminds you that it’s for your own good, and hurts him more than you.
Ruling
In ’37 Stalin made a hash
Of party loyalists and army brass.
Decimation: One in ten are shot.
What’s the word when one in ten are not?
To do the same thing over and over expecting different results is reputed to be insanity, and yet we persist in elections.
Democracy is the conviction that my policy preferences are widely held, and populism is the fear that yours are.
The end does not justify the means: it is the means.
To win at politics requires commitment, and the committed party is the one to whose constituents politics offers the only chance of advancement.
Rich societies produce leisure sufficient for folly, and democratic societies make this everybody’s problem.
No sensible ruler tries to suppress ideas. It is a comparatively simple matter to suppress their implementation.
Today’s atrocities are committed for Equality and Justice; tomorrow’s will be committed for Love.
To be represented is the smallest aspiration.
Progressive mores, which in the name of equality must be preached to and adopted by all, are mildly toxic to about a tenth of the population, crippling to two-thirds, and potentially fatal to the rest. For a few grifters they make a lucrative career.