Unjust Government Quotes

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?

When a government becomes unjust, honor is often found among the lawless.

Despots prefer the friendship of the dog, who, unjustly mistreated and debased, still loves and serves the man who wronged him.

An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust.

Plato is fully convinced that philosophers cannot quietly retire from politics because they distain its rampant corruption. Philosophers will inevitably be victimized by unjust governments and perhaps martyred.

Government decisions are as a rule unjust, because pure justice is found only in the legal caliphate that lasted only a short while.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

The abiding western dominology can with religion sanction identify anything dark, profound, or fluid with a revolting chaos, an evil to be mastered, a nothing to be ignored. 'God had made us master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples.' From the vantage point of the colonizing episteme, the evil is always disorder rather than unjust order; anarchy rather than control, darkness rather than pallor. To plead otherwise is to write 'carte blanche for chaos.' Yet those who wear the mark of chaos, the skins of darkness, the genders of unspeakable openings -- those Others of Order keep finding voice. But they continue to be muted by the bellowing of the dominant discourse.

Listen, then," says the angry Sophist (Thrasymachus), "I proclaim that might is right, and justice is the interest of the stronger. The different forms of government make laws, democratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, with a view to their respective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve their interests, they deliver to their subjects as "justice," and punish as "unjust" anyone who transgresses them.

Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Peaceful civil disobedience to unjust laws, which I support with every fiber of my being, can sometimes be necessary at any level of government. It falls upon the people, in the last resort, to stand against injustice no matter where it occurs.

As citizens, we knew we had ceded some of our individual rights to society in order to live together as a community. But we did not believe this social contract included support for an immoral system. Since the people invested government with its authority, we understood that we had to obey the law. But when law became suppressive and tyrannical, when human law violated divine principles, we felt it was not only our right, but our duty to disobey. As Henry Thoreau strongly believed, to comply with an unjust system is to accept abuse. It is not the role of the citizen to follow the government down a path that violates his or her own conscience.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

...I realized that my father, of all these men, was the most obstinate, helplessly bonded to his better instincts and their excessive demands. I only then understood that he had quit his job not merely because he was fearful of what awaited us down the line should we agree like the others to be relocated, but because, for better or worse, when he was bullied by superior forces that he deemed corrupt it was his nature not to yield--in this instance, to resist either running away to Canada, as my mother urged our doing, or bowing to a government directive that was patently unjust. There were two types of strong men: those like Uncle Monty And Abe Steinheim, remorseless about their making money, and those like my father, ruthlessly obedient to their idea of fair play.

Tyrannical governance is unjust, since it is ordered to the private good of the ruler, not to the common good . . . And so disturbance of such governance does not have the character of rebellion . . . Rather, tyrants, who by seeking greater domination incite discontent and rebellion in the people subject to the them, are the rebels.

He had long observed with disapprobation and contempt the superstition which governed Madrid's inhabitants. His good sense had pointed out to him the artifices of the monks, and the gross absurdity of their miracles, wonders, and suppositious relics. He blushed to see his countrymen, the dupes of deceptions, so ridiculous, and only wished for an opportunity to free them from their monkish fetters. That opportunity, so long desired in vain, was at length presented to him. He resolved not to let it slip, but to set before the people, in glaring colours, how enormous were the abuses but too frequently practised in monasteries, and how unjustly public esteem was bestowed indiscriminately upon all who wore a religious habit. He longed for the moment destined to unmask the hypocrites, and convince his countrymen, that a sanctified exterior does not always hide a virtuous heart.

When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable, cruel, revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of Canaan, surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty, this God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his power:—'Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander until your carcasses be wasted.' This curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert, and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from God. When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents, visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each, other, swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt, and remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters. Compared with Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny of Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God. While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword, and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend. It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch.

