10-10-2018, 07:59 AM
(10-10-2018, 06:27 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(10-10-2018, 03:20 AM)Galen Wrote: Given the how much the left acts like the Inquisitors of centuries past it seems that they are in direct opposition to individual liberty these days.
The inquisition at best was an anti drug agency in an age when religion and superstition was dominant, not science. The foe was witchcraft, which was the use of ergot and other similar poisons to generate a high. Potions were often boiled in large black pots to achieve concentration, often applied to broomsticks, applied to the thin skin of the genitals to be absorbed relatively safely, and sometimes left behind a green tint over the whole body. There is basis in fact behind many of the old myths. Believe it or not, the modern equivalent drugs are safer, less destructive. That says a lot when you are comparing against heroin or crystal meth. The ingredients and recipes are still available, but have passed into disuse.
Remember that the witches were typically seen as old women, often insane or senile. The drug in question was ergot, a fungal infection of grains other than wheat. Ergot is a word-forming element of the name of the hallucinogen lysergic acid, best known as LSD. The potions are sophisticated alchemy. Broomsticks? Women had those.
Quote:At worst, the inquisition provided a way to torture and destroy innocents and take their assets. Any time you do not have adequate checks and balances on an organization, and the Inquisition counts, it will become corrupt to the point of being evil. The tools they thought appropriate to fight drug abuse have to be powerful, and are therefore corruptible if not watched and checked. At a time when true autocratic government and religion were the norm, it got really bad.
The point. What begins as a moral crusade often becomes pillage and sadism.
Quote:In what way are blues like the inquisition? Do blues use torture, and are they immune to prosecution when they do?
I see you as using absurd propaganda which has no basis in a complex reality.
It's simple. Galen sees himself as a victim of a society that rejects his values of pure plutocracy as the means of rushing to an aristocratic order.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.