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From: laurenticwave
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  • Not sure what Russell was on about here, Accoding to Russell's thinking, in the modern context, the USA would be right to drop a nuclear bomb on Teran before Iran get's the bomb.

  • Yeah, lets start a nuclear war. Fuck you are dumb "Bertrand Russell".

  • Well, there's food for thought. I can see his line of reasoning, he has seen both great wars, and the thought of another great war seemed inevitable to him.

    It is true, a "mutual" nuclear war has the potential to wipe out most complex life on the planet. Russell didn't imagine a balance of power with MAD that hindered the outbreak of great wars.

    Yet it were intellectuals like him that reminded us of the terror of such wars, and if we lose their knowledge we may yet start one out of ignorance.

  • It's not that inconsistent. The probable outcome of a nuclear war with Russia at that time was horrible, but not as bad as the probable outcome of a nuclear war where BOTH sides had nuclear weapons - we're extremely fortunate that didn't happen, but it was always probable that it would have, and it very nearly did on several occasions.

  • Isn't amazing that people who imagine themselves thinkers and intellectuals so callously and so easily talk about slaughtering millions of men, women, and children. How can people like Russell who pride themselves on their supposed ability to think clearly fail to see that they lack basic human decency? 

  • Regardless of what one thinks of Russel, I think we can all agree that the other man in the clip is a pompous jerk :)

  • looks like he wasn't such a great philosopher after all

  • @redryan20000 "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" - Emerson

  • should a man be criticised for being prepared to "modify" his opinions, if he sees fit?! surely not.

  • I disagree with the analysis of the man in the cardigan, but appreciate the expansion on my previous impression of Bertrand Russel. No one should be idolized, no matter how intelligent and clear spoken.

  • what's wrong about changing your mind?

  • @OGthegame Absolutely nothing. Being able to change one's mind, based on evidence, is what separates intelligent people from those who are dogmatic.

  • @heathdwatts Where did he change his mind? The circumstances changed - not his opinion.

  • @heathdwatts Thank you, for contributing some clarity and exact thinking. This is at the heart of what Russell was all about.

  • @OGthegame Do I miss something? Because for all I see in the video - he didn't change his mind. I'm a bit shocked that Russel would have dropped the Atom bomb on any country, and even later justified it just because the bombs were not as big as modern versions.

  • My god, you mean an old man made a statement that he later regretted? Who would ever thing a human dedicated to science would make a statement that he had to append?!?! Obviously Bertrand needs to learn that the scientific method is nothing if not an air tight cliff from which contemptuous dross is flung.

  • The clip presents Russell as a flip-flop. I don't see a contradiction in his reasoning though. He wanted to bomb USSR to prevent another country from obtaining nuclear weaponry.

    When this was not done and USSR DID develop said technology, his contingency plan was mutual disarmament between US and USSR.

    This doesn't make him a flip-flop. Only if US had bombed USSR and he then regretted it and then changed his mind would he have been.

  • Muggeridge - as was so often the case - was being an ass there. As though being willing to modify or hone one's opinions is a bad thing! Typical stupid bloody Christian.

  • Agreed that chaning one's mind is noble not "impish or irresponsible". Indeed in several of his essays, but particularly in his religious essays, Russell specifically discusses how part of "the tyranny of the mind" (such as of public opinion, fear of persecution, etc.) includes the irrationality of holding on to beliefs, thoughts or conclusions when the evidence proves contrary. Why would he violate his own logic in this regard by not changing his mind if such change is warranted by the facts?

  • I find it incredibly presumptuous of the interviewee at the end there calling Russell's adapting philosophy "irresponsible". You can see changes in many of his philosophies throughout his career -- this is not a point of weakness. When one realizes that they have been mistaken, one ought to change their ideas. To expect otherwise is nonsense.

  • you do know all of you will be dead in less than 30 years from GMO foods

    an you can thank this bastard an all the darwin mongers for that , its funny how eugenics does not cover ugly bastard mass murders because if it did all the eugenics mongers should face there own ideas in the gas chamber,

    they created all the unfit from the toxins they were outputting an then they say its a problem an cull them its like making an arsonist a fireman ,i notice most pro eugenics mongers are very ugly lookin

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  • His argument has merit.

