Today: Schopenhauer

Everywhere and in all ages, there has been great dissatisfaction with governments, laws, and public instituions; mainly, however, because people are always ready to blame these for the misery that inheres in human existence and is the curse, so to say, that descended on Adam and his whole race. NEver has there been a more lying and impudent exploitation of this false projection, however, than that of the demagogues of this "modern" day. These enemies of Christianity are optimists: the world, for them, is an end in itself and in terms of its own crude conditions available for conversion into a dwelling of perfect bliss. The howling, colossal evils of our century they ascribe entirely to the regimes, blame altogether and only on these; and without these, there would be heaven on earth, ie all of us, set free of toil and pain, would be able, to 'our hearts'content, to feed and swill, propagate and burst: for that is the paraphrase of this "end in itself" and the goal of the "endless progress of mankind," that they tirelessly preach with their overblwon cliches.