Sunday, March 20, 2005

Candide Camera

The New Yorker for March 7 has an interesting piece on Voltaire, sort of an 18th century Abbey Hoffman*:
"Enligntened times will only enlighten a small number of honest men," he wrote. "The common people will always be fanatical." He coined his most famous phrase, Ecrasez l'infame-"Crush the Horror"...
The horror was the alliance of religious fanaticism with the instruments of the state, and the two combined for torture and official murder.
Sound familiar?

*Abbey Hoffman said something you couldn't get away with today in a New York Microsecond:
"Avoid all needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon."

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