4 replies to this topic

[ara baliozian]

HONESTY UNITES, CHARLATANISM DIVIDES
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That’s because when honest men come together,
they agree to place the common good above
their own parochial, partisan, or personal interests.
Moreover, honest men with honest disagreements
are capable of developing a consensus,
which means "working together"
rather than "total agreement on all points."
Total agreement on all points
is a purely utopian concept.
It doesn’t happen even among friends,
relatives, coworkers, partners,
or, for that matter,
members of the same club, party, or organization.
Where there are long-standing feuds,
you can be sure of one thing:
the common good is an absent factor
and both sides would rather see each other destroyed
than reach a consensus.
At the turn of the century,
in the Ottoman Empire,
the Armenian elite was divided into two distinct groups:
the collaborators and the revolutionaries.
When they negotiated with each other,
these two groups spoke in the name of the people
(though none of them had been elected by the people)
but they were unable to reach a consensus
for the sake of the people;
and what was bound to happen happened,
with the result that the elites survived
but the people perished.
What we are witnessing today
may be said to be a variation on the same theme,
and what is again being ignored is the common good.
That’s because,
when charlatans speak in the name of the people,
what they really have in mind is their own
party, church, family, and, more often than not,
ego.

[dragon]

Hovik,
Are you Zournajian? Just asking...

[MJ]

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted March 18, 2001 11:14 AM
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DISSIDENTS & HISTORY
****************************************
The USSR collapsed
not because of the evil influence of dissidents
like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov
as Stalinists like to assert)
but because the policies adopted and implemented by the Kremlin
were wrong.
History does not take orders from dissidents.
Dissidents don’t shape history.
They have no power over the destiny of a nation:
all they do is interpret its direction.
Our medieval historians predicted our downfall
long before it happened.
Again and again they warned our kings and warlords that
a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.
But they were ignored.
They continue to be ignored today.
As for our tribal leaders:
repeated failure does not seem to faze them;
it is as though they had raised an invisible Chinese Wall
between themselves and reality.
They recycle the same old propaganda line
and they can always count on a tiny band of faithful followers
whose critical faculties have been atrophied.
As for the alienated majority:
they no longer count because
they are part of that reality that is
on the other side of the invisible Chinese Wall.
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ara baliozian