Looks like the soldier quote is gonna be big in comments. I think it’s out of place too, and as opposed to most other quotes that Eliezer comes up with, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. In the same way as: “It is the scalpel, not the surgeon, or the nurse, that fixed your wounds!”
Soldiers are tools wielded by the structure in power, and it is the structure in power that determines whether the soliders are going to protect your rights and take them away.
Perhaps, “The One” might argue, it is a different kind of person who becomes a soldier in an army that “protects freedom” rather than an army that oppresses its countrymen. There are probably more such idealists among the soldiers in the US army, than among troops commanded by the Burmese generals.
Even so, though, the idealist soldier does what he’s commanded to do, and whether that which he does actually protects freedom or not, is largely determined by the structure of power, not the idealist soldier. He remains a tool, a hammer wielded by someone else’s will.
Looks like the soldier quote is gonna be big in comments. I think it’s out of place too, and as opposed to most other quotes that Eliezer comes up with, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. In the same way as: “It is the scalpel, not the surgeon, or the nurse, that fixed your wounds!”
Soldiers are tools wielded by the structure in power, and it is the structure in power that determines whether the soliders are going to protect your rights and take them away.
Perhaps, “The One” might argue, it is a different kind of person who becomes a soldier in an army that “protects freedom” rather than an army that oppresses its countrymen. There are probably more such idealists among the soldiers in the US army, than among troops commanded by the Burmese generals.
Even so, though, the idealist soldier does what he’s commanded to do, and whether that which he does actually protects freedom or not, is largely determined by the structure of power, not the idealist soldier. He remains a tool, a hammer wielded by someone else’s will.