Maybe money sits at the heart of every controversy about monarchy. Britain has long had trouble making up its mind. Many support the Crown, but many also feel anxious about the cost. That anxiety is increased by the fact that the cost is unknowable. Depends on who’s crunching the numbers. Does the Crown cost taxpayers? Yes. Does it also pay a fortune into government coffers? Also yes. Does the Crown generate tourism income that benefits all? Of course. Does it also rest upon lands obtained and secured when the system was unjust and wealth was generated by exploited workers and thuggery, annexation and enslaved people? Can anyone deny it? According to the last study I saw, the monarchy costs the average taxpayer the price of a pint each year. In light of its many good works that seems a pretty sound investment. But no one wants to hear a prince argue for the existence of a monarchy, any more than they want to hear a prince argue against it. I leave cost-benefit analyses to others. My emotions are complicated on this subject, naturally, but my bottom-line position isn’t. I’ll forever support my Queen, my Commander in Chief, my Granny. Even after she’s gone. My problem has never been with the monarchy, nor the concept of monarchy. It’s been with the press and the sick relationship that’s evolved between it and the Palace. I love my Mother Country, and I love my family, and I always will. I just wish, at the second-darkest moment of my life, they’d both been there for me. And I believe they’ll look back one day and wish they had too.

I don’t disagree with all of what you do,” he said, “but I think it’s entirely unjust that you receive checks from the government for your homosexuality.” I stared at him with my mouth full of fries. “Oh, it’s not that bad,” I said, “I only get half as much because I’m bisexual.

It is worth distilling this message in order to fully appreciate the irony. The story was that after decades of New Deal–era federal subsidies had created a white middle class, reinforced a segregated black underclass, and created cyclic poverty that made it difficult for many to find shelter and food without government aid, it was black people who were being unjustly enriched by the overly generous hand of the state.

It is right that the influence of the Government should be known in every humble home as the guardian of frugal comfort and content, and a defense against unjust exactions, and the unearned tribute persistently coveted by the selfish and designing. It is right that efficiency and honesty in public service should not be sacrificed to partisan greed; and it is right that the suffrage of our people should be pure and free.

It is a special blessing to belong among those who can and may devote their best energies to the contemplation and exploration of objective and timeless things. How happy and grateful I am for having been granted this blessing, which bestows upon one a large measure of independence from one's personal fate and from the attitude of one's contemporaries. Yet this independence must not inure us to the awareness of the duties that constantly bind us to the past, present and future of humankind at large. Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here, involuntarily and uninvited, for a short stay, without knowing the why and the wherefore. In our daily lives we feel only that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own. I am often troubled by the thought that my life is based to such a large extent on the work of my fellow human beings, and I am aware of my great indebtedness to them. I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper. I have never coveted affluence and luxury and even despise them a good deal. My passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as has my aversion to any obligation and dependence I did not regard as absolutely necessary. [Part 2] I have a high regard for the individual and an insuperable distaste for violence and fanaticism. All these motives have made me a passionate pacifist and antimilitarist. I am against any chauvinism, even in the guise of mere patriotism. Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as does any exaggerated personality cult. I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I know well the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual have always seemed to me the important communal aims of the state. Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice keeps me from feeling isolated. The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is.

Hence, when a government ceases to protect the citizenry of their God-given rights, but instead constructs laws attacking and depriving men of those rights, that government has perverted its power and has decided to play the tyrant. Such a government is to be resisted and not obeyed, regarding those areas of unjust laws.

