Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn More Quotes by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn More Quotes From Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn It is the low drive for sameness and the hatred of otherness that characterizes all forms of leftism, which inevitably are totalitarian. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn form hatred lows Sometime in the coming century, people will rack their brains pondering how nations with tremendous scientific and intellectual achievements could have given uninstructed and untrained men and women the right to vote equally uninstructed and untrained people into responsible positions. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn intellectual men people Democratism and its allied herd movements, while remaining loyal to the principle of equality and identity, will never hesitate to sacrifice liberty. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn sacrifice liberty identity "Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be nuns and monks, but the standard reply is 'prisoners'" Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn jail spiritual food As humanism begins to dominate the state, the consequence is complete hostile annexation of the church or persecution by separation. Religion is then removed from the marketplace and the school, later from other domains of public life. The state will not toerlate any gods besides itself. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn religious christian school For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn average war world Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions (although it will not always be exercised even by them). For such people tolerance is an act of self-abnegation; although they are convinced that those who differ from them must be wrong, they nevertheless will protect their rights. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn religious self rights Only a person with convictions has a genuine possibility to be tolerant. He who accepts no absolute values but clings to polite doubt cannot be tolerant but merely indifferent. He is morally defenseless in the face of evil. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn doubt evil faces People are rarely diabolic or bent enthusiastically on evil. As a rule, they are only weak; they cannot resist temptation and thus give way to their evil drives. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn evil giving people Even 51 per cent of a nation can establish a totalitarian and dictatorial règime, suppress minorities, and still remain democratic; there is, as we have said, little doubt that the American Congress and the French Chambre have a power over their respective nations which would rouse the envy of a Louis XIV or a George III were they alive today. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn envy live-for-today doubt [T]he democratic principle of "one man, one vote," viewed against a background of voting masses numbering several millions, only serves to demonstrate the pitiful helplessness of the inarticulate individual, who functions at the polls as the smallest indivisible arithmetical (and not always algebraic) unit. He acts in total anonymity, secrecy and legal irresponsibility. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn voting principles men Modern man is a hard driven nomad without any stability, not (as the Bible has it) a wanderer or a pilgrim, but a refugee-an escapist. Instead of meditation and reflection there is only speed, fear and “distraction. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn meditation reflection men
