[lit-ideas] Re: Stasi on our Minds

 

Lawrence quotes Donnersmarck as saying he was influenced "by a passage in which 
Maxim Gorky records Lenin saying that he can’t listen to Beethoven’s 
Appasionata because it makes him want to say sweet, silly things and pat the 
heads of little people, whereas in fact those little heads must be beaten, 
beaten mercilessly, to make the revolution." 
  
Lawrence, I don't know how to say this without sounding snide and mean, but I 
assure you that I have no mean or hard feelings towards you personally, just 
strong disagreements.  You quote Donnersmarck as a way of showing how people 
like Lenin are capable of overcoming their humanistic empathetic impulses in 
the pursuit of an ideology.  Had you stopped there I would have agreed with 
you.   But you continued:

"but inasmuch as the Islamist enemy has vowed our destruction I don’t believe 
this matter can remain academic. The Islamists have declared war on us and are 
engaged in attacks of one kind and another; so it is prudent to protect 
ourselves against their efforts – including (with apologies to Ash) protection 
against Fifth-Columnist-types in our nations. 
"When the spy slips in to do his evil deed, it is best to discover and stop him 
– not protect his human rights and civil liberties – it seems to me."

To me your reaction seems very much like Lenin's.

Mike Geary

Fifth Columnist of Memphis

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