    His thought process was consist. You need to modify your conclusions as circumstances change.

    There was a real reasonable chance Nuclear war could break out and kill everyone on earth at this time. To Sacrifice a couple 100k lives to save perhaps the entire human race could be termed as "the right thing to do".

    When Russia got the bomb this was no longer a possibility... the equation changed so your answer to it (if you think rationally) will almost always change.

  • @bobdigital21

    paper tiger

  • Every person that has lived or is living now, on this planet, was or is capable to err. This is just an example of it. Unfortunately people idealize great thinkers to be above human when they are merely that: human.

  • @bamb04 Well said. I doubt if Russell ever claimed that his own thought processes were at all times exact and infallible. He merely says that we should at all times strive to make our thinking as exact as we can. As for the guy saying that Russell modified his thinking over time - that is not a bad thing. It is the opposite of dogmatic thinking.

  • One by one the United Nations will summarily Shit and Defecate on every sovereign "free" country on the planet.

  • The City of London is a private Corporation run by the Bank of England and Dynastic families who control the IMF, World Bank, and Federal Reserve System.

    They are part of the "Club of the Isles, after King Edward VII, an association of primarily of European royal families, including the Queen, with an estimated $10 trillion in assets in such corporate giants of the London Stock Exhange as Royal Dutch Shell, Lloyds of London, Lonrho, Rio Tinto, Anglo American Mining, and De Beers.

  • @AnonymousWhitePerson Wow which credible sources did you manage to track down for this information? I take it you're a journalist. What you just said would normally be laughed at but wow! When are you going to release the story?

  • @waldoistwisted,

    No need to release the story. The United Nations will rise to become a World Government regardless of what I say; and it will vie with the other Cecil Rhodes Roundtable Groups of the Bilderberg Group and Trilateral Commission to liquidate the sovereignty of every nation on the planet.

  • The present bankrupt International Post-Bretton Woods Financial and Monetary System is the Ghost of the British Empire in disguise; as of 2007 it has bankrupted itself.

  • His kind are an Alien Species like the Rothschilds and Windsors.

  • The British Oligarchy is an Alien Species.

  • The Rothschild gang initiated and directed the whole process: N.M. Rothschild and Sons director Sidney Baillieu Myer was the chairman of the Mont Pelerin Society front the Tasman Institute, which co-wrote Kennett’s ominously-titled “blueprint for reform”, Project Victoria; Rothschild then became a key creditor to many of the companies that snapped up the assets.

  • Mr Isherwood detailed the history of the Rothschild-directed looting of Australia, through privatisation:

    Privatisation started in Australia with the federal sale of Qantas and the partial sale of the Commonwealth Bank in 1991, but the election of Jeff Kennett in Victoria in 1992 was the start of a fire sale frenzy, in which more than $30 billion worth of state government assets—mainly electricity—was sold in three years.

  • Bertrand Russell was an avid lover of One World Government.

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  • Sir Julian Huxley was as Eugenicist.

  • To Russell, the common man was a fat stupid human domesticated animal, much like livestock or poultry, to be eaten at the dinner table of a superior elite and predatory banker.

  • Lord Russell was a Eugenicist who advocated sterilization, drugs, promiscuity, and prepubescent sex.

  • British Fabian, Lord Bertrand Russell was an agent of MI5, who later chaired the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom beginning in 1950 with John Dewey, Bendetto Croce, and Sidney Hook.

    The explicit intent of the "Congress" as led by Sidney Hook, was to corrupt the culture, mores, and educational systems of Europe and the Americas.

  • "They hadn't yet got the H Bomb they ONLY had the A bomb." I believe Russell is long overdue the credit he deserves for his wonderful sense of humour!

  • @laurenticwave: Nothing unclear here. He wasn't a war monger, he was thinking about what we could do to prevent the extinction of the human race. With the benefit of hindsight, his concern sounds overblown and his solution callous, but at the time many scientists thought nuclear annihilation was *inevitable*. Feynman was famously depressed over it, feeling it was pointless to build for the future because we would all be dead soon.

