The Smartest People

I ran across this quote today:

"Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth."- Will Rogers

It reminded me of the cultural attitudes and level of learning in Russia. As we all know, Russia had a ton of stuff prohibited durring the Soviet years. Most literature was "underground" - what they call Samizdadt. Authors who could not support the Soviet message printed things themselves, and they were distributed by hand, photocopied, hand copied, and distributed by the millions all throughout their country. The "best selling authors" of all the soviet years were the ones that distributed their work illegally and underground. Of course, they didn't make any money for their efforts, but they did make a name for themselves, and that carried them through once everything became legal.

It is also interesting to note the spiritual blossiming in Russia after the collapse of communism. Now that Orthodox Christianity is no longer under the iron thumb of the state, it is flourishing.

There is nothing like freedom to supress us!

Regards,
Basil