Already the people murmur that I am your enemy because they say that in verse I give the world your me. They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos. Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voice because you are the dressing and the essence is me; and the most profound abyss is spread between us. You are the cold doll of social lies, and me, the virile starburst of the human truth. You, honey of courtesan hypocrisies; not me; in all my poems I undress my heart. You are like your world, selfish; not me who gambles everything betting on what I am. You are only the ponderous lady very lady; not me; I am life, strength, woman. You belong to your husband, your master; not me; I belong to nobody, or all, because to all, to all I give myself in my clean feeling and in my thought. You curl your hair and paint yourself; not me; the wind curls my hair, the sun paints me. You are a housewife, resigned, submissive, tied to the prejudices of men; not me; unbridled, I am a runaway Rocinante snorting horizons of God's justice. You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you; your husband, your parents, your family, the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall, the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne, heaven and hell, and the social, "what will they say." Not in me, in me only my heart governs, only my thought; who governs in me is me. You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people. You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone, while me, my nothing I owe to nobody. You nailed to the static ancestral dividend, and me, a one in the numerical social divider, we are the duel to death who fatally approaches. When the multitudes run rioting leaving behind ashes of burned injustices, and with the torch of the seven virtues, the multitudes run after the seven sins, against you and against everything unjust and inhuman, I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand.

The only thing that "law" and "government" are needed for is to attempt to legitimize immoral force. And that is exactly what "government" adds, and the only thing it adds, to society: more inherently unjust violence. No one who understands this simple truth would ever claim that "government" is essential to human civilization.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison

Is not that government both unjust and ungrateful, that is so prodigal of its favours to those that are called gentlemen, or goldsmiths, or such others who are idle, or live either by flattery or by contriving the arts of vain pleasure, and, on the other hand, takes no care of those of a meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without whom it could not subsist?

Thus did I receive, through the singing of these various hymns and the moral education that accompanied them, not only a religious, but a political schooling of sorts. For though the intertwining of morality and politics does not necessarily make for a clear understanding of the cynicism that governs world affairs., it does engender impatience with and a rejection of this cynicism, and a real belief in a more perfect, less unjust world. And though I regret not having been taught more about the real world, I have never regretted being taught this kind of morality first.

The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral or aesthetic theory; it is only a political theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life. Political theory deals with what is proper or improper for government to do, and government is distinguished from every other group in society as being the institution of organized violence. Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free to do as he sees fit, except invade the person or property of another. What a person does with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism. It should not be surprising, therefore, that there are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and devotees of alternative lifestyles, and that there are also libertarians who are firm adherents of "bourgeois" conventional or religious morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory. Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that "liberty is the highest political end" — not necessarily the highest end on everyone's personal scale of values.

Thus all consent to that maxim of Crassus, that a prince cannot have treasure enough, since he must maintain his armies out of it; that a king, even though he would, can do nothing unjustly; that all property is in him, not excepting the very persons of his subjects; and that no man has any other property but that which the king, out of his goodness, thinks fit to leave him.  And they think it is the prince’s interest that there be as little of this left as may be, as if it were his advantage that his people should have neither riches nor liberty, since these things make them less easy and willing to submit to a cruel and unjust government.  Whereas necessity and poverty blunts them, makes them patient, beats them down, and breaks that height of spirit that might otherwise dispose them to rebel. 

From the moment we're born, women are brainwashed to prioritize motherhood and marriage over intellect and personal fulfillment. We're handed baby dolls and aprons and told our greatest contributions are accomplished in the nursery and the kitchen. But that lie is as damaging as it is degrading, because a kingdom is only as strong as its weakest citizen! And a society with unjust limitations is less likely to prevail than a country of equal opportunity When a nation segregates any percentage of its population, it only segregates a percentage of its potential! So for the sake of the kingdom, it is time for women to stand together and demand a new government that values every citizen's thoughts, ideas, and morals. Then and only then will our country journey into realms of prosperity it has never seen before.