  • @ReductioAdAbsurdum Nuclear proliferation is still one of the most pressing issues in the world. Pakistan (a country we are bombing) has nuclear weapons. Weapons grade material has gone missing in the past. The threat of a weapon being used in a major city and us making an irrational response (a la Afghanistan) is pretty likely, given how many enemies we seem to be able to accumulate.

  • ha your the one with the poor perception an low iq your a brainwashed mainstream telly watching

    buffoon

  • beingPOISONED: lol.. you're an idiot.

  • Education should aim at destroying free will,so that after kids have left school they shall be incapable throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking an acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished,

    Bertrand Russell 1953

  • This clip shows how a scientific and mathematical genius can be utterly stupid when discussing an area outside his own narrow expertise. There are many such examples--the absolutely insipid statements by Einstein on war and peace, for example.

  • I think his point was one of the lesser of two evils

  • Does anyone else think that Bertrand Russell could have been the model for Darth Sidious' speaking style?

    (That's the Emperor in Return of the Jedi).

    They sound eerily similar, especially when saying words like "wicked", "evil" and his penchant for the phrase "a great many xxxx".

  • I don't really care abut him changing ideas on war, I think everything he says is really interesting... even when contradicting himself.

  • Russell was old as fuck when he said this. It doesn't count.

  • This type of disordered thinking is the fruit of atheism.

    As Dostyevski wrote, "Without God, all things are permissible."

  • Dystopiologist's rule: 'If I said it or somebody else I like wrote it, it's true.'

  • Russell's idea of pre-emptive war against Stalin was not ridiculous. Also, I agree with him that a quick German victory in World War I would have saved millions of lives and prevented the later rise of BOTH Nazism and Communism each of which murdered many millions. Without Lenin there's no Mao in China, no Stalin, no Pol Pot, no Kim Jong Il and Vietnam remains Catholic. Whether that's good or bad depends on point of view, I regard Communism as evil. btw, Russell & LeMay agreed on this one!!

  • I resent this man's opinion of Bertrand very much. "Impish"?!

  • @Williyf I think is just not smart enough for BR, and I didn't even listened, what was he saying? BR just steals the show.

  • Poor Malcom is just a boring old reactionary clown !

  • It just sounds like Russell was frightened that a ruthless mass murderer such as Stalin would be able to use nuclear weapons. Perhaps he was justified to think that out of utility it would be better to strike first - and perhaps something later changed his thoughts on the matter. But now that he changed his mind here we are to believe that he had an "impish" quality to his thinking throughout his whole career? That is completely absurd.

  • i think you will find proper fermented soy is safe but the stuff we get to eat over here an also you guy in the usa is fermented with toxic method

    its this western gmo soy which has been proven to cause cancer an is linked to bowl cancer in men an breast cancer in women an lung cancer in both , so yes safe soya is safe but the soya in our food is mostly unsafe, im alergic to soya an so are many others its simply wrong that all these old products once safe now use unsafe fermented soya,

  • but dialogue also exists....

    yep dialogue its not time-pragmatic LOL

  • its clear That many of the people commenting on this Vid are C.I.A or get there info from Mainstream

    outlets an shut there mind to the true facts also many of the people on youtube are agents for certain other agendas the biggest lie on youtube is the blaim it all on the jews stance i think you will find the freemasons are the ones controlling an hiding behind the jews they let the jew take the flack an they are free to rule , the alleged jewish controllers built a freemason temple in israel?

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  • @beingPOISONED lol... you win the award for failing to punctuate, 'cept at the end, which to me implies an eagerness for people to back you, rather than you being certain of your statements... at any rate it's linguistically rubbish, logically rubbish, and is pointing to a wishy washy body of evidence, and omitting a shedload of reasonable counter arguments... well done.

