Repeated Folly

Men Rising Above Their God-Ordained Station

Myanmar, or Burma, has drawn the attention of the world's media in recent days with a largely free election and a staggering majority for Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy.  This has occurred under military rule--a rule which has persisted in Myanmar for over fifty years.  It remains to be seen where it will all lead.  We hope it leads to a much greater good for that country.

Burma was a former British colony; its economy was largely shattered as a result of the Japanese invasion in 1943 and the resulting land war throughout the country.  Eventually Japan was defeated and driven out by the Allies.

The leader of the Burmese army at the time, Ne Win seized power from the post-war elected civilian government, and the resulting military regime was welcomed by the populace.  Emma Larkin [Finding George Orwell in Burma (New York: The Penguin Group, 2011)] describes what developed from there:

Many older people I spoke with remembered a sense of relief as the army brought the country back under control.  But, as with the pigs in Animal Farm, it gradually became clear that Ne Win was no benevolent leader.  He launched what he called 'The Burmese Way to Socialism', a heady and disastrous mix of Marxism and Buddhism.  All other political parties were outlawed, and Ne Win's opponents were imprisoned.  All private businesses were declared state property.  Many foreigners living in Burma, mostly Indian and Chinese merchants, were stripped of their assets and fled or were forced to leave as the country sealed itself off from the outside world.  Military men with no business experience were put in charge of Burma's industry and agriculture.  Before long they had depleted the country's foreign reserves and were unable to import necessities--spare parts for machinery, or even toothbrushes.  The shelves in the shops were soon empty, and people were reduced to queuing for rations of cooking oil and rice.  Ne Win and his military had transformed Burma--a country abundant in natural resources--into a wasteland.  After twenty-five years of Ne Win's rule, a year before the 1988 uprising, the United Nations declared Burma one of the world's least developed countries, along with ten other countries mostly located in sub-Saharan Africa.  [Ibid., p. 109f]

This pattern--socialist dictatorship leading to rapid economic ruination and socio-economic degradation of citizens--has been seen repeatedly throughout the past one hundred years.   The pattern was seen, for example, in the post-WWII "republics" of Eastern Europe, with nations like Albania and Romania being ground down to impoverishment--rapidly so.  It is not a matter of race, nor culture.  The pattern has repeated itself from Bhutan through to the Soviet Union, and all races and cultures in between.

But there remains an ethic or philosophical principle common to all these examples:  all have a tyrannical, absolutist civil government whose authority is self-asserted to be above God and above any law but its own.  When men, who eat, urinate, and defecate like every other human set themselves up as gods and not men, cruelty, oppression, death, poverty and devastation follow in their wake.  And these consequences follow rapidly--within a generation.