The Yeats is especially eerie in the wee hours of the morning. Most prescient, unfortunately.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4515W and Dostoevsky
George W. Bush is a man possessed
by Justin Raimondo
Midway through his inaugural address, when the president proclaimed "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," I wondered if Bush or his speechwriters knew or cared how alien this ultra-revolutionary rhetoric would seem to conservatives of the old school – and soon had my answer:
"Because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts we have lit a fire as well, a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power; it burns those who fight its progress. And one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world."
(snip)
In Dostoevsky's novel, that fire in the minds of men is not a yearning for liberty, but a nihilistic will to power that can only end in destruction. Put in George W. Bush's mouth, those words are not a paean to freedom, but a manifesto of pure destructionism. Like Governor Lembke, President Bush has no dearth of hardline advisers who counsel him in ways calculated to provoke a violent reaction: unlike Lembke, however, there is little chance George W. Bush will learn his lesson, even if it comes too late.
(snip)
The Marxist and anarchist revolutionaries of Dostoevsky's day thought they saw history's "visible direction," although they did not ascribe to it an author. The Bushian innovation is to give his brand of revolutionism a theological theme, substituting God for History – but these are mere details. The central idea is the same: a worldwide revolutionary upheaval is needed to put the world right, and some men are anointed by history as redeemers.
(snip -- much more)