  • @esoervik i take it you support eugenics an 21 mercury vaccines for kids then

    you win the award for attacking people for free speech your a bully an pointless an pathetic least i stand for truth you cover up the scums crimes which makes you worse

  • hmmm some of you think this is not in effect now well maybe look at how we are injected in school an our food an water contains poisons like "fluoride" , Aspartame, msg, look at how soya is in everything , they tell us in the west its good stuff an they say its popular in china? hmm funny that the poor people that do eat it in china suffer alarming levels of bowel cancer hmmm its in all our foods these days an bowel cancer is on the increase, do u ever get pains in your tummy ? MONSANTO POISON!

  • Actually almost everybody in Korea or Japan who isn't allergic to it eats it, and they have far superior health because of it. Soy is just another plant, and you act like it's some highly manufactured chemical additive. You are also conflating the food with anything GMO, which is irrational and flase. You are actually much safer eating soy than most corn in the United States, unless it's explicitly marked non GMO, there's much more mutant corn going around, and a lot of processed mutant canola.

  • All very interesting - and entirely possible - but would you mind citing a few verifiable sources? Of course it's true in a general sense that the Soviet Union was created by Capitalism, if only as an inevitable reaction... but you seem to be suggesting something rather more specific!

  • @DreadfulSolemnity must be nice to know all that. so everything that happened from the 1850's to the middle 1920's was orchestrated by some industrialists, bankers, and their foot soldiers from Britain and the United States. History is so simple and easy! Thanks Judge Dread

  • @DreadfulSolemnity And the problem with all this is?

  • @DreadfulSolemnity Seriously, does it seem funny to you that the British would want to take out the Ramanove Dynasty? Do you think the world is worse off for that? Would you rather have them competing for control of world resources?

  • @scruethedemiurge

    Do you not know that Russell's remark post-dated the Romanov dynasty by more than 30 years?

  • @musekiteer Yes, that wasn't the point of my comment. What's your point?

  • @scruethedemiurge

    Read what you said.

  • @musekiteer You tell me to read what I said? Fuck you, asshole!

  • @scruethedemiurge,

    British King George V's agents, the London Crown International Bankers financed the Bolshevik Uprising in order to defeat the transfer of power from his his own Cousin, Czar Nicholas II to the Provisional Government of Kerensy, leading to the Soviet Union, preventing Russia from becoming a Democracy and murdering his own cousins, the entire Romanov family.

    Instead Russia became a Soviet dictatorship and a haven for Monopoly Capitalists.

  • @AnonymousWhitePerson Yes, I know about all that, thanks.

  • @scruethedemiurge,

    The British Oligarchy seeks to Eradicate 90 Percent of the Human Race.

  • @AnonymousWhitePerson Well, I guess those of us who don't want 90% of the human race eradicated had better thwart their plans.

  • @scruethedemiurge,

    Are you being sarcastic or are you agreeing with me? (I can't judge sarcasm and irony Online).

  • @AnonymousWhitePerson Well, if these "royal" families really want to destroy 90% of us, we'd damn well better not let it happen. I don't want myself and my family wiped out just because some bunch of pricks with a superiority complex wants the whole world to themselves.

  • @scruethedemiurge,

    The U.S.A. is a Crown (Temple) Corporation.

  • @AnonymousWhitePerson What practical consequence has that for you or me? And what do you propose we do about it?

  • @scruethedemiurge,

    Prince William is being groomed to be King of the entire World; he is being groomed to assume the position of "Supreme Commander" of the United Nations, and to rule over the United Nations General Assembly as a World Government.

  • @AnonymousWhitePerson I'm assuming you don't approve of the idea of a world government, led by Prince William or anyone else. Please do send me a personal message telling me if it's Just the Windsors, Rothschilds etc that you don't approve of or if it is the idea of any world government at all that you can't stand. Also, is there any kind of world government you would support?

  • @DreadfulSolemnity You're a real nutcase, you know that?

  • @DreadfulSolemnity Marx was an agent only for himself and the world history he was rightly convinced he would influence in time (for better or worse). The principal thing British agency cover would have brought him personally -- better living conditions -- he would have rejected outright. Incorruptible and dead-ass broke his whole stinking life, Marx is a dead end for bubblegum-brained conspiracy vomitists, so just hang it up -- it doesn't fit.

