In "The Ayn Rand Lexicon, Objectivism from A to Z"(http://www.amazon.com/Ayn-Rand-Lexicon-Objectivism-Library/dp/0452010519/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308711714&sr=8-1, I found this (pages 248 - 249);
It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable: men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men's spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; it has to deal not in death, but in sudden death; a state of chronic uncertainty is what men are psychologically unable to bear.
Don't you guys feel that the "tacking in the wind", all the changes in doctrine, and all the extremes elders will go to, and the gossip, are just a way to keep you all in fear of what might happen, just as in the paragraph? My hunch is, perhaps the changes in doctrine are not "tacking in the wind" at all, but a deliberate way to make people not know what to expect, and thus fear the unexpected.
What do you guys think?