Two literary figures bridge the gap between the mediaeval age and the Renaissance. They are Sir Thomas Malory, the author of Le Morte D'Arthur, and the first 'poet-laureate', John Skelton. In their entirely separate ways, they made distinctive contributions to the history of literature and to the growth of English as a literary language. ........ Le Morte D'Arthur is, in a way, the climax of a tradition of writing, bringing together myth and history, with an emphasis on chivalry as a kind of moral code of honour. The supernatural and fantastic aspects of the story, as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, are played down, and the more political aspects, of firm government and virtue, emphasised. It was a book for the times. The Wars of the Roses ended in the same year as Le Morte D'Arthur was published. Its values were to influence a wide readership for many years to come. There is sadness, rather than heroism, in Arthur's final battle.. ...... John Skelton is one of the unjustly neglected figures of literature. His reputation suffered at the hands of one of the earliest critics of poetry, George Puttenham, and he is not easily categorised in terms of historical period, since he falls between clearly identified periods like 'mediaeval' and 'Renaissance'. He does not fit in easily either because of the kinds of poetry he wrote. But he is one of the great experimenters, and one of the funniest poets in English.

What Hurts the People There are five things that hurt the people: There are local officials who use public office for personal benefit, taking improper advantage of their authority, holding weapons in one hand and people’s livelihood in the other, corrupting their offices, and bleeding the people. There are cases where serious offenses are given light penalties; there is inequality before the law, and the innocent are subjected to punishment, even execution. Sometimes serious crimes are pardoned, the strong are supported, and the weak are oppressed. Harsh penalties are applied, unjustly torturing people to get at facts. Sometimes there are officials who condone crime and vice, punishing those who protest against this, cutting off the avenues of appeal and hiding the truth, plundering and ruining lives, unjust and arbitrary. Sometimes there are senior officials who repeatedly change department heads so as to monopolize the government administration, favoring their friends and relatives while treating those they dislike with unjust harshness, oppressive in their actions, prejudiced and unruly. They also use taxation to reap profit, enriching themselves and their families by exactions and fraud. Sometimes local officials extensively tailor awards and fines, welfare projects, and general expenditures, arbitrarily determining prices and measures, with the result that people lose their jobs. These five things are harmful to the people, and anyone who does any of these should be dismissed from office.

Veterans being sent into unjust wars for corporate profit is a perversion of trust, at best. I found the emotional manipulation of both sides, the propaganda at play so incredibly revolting that I couldn't stand to idly wave a flag or flaunt yellow ribbons without asking serious questions regarding motive.

The economists exploded the old tenets: that it is unfair and unjust to outdo a competitor by producing better and cheaper goods; that it is iniquitous to deviate from the traditional methods of production; that machines are an evil because they bring about unemployment; that it is one of the tasks of civil government to prevent efficient businessmen from getting rich and to protect the less efficient against the competition of the more efficient; that to restrict the freedom of entrepreneurs by government compulsion or by coercion on the part of other social powers is an appropriate means to promote a nation's well-being.

It is not enough to overthrow governments, masters, tyrants: one must overthrow his own preconceived ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust. We must abandon the hard-fought trenches, we have dug ourselves into and come out into the open, surrender our arms, our possessions, our rights as individuals, classes, nations, peoples. A billion men seeking peace cannot be enslaved. We have enslaved ourselves, by our own petty, circumscribed view of life. It is glorious to offer one's life for a cause, but dead men accomplish nothing. Life demands that we offer something more—spirit, soul, intelligence, good-will. Nature is ever ready to repair the gaps caused by death, but nature cannot supply the intelligence, the will, the imagination to conquer the forces of death. Nature restores and repairs, that is all. It is man's task to eradicate the homicidal instinct which is infinite in its ramifications and manifestations. It is useless to call upon God, as it is futile to meet force with force.

We are showing them that government does not rest upon force at all; it rests upon consent. As long as women consent to be unjustly governed, they can be, but if directly women say : 'We withhold our consent, we will not be governed any longer so long as the government is unjust.' Not by the forces of civil war can you govern the very weakest woman.

