INTERNAL CONSENT | 2002-12-14
In a free country a person is asked to OBEY laws, but he is not required to APPROVE of them. You are free to believe anything you want to. You are punished for ACTS which violate the law.
In a totalitarian society you must not only DO what the State demands, you must BELIEVE what the state tells you. Absolutism requires not only external obedience but internal consent as well.
In any Religious Inquisition, it is not enough that a person merely conform.
In a Religious Inquisition one must Believe. That is what makes it Religious. That's what makes it an Inquisition.
Even the most absolute religious tyranny allows some discussion, so long as everyone allowed to speak is within the bounds of True Belief.
Political Correctness is our national religion. Some opposition is allowed, some discussion is allowed, but only within the limits of our imposed Faith.
We segregationists predicted all the horrors that would come with integration except one. No one predicted that after integration was imposed and all the horrors we predicted came about, we would still be required to say integration was good. No one imagined that, in America, we would have to BELIEVE that integration was good.
Again, all Good-thinkers today -- what we call the respectable people -- look with horror on the idea of blacks sitting at the back of buses. But people in 1948 thought that a drug culture, school violence, a country ruled by minority votes, a third world invasion and an America looking forward to a future as a colored country were real horrors.
Americans in 1948 would have been shocked by the Inquisition we take for granted. And anybody in 1948, including real liberals, would have been horrified at a national brainwashing. And it is today's "conservatives" who must lead in enforcing this Inquisition.