Our idealists must own that their velleity to abolish all suffering is most fully expressed in the Fifth Wisdom of Lamaism, the doctrine that teaches that "no durable happiness, nor yet security, for any sentient being can exist while others are a prey to suffering." That truth cannot be questioned and you may take it to heart: in practical terms it means we got ourselves born on the wrong planet - in the wrong universe.
Revilo P. OliverAmerican Conservatism is finished, and its remaining adherents are, whether they know it or not, merely ghosts wandering, mazed, in the daylight.
Revilo P. OliverWhen the veil of fiction was rent, man shuddered before "Nature, red in tooth and claw." Nature had always been that and always will be, and the hands of man, even when he fashions and defends the noblest civilization, must forever be bloody hands, for this is a world in which only the strong and resolute nations survive, while the weak, especially the morally weak, who babble about brotherhood and peace, are biologically degenerate and doomed to extinction.
Revilo P. OliverNow I admit that the notion of a warless world is a pleasant and attractive thought. But people who believe that there can be such a thing should ask it of Santa Claus, in whom they doubtless also believe.
Revilo P. OliverThe most beautiful conception of immortality of which I know, and certainly one that by contrast shows the utter vulgarity of Christian ideas, is set forth in Pindar's second Olympian: after three or six lives in which a man has lived with strict justice and perfect integrity, he passes beyond the tower of Cronus to the fair realm that cannot be reached by land or sea, where gentle breezes from a placid ocean blow forever on the fields of asphodel. For a description, see Pindar. If the beauty of great poetry can commend a religion, here you have it.
Revilo P. OliverA political philosophy (often called "political science" by practitioners who are not averse from verbal trickery) must deal with contemporary realities. If it does not, if it is charged with "ideals," it is merely a variety of romantic fiction, although it may not be recognized as such.
Revilo P. OliverOur idealists must own that their velleity to abolish all suffering is most fully expressed in the Fifth Wisdom of Lamaism, the doctrine that teaches that "no durable happiness, nor yet security, for any sentient being can exist while others are a prey to suffering." That truth cannot be questioned and you may take it to heart: in practical terms it means we got ourselves born on the wrong planet - in the wrong universe.
Revilo P. Oliver