The Founding Fathers believed that the best way to avoid oppressive and unjust rule was by making it difficult for government to act at all. They also believed that the real threat of tyranny lies with the president, not the Congress. Thus, they provided for a strong Congress with many enumerated powers, and a relatively weak president with few specific powers. Over

However appealing it may be in theory, the benevolent design of Nature rarely works out in practice, requiring intellectual acrobatics on the part of those who invoke it. [Adam] Smith recognizes that a healthy economic circulatory system depends on some government interference. Complete freedom leads to monopolies, giving manufacturers outsize power over prices and politicians, which works to the detriment of the body politic. How to account for monopolies while maintaining an ideal of naturalness? Just call them unnatural. Monopolists, writes Smith, are guilty of selling their commodities "much above the natural price." To regulate them is to force them into accordance with nature—even though monopolies themselves naturally emerge in unregulated economies.

Nowhere did our Founders lay out a plan for our government to attempt to ensure equal outcomes for citizens at the expense of those who excelled in the American environment of freedom and liberty. It was not their intent to create a system that allowed government to punish one class in order to unjustly reward another class to “level the playing field“ while at the same time buying votes.

. . .the Thirty sent for me” says Socrates “. . .and ordered [me] to bring Leon the Salaminian to be put to death. . .I, however, showed again, by action, not in word only, that I did not care a whit for death. . .but that I did care with all my might not to do anything unjust or unholy… For that government, with all its power, did not frighten me into doing anything unjust…I simply went home.

I have learned that the Mahabharata is about the way we deceive ourselves, how we are false to others, how we oppress fellow human beings, and how deeply unjust we are in our day-to-day lives. But is this moral blindness an intractable human condition, or can we change it? Some of our misery is the result of the way the state also treats us, and can we redesign our institutions to have a more sympathetic government?

Though Churchill had asked for the vote of confidence, it galled him to have to listen to speech after speech carping on the alleged failings of his government. He was thick-skinned, but only to a point. Even Averell Harriman’s daughter Kathy recognized this, after spending a later weekend at Chequers. “He hates criticism,” she wrote. “It hurts him as it would a child being unjustly spanked by a mother.” On one occasion he told his great friend Violet Bonham Carter, “I feel very biteful & spiteful when people attack me.

Is not that government both unjust and ungrateful, that is so prodigal of it's favors to those called gentlemen, or goldsmiths, or such others who are idle, or live either by flattery or by contriving the arts of vain pleasure, and, on the other hand, takes no care of those of a meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without whom it could not subsist? But after the public has reaped all the advantage of their service, and they come to be oppressed with age, sickness, and want, all their labours and the good they have done is forgotten, and all the recompense given them is that they are left to die in great misery.

And the different forms of government make laws democratical, aristocratical, tyrannical, with a view to their several interests; and these laws, which are made by them for their own interests, are the justice which they deliver to their subjects, and him who transgresses them they punish as a breaker of the law, and unjust. And that is what I mean when I say that in all states there is the same principle of justice, which is the interest of the government; and as the government must be supposed to have power, the only reasonable conclusion is, that everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger.

The derivation of just power from the consent of the governed depends upon the integrity of the reasoning process through which that consent is given. If the reasoning process is corrupted by money and deception, then the consent of the governed is based on false premises, and any power thus derived is inherently counterfeit and unjust. If the consent of the governed is extorted through the manipulation of mass fears, or embezzled with claims of divine guidance, democracy is impoverished. If the suspension of reason causes a significant portion of the citizenry to lose confidence in the integrity of the process, democracy can be bankrupted.

So is he a radical?” non-Muslims often asked when I told them about the Sheikh. “Not at all,” I’d say, assuming we were all speaking in post-9/11 code. “Of course not.” And I’d meant it. He is not a radical. Or rather, not their kind of radical. His radicalism is of entirely another caliber. He’s an extremist quietist, calling on Muslims to turn away from politics and to leave behind the frameworks of thought popularised by Islamists in recent centuries. Akram’s call for an apolitical Islam unpicked the conditioning of a generation of Muslims, raised on the works of Abu l’Ala Maududi and Sayyid Qutb and their nineteenth-century forerunners. These ideologues aimed to make Islam relevant to the sociopolitical struggles facings Muslims coping with modernity. Their works helped inspire revolutions, coups, and constitutions. But while these thinkers equated faith with political action, the Sheikh believed that politics was puny. He was powered by a certainty that we are just passing through this earth and that mundane quests for land or power miss Islam’s point. Compared with the men fighting for worldly turf, Akram was far more uncompromising: turn away from quests for nation-states or parliamentary seats and toward God. “Allah doesn’t want people to complain to other people,” he said. “People must complain to Allah, not to anyone else.” All the time spent fulminating, organising, protesting? It could be saved for prayer. So unjust governments run the world? Let them. They don’t, anyway. Allah does, and besides, real believers have the next world to worry about.

