The hubris and arrogance of governments and government officials is rarely realized by the officials themselves.
Conventional wisdom among political scientists suggests that when governments achieve TOTAL domination and control over others, great achievements and accomplishments are just moments away.
Yet the opposite is true.
Take, for example, “total institutions” such as prisons. One might think that they would produce perfect, er . . . “corrected” people. Yet all history shows prisons produce the worst of all human beings.
Take, for example, the Soviet Union–the “workers paradise”–according to Marxists. It was actually hell on earth for workers and the poor.
Now a recently-surfaced memo shows the thoughts of U.S. President Richard Nixon on Jan. 3, 1972 about the U.S.’s total control of Vietnamese airspace.
We have had 10 years of total control of the air in Laos and V.Nam. The result = Zilch. There is something wrong with the strategy or the Air Force.”
(Just one day earlier, Nixon told CBS News that “the results [of U.S. air force actions in Vietnam] have been very, very effective.”)
