Tyranny, Tyrants and Tyrannical Systems (6)
By "trampling upon the helpless abroad" with unchecked surveillance, Americans have learned, "by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home." - Mark Twain
"There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." - Charles De Montesquieu
We're not a democracy. It's a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we're a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy." : Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General
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"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy" : John Pierpont Morgan
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“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.” Voltaire
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The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny: Michael Parenti
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"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes." Thomas Paine
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"Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." Thomas Jefferson to I. Tiffany, 1819
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"Peoples of Egypt, you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion. Do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights!" Napoleon Bonaparte, 1798
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The Second Treatise of Civil Government 1690
"That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think that robbers and pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which unlawful force extorts from them.
Should a robber break into my house, and, with a dagger at my throat, make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title by his sword has an unjust conqueror who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown or some petty villain.
The title of the offender and the number of his followers make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession which should punish offenders." John Locke - 1632-1704
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"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." -- John Bradshaw (1602-1659)
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"Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible." -- Robert LeFevre, in his essay, Aggression is Wrong
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"O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!" -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."--Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819
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"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth." Adolf Hitler
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“Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.” Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
“The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that `if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' it is a very serious consideration…that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event." - Samuel Adams, speech in Boston, 1771
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"Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?" -- Ayn Rand- (1905-1982) Author
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The state has, in order to control us, introduced division into our thinking, so that we come to distrust others and look to the state for protection! But the roots of our individualism remind us that what we are is inseparable from the source from which all others derive; that coercive practices that threaten our neighbor also threaten us.: -Butler Shaffer
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“People crushed by law have no hope but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.." Edmund Burke
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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C. S. Lewis
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"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like the evil spirits at the dawn of day." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Pierre S. du Pont de Nemours
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"When the government fears the People, that is Liberty. When the People fear the Government, that is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson
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"The limitation of tyrants is the endurance of those they oppose." - Frederick Douglass
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"when an administration embarks on a war justified by little or no intelligence, speaking the truth can be regarded as treachery. The country could use more of that kind of "treachery." Ray McGovern
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A nation which enslaves another forges its own chains. - Karl Marx
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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves": William Pitt, Earl of Chatham
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"Where might is master, justice is servant" Proverb
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Tyrants and dictators first sells themselves as saviors. Gary Amirault
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"The people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals." Aldous Huxley
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Countries that invest heavily in “intelligence agencies” are ruled by murderers, liars and thieves who come but to kill, steal and destroy whose language is double-speak. Emet Tzedakah
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"This focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security."-- Michael Lerner, journalist
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". . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them. " Gerry Spence, From Freedom to Slavery.
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"All the cops are just workers for the one percent, and they don't even realize they're being exploited." - Ray Lewis - Retired Philadelphia Police Captain At Occupy Wall Street Protest
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"Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system." - Dorothy Day
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"If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine." - Ernesto Che Guevara
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"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." - Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
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"Denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good." - Philip Gourevitch
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"It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.
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"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."-
Steve Biko