Totalitarian, the idea of the total control of the individual and society by the state, is an ideology that is thousands of years old. It goes back to Plato in ancient Greece it is the foundation of the Chinese Empire. China's first Emperor based his empire on the political theory of legalism of philosophers such as Lord Shang and Han Phaisu. The hand Dynasty and the succeeding dynasties in China were a fusion of Confucianism and legalism. In our time Chairman Mao was a great admirer of the ancient philosophy of legalism. In ancient India, India's first Empire was a totalitarian state and the structure of that state was defined by its prime minister in the ancient book of the Arthsashastra these are basic facts both world history.
In our time the term totalitarianism the technical term was invented by Mussolini but its roots go back thousands of years into the past and ideas such as eugenics and euthanasia are also thousands of years old as is demonstrated in are quotations from Plato and Aristotle the ideas of both eugenics and euthanasia are very much a part of the intellectual thought of ancient Greece. Here in America recently we saw the movie 300 very creative and interesting the about the ancient Spartans and the issue of euthanasia for the unfit is very specifically displayed in that film.
Now as we look into the future the issue of totalitarianism presents itself again. We need to differentiate between real traditional values and false traditional values.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was an effort to portray America's imperial system as some sort of ultimate traditional value. Now that's very hard to believe as America's economy is falling apart and the other shortcomings of America are becoming all too apparent. I mean when some empires have lasted hundreds or sometimes thousands of years the American world empire was already falling apart at the seams and America's historical claims to be a traditional value are imaginary nonsensical. The American political system is a somewhat bastardized copy of the Roman and Greek systems and those political systems ended up failing and committing suicide beyond that it's a very aberrant system and world history it's not something that's been part of the mainstream or something that anybody ever really thought was some sort of ultimate wisdom.
The New Testament was written in Greek but the term democracy isn't even mentioned once which shows how thoroughly the concept of democracy had disappeared into oblivion in Greek society and the issue of America's concept of religion is also not a traditional value. Christianity is a relatively new religion Evangelical Christianity is only 200 years old Pentecostal Christianity which dominates evangelical television is only 100 years old.
So we need to make sure we understand real traditional values verses false traditional values and as we look into the future we need to understand what has worked in the past and what has not worked in the past. In a crisis like it or not totalitarian solutions are what has been adopted and this fact needs to be kept in mind, and we will discuss this in greater detail about the future to come