  • @DreadfulSolemnity Ha Ha, your comment got voted out by a load of ill educated fuckwits, you are 100% CORRECT, my friend (one of the joys of democracy im afraid)

  • The Soviet Union was created from start to finish by the Wall Street and London Financial District.

  • "He will hear what a man has to say on any given subject, even if the speaker end only in proving himself prince of fools. Even a fool will sometimes hit the mark. There is some truth in all men who are not compelled to suppress their souls and speak other men's thoughts. The finger even of the idiot may point to the great highway."

    -Albert Pike,

    "Morals and Dogma."

  • "In a free country, human speech must needs be free; and the State must listen to the maunderings of folly, and the screechings of its geese, and the brayings of its asses, as well as to the golden oracles of its wise and great men. Even the despotic old kings allowed their wise fools to say what they liked. The

    true alchelllist will extract the lessons of wisdom from the babblings of folly."

    -Albert Pike.

    Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

  • Russell's intent in "preemptive nuclear war" was to use the United States and the United Kingdom, as the world's -then-only-Nuclear-Armed-Super­power to persuade the United States to drop an Atomic weapon on the Soviet Union, to force the Soviet Union to submit to World Government. Nuclear Terror.

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  • who is this "impish" minded character?

  • Modifying your thoughts is a wise thing to do, it's not impish.

  • My thoughts exactly.

    As soon as we stop having the ability to modify our thoughts when faced with new information, we slip right into dogma...

  • This is not "one" of the solution but pure dictatorship. This was the exact reason for World War I and II.

  • "Education should aim at destroying free will,so that after kids have left school they shall be incapable throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking an acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished,

    Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible."

    Bertrand Russell 1953

  • @beingPOISONED

    You sure love to quote this distortion of Russell's views in every single Russell video don't you? Once again, I think it should be noted that this quote is Russell explaining Johann Gottlieb Fichte's view on education in The Impact of Science on Society.

    This quote should not be taken out of context.

    Asshole.

  • @brightsuperstition

    Thank you bright. I've seen this misquoted several times as well. For that matter, they may as well quote his entire book "Power" where he lays out the mechanism of authoritarian rule, (although clearly in an analytical and cautionary tone), with examples from history.

    Conspiracy theorists piss me off because as they tell lies and blatant spin they sit on their perch and proclaim how knowledgeable they are.

  • beingPOISONED,

    You are an idiot of you think that people can't use google to verify such atrocious quote mining attempts. Such intellectual dishonesty is reprehensible...

  • @beingPOISONED well done.. well said

  • I have great respect for Russell and his work, but logical thinking and pragmatic does not mean everything should be thought logically. Life of people is more valuable and more imp is emotions. No philosphy no matter how logical/illogical can be allowed to justify killing of any sort. Peace can never be brought by war!!!!

  • @shailkamble sure it can. U ever been driving with ur friends lookin for a restaraunt and one person wants to eat chinese, another italian ect. ? Then everyone starts yelling and acting stupid "I WANT CHINESE!!!" and so on. Well, imagine if u pulled out a gun right then. lol I'm not sayin its the best solution but, it IS a solution

  • exact thinking, more liek you smoked too much and your mouth sagged so you have to think that it was worth it.

  • totally out of context. If a lunatic wants to kill you and you try to persuade him to not do so, you have to defense yourself.

  • Pobrecito mi viejito hom'e como le caen encima

  • No one as of yet, has been able to provide the speech IN CONTEXT. If USSR aggression continued, it would have be a reasonable thing to say that we must have a war. Stalin was responsible for the death of millions of innocents. Peace can only come if both sides participate. But WHERE does he say we should "drop the bomb first." Anyone? I don't see the problem with his thinking.

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  • Time may yet prove Russell right, if nuclear war ends up occurring and killing everyone, we would be wishing that we'd done everything to stop other countries from developing it.

  • It is foolish to believe that public figures should not be allowed to change their mind's. Get off his back.

