To use the terms that are reserved for official enemies, it is the commissars and apparatchiks, not the dissidents, who are respected and privileged within their own societies.

It is only natural to expect that guilds will tend to "protect their turf" and to resist challenge.

Plainly elites in America don't want democracy. And why should they? Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.

If voting could actually change anything, it would be illegal.

Should people be mere "interested spectators of action," not "participants," restricted to lending their weight periodically to one or another sector of the "responsible men," as advocates of "manufacture of consent" have recommended? Or should their rights transcend these highly restricted bounds?

The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.

The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.