Saturday, 1 January 2011

Liberty Is Dying In Our Pseudo-Democracy

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100069795/the-most-important-book-of-2010/



I’m grateful to Snowdon not just for demonstrating through careful analysis how embarrassingly flawed The Spirit Level is, but also for introducing me to two fascinating quotations from the 19th century French philosopher Alexis De Tocqueville, who saw it all coming as long ago as the 1840s. A distorted definition of equality, De Tocqueville argued, would one day lead to despotism. Liberties would not be lost overnight but would fade away incrementally:

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

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 a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

3 comments:

Andraste said...

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

- Thomas Jefferson

extant said...

This video was produced after I made my firm statement, that it is only those very few with real Passion, who can and will be able to invigorate Passion in those around them that will take us forward-

It is only intense PASSION he says that will allow us to progress and finally win.

YOU MUST ALL WATCH ALL OF THIS-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JAocgOUvnQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV6pjHmXSS4&feature=related

extant said...

The Energy The Passion ,the rage, the insanity ; the latter obviously my Q :O)

WATCH THIS. THE WILL TO LIVE-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDOyy2r2Kl0