Athena
08-09-2006, 05:57 PM
I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world.Â*Â*The first thing that strikes the obsevation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives.Â*Â*Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest,-his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not; he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.
Above the race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon inself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate.Â*Â*That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild.Â*Â*It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authroity, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.Â*Â*For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living.Â*Â*
Thus, it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs man of all the uses of himself.Â*Â*The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community.Â*Â*It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.Â*Â*The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrianted from acting; such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyranize, but it conpresses, enervates, extingishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better then a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the goverment is the shepherd.Â*Â*
Tocqueville "Demcracy in America"Â*Â*1835
I hate conspiracy theories, because they are like religion, preoccupying the mind with silly nonsense and therefore preventing the correct identification of why things are as they are.Â*Â*
No government power has been more repressive than the people posting to these forums.Â*Â*Government alone does not have that much power, but social agreements do.Â*Â*Adopting Prussian military bureaucracy and applying it to citizens, and education for technology producing 'products for a technological society with unknown values', and we manifest the horror of which Tocqueville speaks, with every citizen enforcing the power of this repressive and restrictive power over men, while their national wealth is spent on the military domination of the world.Â*Â*
Above the race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon inself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate.Â*Â*That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild.Â*Â*It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authroity, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.Â*Â*For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living.Â*Â*
Thus, it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs man of all the uses of himself.Â*Â*The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community.Â*Â*It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.Â*Â*The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrianted from acting; such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyranize, but it conpresses, enervates, extingishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better then a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the goverment is the shepherd.Â*Â*
Tocqueville "Demcracy in America"Â*Â*1835
I hate conspiracy theories, because they are like religion, preoccupying the mind with silly nonsense and therefore preventing the correct identification of why things are as they are.Â*Â*
No government power has been more repressive than the people posting to these forums.Â*Â*Government alone does not have that much power, but social agreements do.Â*Â*Adopting Prussian military bureaucracy and applying it to citizens, and education for technology producing 'products for a technological society with unknown values', and we manifest the horror of which Tocqueville speaks, with every citizen enforcing the power of this repressive and restrictive power over men, while their national wealth is spent on the military domination of the world.Â*Â*