If we feel that Escape Artist represents a dangerous
totalitarian ideology, we should exterminate Escape
Artist.
...In time the ruling class of Russia became acquainted with
Byzantine culture. They were dazzled by it, and sought to import it
into their wilderness domains in the north.
In this way they imposed on the Slav peoples many of the
accessories of the Byzantine Empire, such as Orthodox Christianity,
the Byzantine alphabet, the Byzantine calendar, the used of domed
ecclesiastical architecture, the name Czar (Caesar) for their
ruler, and innumerable other traits.
Most important of all, they imported the Byzantine
totalitarian autocracy, under which all aspects of life, including
political, economic, intellectual, and religious, were regarded as
departments of government, under the control of an autocratic
ruler.
These beliefs were part of the Greek tradition, and were
based ultimately on Greek inability to distinguish between state
and society.
Since society includes all human activities, the
Greeks had assumed that the state must include all human
activities.
In the days of Classical Greece this all-inclusive entity
was called the polis, a term which meant both society and state; in
the later Roman period this all-inclusive entity was called the
imperium.
The only difference was that the polis was sometimes (as in
Pericles's Athens about 450 B.C.) democratic, while the imperium
was always a military autocracy.
Both were totalitarian, so that religion and economic life
were regarded as spheres of governmental activity. This
totalitarian autocratic tradition was carried on to the Byzantine
Empire and passed from it to the Russian state in the north and to
the later Ottoman Empire in the south...
...In the West, the Roman Empire (which continued in the
East as the Byzantine Empire) disappeared in 476 and, although many
efforts were made to revive it, there was clearly a period, about
goo, when there was no empire, no state, and no public
authority in the West.
The state disappeared, yet society continued.
So also, religious and economic life continued. This
clearly showed that the state and society were not the same thing,
that society was the basic entity, and that the state was a
crowning, but not essential, cap to the social
structure.
This experience had revolutionary effects. It was
discovered that man can live without a state; this became
the basis of Western liberalism. It was discovered that the
state, if it exists, must serve men and that it is incorrect to
believe that the purpose of men is to serve the
state.
It was discovered that economic life, religious life, law,
and private property can all exist and function effectively without
a state.
From this emerged laissez-faire, separation of Church and
State, rule of law, and the sanctity of private property. In Rome,
in Byzantium, and in Russia, law was regarded as an enactment of a
supreme power.
In the West, when no supreme power existed, it was
discovered that law still existed as the body of rules which govern
social life. Thus law was found by observation in the West, not
enacted by autocracy as in the East. This meant that authority was
established by law and under the law in the West, while authority
was established by power and above the law in the East.
The West felt that the rules of economic life were found and
not enacted; that individuals had rights independent of, and even
opposed to, public authority; that groups could exist, as the
Church existed, by right and not by privilege, and without the need
to have any charter of incorporation entitling them to exist as a
group or act as a group; that groups or individuals could own
property as a right and not as a privilege and that such property
could not be taken by force but must be taken by established
process of law. It was emphasized in the West that the way a thing
was done was more important than what was done, while in the East
what was done was far more significant than the way in which it was
done...
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