Take Your Monolith and Shove It

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 24 Mar 2008 09:38:49 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - Neil's motto is, "Of the dead, speak only the truth." And he speaks some uncomfortable truth about Arthur C. Clarke. He was socialist, to the core. [tle]

When I wrote back to my correspondent, she conceded a few of my points, but argued that Clarke wrote great science fiction (and wanted to get us -- the right kind of "us", mind you -- off this planet) that justifies everything else he thought and did. I wish she were right -- The Deep Range alone might vindicate him -- but she isn't. Ask six million German Jews. Or the Kulaks. Or the Chinese "landlords". Or the Cambodians.

Oh, you can't ask them, I pretend to hear you complain, because they're all dead, each and every one of them victims of one crappy kind of socialism or another? Yes, they are, and it will always be this way, as long as anybody can obtain power by asserting that the group is somehow more important -- or has more rights -- than the individual.

Add comment Edit post Add post