Good bad, bad good!

Sun Tzu's 'principles' seem rather similar to Saul Alinsky's 12 Rules for radicals. It reinforces my observations that the totalitarian mindset is more about theft and corruption than it is about the creation of new ideas:

1. "Undermine everything that is good in the land of your enemies.
2. Implicate the ruling class of your enemies in corruption and turn their youth into drug addicts.
3. Undermine the standing of all leaders by frequent scandals.
4. Do not hesitate to use the lowest and most repulsive creatures as collaborators.
5. Use all means in your power to impede the activity of the government.
6. Spread sectional disputes in the land of your enemies.
7. Incite the young to struggle against the old.
8. Devalue the traditions of your enemies, destroy all authority.
9. Organise sabotage and withdrawal of labor.
10. Sap the fighting spirit of the enemy by sensual desires and soft music.
11. Make the enemy believe in total sexual freedom, turn his women into whores.
12. Buy the services of traitors and infiltrate the enemy state with spies."

If one digs into any  socialist ideology you always find a creative idea/tradition/philosophy that has been stolen, corrupted and twisted into some scrofulous parody of its former self. Marxism itself is a corruption of theological truths with God erased and the state inserted on the throne.

A more current example has to be marriage. How tradition which has existed in most civilisations for millennia has recently been twisted, distorted, excoriated and turned into its opposite, i.e. something that is now supposed to be a symbol of hate rather than the symbol of love it has always been. 

This was once seen as a perfectly normal point of view. Now, in the historical blink of an eye, it has been denormalised, and with such ferocity and speed that anyone still brave enough to express it runs the risk of being ejected from public life …

What we have here is the further colonisation of public life by an elite strata of society – the chattering class – and the vigorous expulsion of all those who do not genuflect to their orthodoxies. Whether you’re a climate-change denier, a multiculturalism sceptic or, the lowest of the low, someone who believes in traditional marriage, you’re clearly mad and must be cast out. [Brendan O’Neill]

The social impact of this illiberal liberalism will be dire.