  • It is completely consistent to want to avoid total nuclear destruction of the entire world, and to use whatever means appropriate to the circumstances to prevent that.

  • how do you avoid nuclear destruction by destroying an entire country with nuclear bombs?

  • An "entire country"? Who advocated that?

    Dropping a bomb on Moscow is obviously less bad than the destruction of the entire world.

    Unilateral western disarment is obviously less bad than the destruction of the entire world.

  • Dropping a bomb on Moscow and unilateral western disarmament are obviously completely inconsistent to the point of being contradictory polar opposites. It's amazing how idealization destroys one's ability to reason.

  • great

  • "America is younger than Russia. I have always maintained, though in fear of exaggeration, that it is a primitive people camouflaged behind the latest inventions. -- Jose Ortega y Gasset

  • "Not that (Russell's) philosophy would have been sound: he is a born heretic or genial madman, like John Knox or Giordano Bruno: yet he is preternaturally intelligent, penetrating and radical; so that the more wrong he is the clearer he makes the wrongness of his position" -- George Santayana

  • Though there is something to be said for taking a consistent stance, modifying your views in light of further analysis is indeed an essential aspect of intellectual honesty.

  • While I hold with high regard much of Russell's philosophy, I too have at times seen him as somewhat insincere. I could be wrong, but that's what I get from him.

  • Where have you seen him as insincere?

  • He was saying that before the russians had the chance to get the a-bomb and use it, that the u.s. ought to us it on them to avoid world calamity of all out nuclear war, before they could use it we ought to if the threat was possible that Stalin could use the bomb (dont forget how evil Stalin was!) also this was the a bomb not the h-bomb, maybe he had in mind using it on an invadeing army as opposed to on inncent civillians...lets hope we can have peace.

  • Try logic, comrades.

    True + False = False, end of story.

    Liberals love banning words, the basis of communication. Perhaps we should stop speaking altogether and return to the animal kingdom. Electricity is evil!

  • What is it about the Brits? So intelligent and often so stupid, simultaneously. That's a unique and impossible achievement.

  • "Spanish unintelligent, English and Romans not very intelligent, Greeks and French intelligent." -- Jose Ortega y Gasset

  • No wonder, Gasset was not a real thinker just a person with glib opinions.

  • Appears to me that you made a "glib" commentary. His last name is not Gasset, his father last name is Ortega. Spanish speaking people respect their mother's last name and her last name "Gasset", is added to the full name; in his case Ortega y Gasset decided to put the "Y" which means "and" between his father and mother last names, and that is perfectly acceptable in the "Castellano" Language.

  • No, I did not make a glib comment. I never wrote that his last name is "Gasset", I simply refered to him as "Gasset". Nothing wrong with that. I am a spanish speaker myself so I am well aware of using both parents last names. I sometime write my name like that when its necessary.

  • Davros in Doctor Who is based on Bertrand Russell- Fact!

  • and so is Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss

  • hahaha

  • God, they're so posh.

  • And this from the same man who wanted to bathe the world in a nuclear holocaust.

  • it seems that the goal russell was thinking of is ultimately preventing a disaster... solved both ways(obviously the newer thought being the better way

  • Thanks for this, Laur - ages since I saw it. That such a lucid thinker as Russell should have provided no real answer to the eternal problem of how to ensure peaceful coexistence & avoid wars shows just how elusive the question is. We seem to have made no progress here since ancient times. Muggeridge was a real character in his own right, a beautiful speaker & always entertaining. He ran a TV series "The Question Why" around the same time & it was brilliant.

  • "He is prepared at any moment to modify [his thinking]"!!! Changing your mind is unamerican; those wily Brits!!!

  • i really admire a guy who is so willing to examine and re-examine his own beliefs.

  • I don't see any problems with Russell's views here; he was simply trying to prevent nuclear war. Who's the guy that calls him "impish" in the video? And what's his problem with people changing their minds?

  • sure he was exagerated and wrong about this, but he just wanted to avoid greater evil, he say it cause he didnt trust soviets (and was right about not trusting them) he is still a good hearted person.

