Leonard Peikoff Quote
The aspiring dictator may not be able to identify in philosophic terms the clash between reason and his particular schemes. But he, too, is aware of it. In some (usually unverbalized) form, he knows that he cannot demand unthinking obedience from men, or gain their consent to the permanent rule of brutality, until he has first persuaded his future subjects to ditch their brains and their independent, self-assertive judgment. He knows that he can succeed only with a populace conditioned to seek neither evidence nor argument, a populace which, having shrugged aside the demands of logic, will agree with, and then endure, anything. Hence the spectacle of statists, of every variety and throughout history, both before and during their period in power, systematically attacking the mind. In some terms, these men have grasped that their political goals cannot be achieved until the proper epistemological base is established. Hitler grasped it, too.
The aspiring dictator may not be able to identify in philosophic terms the clash between reason and his particular schemes. But he, too, is aware of it. In some (usually unverbalized) form, he knows that he cannot demand unthinking obedience from men, or gain their consent to the permanent rule of brutality, until he has first persuaded his future subjects to ditch their brains and their independent, self-assertive judgment. He knows that he can succeed only with a populace conditioned to seek neither evidence nor argument, a populace which, having shrugged aside the demands of logic, will agree with, and then endure, anything. Hence the spectacle of statists, of every variety and throughout history, both before and during their period in power, systematically attacking the mind. In some terms, these men have grasped that their political goals cannot be achieved until the proper epistemological base is established. Hitler grasped it, too.
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