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Bureaucratic Survival
The time-worn bureaucratic game of committing arson to play fireman… Systems do not justify themselves; systems defend themselves, as Solzhenitsyn [Солженицын] noted in The Gulag Archipelago: Чем...
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Guilt
Guilt, innocence, and justice–albeit favorite crumbs for tossing out to the crowd–are, to most politicians, acidic concepts whose merest touch can corrode that all-important amour-propre. “Team...
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Truth vs. Lying
In his mid-70s analysis of Soviet socio-political conditions, dissident Marxist historian Roy Medvedev quoted an essay called “Think” by another Soviet dissident, Boris Shragin (Lev Ventsov) saying...
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They Did Not Lie
To understand the moral foundations of a good democracy, a decade in jail can be an education… Solzhenitsyn’s account of his return to civilian life from his “tenner” in the Gulag, given in the story...
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Honey-Mouthed Politicians
Li Linfu, powerful chancellor of Tang dynasty China from 734 to 752, was renown for his devious ways and honeyed voice, evidently an early master of political correctness. Employing his skills to...
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Nothing but “Bureaucratized Anarchy”
While everyone gets excited about the crisis of the day – perhaps a colonial war of liberation or a terrorist threat, the real threat to the democratic society of the homeland comes from within. The...
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Bureaucratic Flavors
Bureaucratic behavior comes in many flavors – it’s hard to predict until the fine lens of crisis is applied. Then, one discovers what sort of government one has. Speaking of the bureaucratic response...
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Politicians Who Can’t Speak the Language of Leadership
In response to Sakharov’s first major official effort to caution the Kremlin about the dangers of the monstrous bombs he was responsible for inventing before he gained sufficient moral stature to...
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