Francis Berger
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Power, Not Truth, Speaks To Power

3/22/2021

3 Comments

 
Speaking truth to power ranks among the left's most cherished political tactics. A favorite of human rights advocates and other assorted activists, it has served as a defiant rallying cry against all sorts of perceived oppression and injustice.

Sold as a courageous means through which to stick it to those in charge, speaking truth to power is constructed on the age-old lie that power actually listens truth. 

Let me tell you a little secret - it doesn't.

Power does not and cannot listen to truth. If it did, it would cease to be power.

There's only one thing power listens to - and that thing is power.

But for the sake of the hypothetical, let's pretend power actually could or did listen to truth. The moment it did, it would simply cease to be because it would be transformed into truth.

This is the faux logic behind the leftist rallying cry. The great march through the institutions is the professed evidence of that logic in action. "We dissolved power with the truth and turned power into truth."

But leftist truth is not truth at all, only power. If leftist truth were real truth, it would not rush in to fill the void power leaves in its wake. 

When leftists claim to be speaking truth to power, they are actually speaking power to power because power is all leftism knows. Truth never enters the equation. If it did, it would not be motivated by the error of speaking to power.

Leftists believe their truth is elevated beyond all good and evil, and this is what makes their purported truth a lie. 

Leftists are convinced their truth does not require God; that their truth transcends God; that their truth is God. The only god leftists worship is power. 

So when leftists rant about speaking truth to power, they are really speaking power to power. Truth never enters the picture. 

Truth never enters the picture because truth is God, and if there is one thing leftists hate more than anything, it is God. 

The Orthodox saint, Alexander Nevsky wisely observed that God is not in power, but in truth. 

Whenever Christ spoke spiritual truth to worldly power, he received mostly questions in response.

What is truth?

And when Christ spoke truth to the Grand Inquisitor, it came in the form of silence . . . sealed with a kiss.
3 Comments
Lazar Istvanich link
3/23/2021 08:03:12

Aga, -- How Proper that Ferenc doth invoke the Spirit of GreatPrince St. Aleksandr Nevsky, to "Drive Home to High Heaven" his so Valid Point!...We have Uploaded to Berdyaev Gruppe the Vita/Zhizn of this great Russian Saint (translated in Engl. via our humble hand nigh a quarter century ago, -- so that You also might "Dare to Believe", and therein find Bold Courage in ChristGod Our Lord!!! --

https://berdyaevdiscussiongroup.groups.io/g/main/files/Vitae_23Nov.html
https://berdyaevdiscussiongroup.groups.io/g/main/files/Zhizn_23Nov.html

Today 23 Marta is a Fated Day for Lazar: a Long Year ago they "did pierce his side with a spear, and there came forth blood & water", as once was done to Christ, -- on this selfsame Day in 2020 Russian Moskva Maiden Androsenko Sofia did post her Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Kj6iLthVg
conjuring forth the Spirit of Mat' Maria Skobtsova, and Berger Ference in turn (from these Vibes) appealed to the World on behalf of Lazar's Condition. And hence a "Death Sentence" was transformed into a Proclamation of Faith, such as is evidenced in the "Life-Bestowing Cross of Christ", of this, -- that "Death hath been Overthrown, for Christ Our God is Risen!"...

And yea, to know fully such things, one must live them!!... Nevsky's Famous Quote has been a Motto throughout my life; may it also be thus for You!!... 23 Marta is a "Day of Destiny", -- the Day of Repose of N A Berdyaev, and of his the Old Generation, and mine the Interim nigh-extinct Generation, and now in both Sofia and Ferenc the New Generation of the Future, -- to the Glory of God!!...
""Не в силе Бог, а в правде. Иные - с оружием, иные - на конях, а мы Имя Господа Бога нашего призовем! Они поколебались и пали, мы же восстали и тверды были".
""Not in power is God, but in truth. Some -- with a weapon, some -- on horses, but we in the Name of the Lord Our God do summon you! They have hesitated and set fire, we however are bravely risen!"

Reply
bruce charlton
3/23/2021 09:33:46

I think this nonsense of speaking truth to power comes from the fact that the leftist agenda has always been top-down - those with power creating (funding, organizing, allowing) pseudo-pressure from below to justify what they wanted to do. Those at low levels are fed ideas (and a bit of money, and license) and encouraged to agitate for what those at the top want doing; and the pawns imagine they are being heroic, democratic, grass-roots etc.

This is a real thing, a process - which I have observed from the inside of the NHS bureaucracy. The long termism and strategic thinking involved is something remarkable - compared with the short-termism and selfishness of most modern humans. Long termist strategy; yet the objectives are destructive, fissile, and damning.

After so many decades of this, the left has woven a web of false (inverted) assumptions, kept in place by lies and suppression, that can only be penetrated (but which are easily penetrated) by honest Christians who think for themselves.

Those who look no farther than this life and world are by now enmeshed hopelessly. There have internalized *so many* wrong concepts and fake facts, that they are rapidly overwhelmed by the scale of their deception, cannot believe that they could be so grossly deceived, and fall back into the mainstream. Those who cannot recognize the reality and nature of evil - likewise.

On the plus side - it is incredibly simple and easy to shrug off the generations of constructed fakery and see directly what needs to be seen - except that people are pre-immunized to reject clarity and simplicity! I've seen this many times. An obvious falsehood (like moral relativism) is resistant to being shown how obviously false it is - because people figure 'if it was That simple, the the idea could not be so common'.

But the same people will not hang around long enough to work-through a more elaborate refutation - thus are they trapped.

Reply
Francis Berger
3/23/2021 10:41:34

@ Bruce - Yes, today it essentially boils down to power speaking to itself in order to justify adjustments and expansions of power.

"Look! Young people want to save the planet! Let's hike taxes, increase regulations and laws, raise prices, fund pointless research, and create many needless, high-paying bureaucratic jobs!" Etc., . . .

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