  • I've been censored by laurenticwave.

  • Rubbish, I haven't censored a word from anyone. Try again!

  • Well, my reply from 2 weeks ago has disappeared! Either you or some demon has removed it!

  • The fact that I am not censoring your accusations of censorship surely points to my innocence? Why not add your reply again?

  • IntelligentHoodlum, I have had this experience many times, you need not assume that you are being censored. I have noticed comments of my own disappear for no obvious reason, and often reappear only to vanish once again. It is apparently a technical issue.

  • Wait, is this video getting on his case because he changed his mind? Since when is it a bad thing to change one's mind? I think it's much more noble to admit you are wrong and change your mind than to maintain beliefs for consistency's sake alone.

  • Quite agree... but Russell doesn't admit that he was wrong.

  • but surely the context of time can make things "appear" to be wrong - yet at the time of saying something is "right" ?

    Who's to know what would have happened if things had gone the way he'd thought they should? - would there not have been a cold war? would there not have been a proliferation of nuclear weapons? - so saying "I was wrong" is a moot point, no?

  • The man in the armchair is an obtuse jackass. If Russel were alive and present to defend himself, he'd make a fool of this insect in very short order.

  • To quote Pappyroo from 2 months ago, "Muggeridge's books document the death of Western Civilization with superior wit and insight. ... He was a far superior thinker than Russell." I add this merely to stir the pot of argument, and certainly don't agree with Pappyroo's 2nd sentence, but it's equally ridiculous/ignorant to dismiss Muggeridge as "an obtuse jackass". Why do so many comments have to be thus polarized?

  • I stand by my dismissal of Muggeridge quite unflinchingly, and I am glad that you do not agree with the second sentence you quote, as it is quite a howler; though I am puzzled as to why you would think a quote from this nobody would lend authority to your assertion. Muggeridge's pseudosophisticated drollery is indeed laughably obtuse. Of course Russel is willing to adapt his views to changing circumstances- what is the implied alternative!?

  • Living, thinking and speaking acc to principles. Especially when these can save millions of lives!

    Quite simple.

  • I find it hard to take Muggeridge seriously as a intellectual thinker when he found more and more salvation through jesus as he got older.People seem to forget that we dropped nuclear bombs on Japan because of the justification of saving a million US lives.Because of the overdue presence of communism we are now seeing the after affect of the Cold War. Perhaps dropping another A bomb on Moscow COULD have benefited the future.Of course anyone would modify their thinking how else would we progress?

  • Well, once you are starting this : it might however (because of the overdue presence of colonialism and capitalism, of which we are now STILL seeing the effect) have been a benefit for mankind, if there had been a 'dropping' of the bomb on London or Washington !

    Note. There exist christian pacifists, they do. Sometimes I prefer their principles OR realism to those of 'logician' pacifists...

  • What the hell is so bad about communism that justifies dropping a fuckin bomb on them. That is no reason. So we should be a nuclear power and noone else? seems like bullying more than thinking. Fuck You. you better hope I never see your stupid face.

  • He died thirty-eight years ago! no chance of running into him on the street, tough guy. Let's see you live till 97. If we had a nuke war with USSR in 1960's, as we could have, he would have been regarded as a wise prophet now!

  • Perhaps if you listen, that might help you reach an informed decision? - I think you'll find that he had umbrage with the LEADERS, not necessarily the idea of "communism" - you'll mostly read that Russell has "problems" with people who stifle freethinking...so don't join the mass of "non thinkers" by basing your reactions on biased American ideas of him (?)

  • LoL, sad very sad.

  • Everybody occasionaly goes off and speaks too soon without thinking.but he modified it. exactly as he should have.

  • "These weapons weren't nearly as bad as the one we have now. It was the A-bomb, now we've got the H-bomb."

    Reminds me of Mao when speaking of US nuclear power, about that time too : "US imperialism is a paper tiger."

  • Ah, yes, Bertrand Russel, the man who wanted to engulf the world in a nuclear holocaust. Pacifist?

  • Where did Russell say that he wanted to "engulf the world in a nuclear holocaust?"