POWER!!!!

The truth behind; power trumps truth.

Take a look at The Communist Manifesto and you will encounter one of the most influential sequences of aphorisms in history. And most of them are false. Why, then, were they so successful? I think the reason is this. It is in the nature of an aphorism to aim at success -- to present a complex nugget of intellectual flavor that makes the brain water in the way that the mouth waters when touched by monosodium glutamate. And success comes more easily for the one who promises power than for the one who offers only truth. Wilde's aphorism about hunting made its mark because it was a weapon in a battle -- indeed in one of the few "class struggles" that the English have known in recent times. And the same is true of The Communist Manifesto. People have only a circumscribed interest in truth. But their interest in power is insatiable. Falsehoods that give confidence or amplify power will, in the moment of contest, eclipse those paltry truths that warn us to hold on a moment and be careful. The point was made by another great aphorist among 19th-century philosophers, Nietzsche. And Nietzsche's popularity today is owing to the same feature that explains Marx's popularity in the ’60s: the promise of power. (Scruton: American Spectator Jul/Aug 2011)