Fact Checking Voltaire

“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

So I was scrolling the X feed and I saw an old classic!

It was a sarcastic meme featuring plexiglass

People who follow me would know that I’ve had a history of pointing out the transparent absurdity of what we were doing, ( pun intended ) and yet most said nothing.

https://x.com/nzdsos/status/1865239060153012711

It made me think of the quote from Voltaire:

“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

I think there are real dangers in not confronting absurdities ..

but first, because it’s helpful to put things in context, the quote where it comes from is this:

Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is injust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.

References are here:

https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/origins-warning-from-voltaire

This encapsulates why you, absolutely, need to speak out when you simply see things that simply don’t make sense.

We have a song at the Cafe locked Out, “ All you have to do is not comply with things that don’t make sense” it fits perfectly.

The Lighthouse Declaration is coming up to it’s second birthday Jan 22, 2025 and has lighthouse keepers from around the world ( and still growing ) of doctors, and other health professionals, and others… who spoke out against the absurdities, and upheld the principles of the declaration.

As recipients of censorship we want to see it ended.

As advocates of informed consent (truth), bodily autonomy (medical freedom), and physician autonomy (let doctors be doctors) not robots…

Nuremberg 2 will doubtless have the line …

“I was just following protocol,( or guidelines), your honour.”

P.S. Anyone can sign it…. you can find it at lighthouse declaration.org

Ok, Next, I watched an interview of Marc Farber. He’s great. Old school wisdom. Reminds me of my dad. His reminder of how socialism can grow to become full blown communism, and his personal experiences of seeing how it impoverishes, and kills.

Lest we forget.

My good friend Hugh @venivedivelcro on X, joked the left and the right have gone so far apart… they’ve come full circle and have come together.

I’m beginning to see the world the totalitarians want to birth as the psychopathic love child of communism and fascism, with a technological, (and satanic ) twist.

The variant of this creature ( in the modern West ) was the massive attack on sense making. I see many of those attacks, DEI ( the attack on meritocracy ) and Wokeism, along with the “ let the state take care of me.” kind of thinking. It seemed banal.

Voltaire explains the slippery slope:

“If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well”

There are far too many politicians, judges, bureaucrats that have long since parted ways with this “ God-given sense of justice” and worse still, their souls and faculties as Voltaire warns.

It has no problem with taking away your freedoms, your privacy, or even your life… but people who haven’t lived through it find it hard to imagine the carnage that can result.

but real freedom, comes with responsibilities, as Marc reminds us……just saying.