Well, he said, have you never heard that forms of government differ; there are tyrannies, and there are democracies, and there are aristocracies? Yes, I know. And the government is the ruling power in each state? Certainly. And the different forms of government make laws democratical, aristocratical, tyrannical, with a view to their several interests; and these laws, which are made by them for their own interests, are the justice which they deliver to their subjects, and him who transgresses them they punish as a breaker of the law, and unjust.  And that is what I mean when I say that in all states there is the same principle of justice, which is the interest of the government; and as the government must be supposed to have power, the only reasonable conclusion is, that everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger.

They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party;—often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community;—and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils, and modified by mutual interests.—However combinations or associations of the above descriptions may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, and to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.—

Then Fidel Castro intervened, calling the situation a “great propaganda victory for Cuba.” It made headlines. Furious, Bobby cabled Castro, threatening to withdraw from the tournament unless the premier promised to stop using him as a political ploy. Bobby continued: I WOULD ONLY BE ABLE TO TAKE PART IN THE TOURNAMENT IN THE EVENT THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY SENT ME A TELEGRAM DECLARING THAT NEITHER YOU, NOR YOUR GOVERNMENT WILL ATTEMPT TO MAKE POLITICAL CAPITAL OUT OF MY PARTICIPATION IN THE TOURNEY, AND THAT IN THE FUTURE NO POLITICAL COMMENTARIES ON THIS SCORE WILL BE MADE. BOBBY FISCHER Castro cabled back, denying making the statement and questioning Bobby’s courage: OUR LAND NEEDS NO SUCH “PROPAGANDA VICTORIES.” IT IS YOUR PERSONAL AFFAIR WHETHER YOU WILL TAKE PART IN THE TOURNAMENT OR NOT. HENCE YOUR WORDS ARE UNJUST. IF YOU ARE FRIGHTENED AND REPENT YOUR PREVIOUS DECISION, THEN IT WOULD BE BETTER TO FIND ANOTHER EXCUSE OR TO HAVE THE COURAGE TO REMAIN HONEST. FIDEL CASTRO

It’s simple,” Jane insisted. “I know just how to do it. Instead of just locking up the women who are suspected of being ill, we should lock up all the women. That way, the ones who are well can never get sick.” At the foot of the table, Whitting scratched his head. “But…how would men use their services?” “What do men have to do with it?” Jane asked. “Um.” Lord James looked down. “I take your point, Bradenton. This is…perhaps not the best conversation to be having at the moment.” “After all,” Jane continued, “if men were capable of infecting women, our government in its infinite wisdom would never choose to lock up only the women. That would be pointless, since without any constraint on men, the spread of contagion would never stop. It would also be unjust to confine women for the sin of being infected by men.” She smiled triumphantly. “And since our very good Marquess of Bradenton supports the Act, that could never be the case. He would never sign on to such manifest injustice.

the community; injustice would only occur, on Plato’s definition, if there were men in the other classes who were wiser than some of the guardians. That is why Plato provides for promotion and degradation of citizens, although he thinks that the double advantage of birth and education will, in most cases, make the children of guardians superior to the children of others. If there were a more exact science of government, and more certainty of men following its precepts, there would be much to be said for Plato’s system. No one thinks it unjust to put the best men into a football team, although they acquire thereby a great superiority. If football were managed as democratically as the Athenian government, the students to play for their university would be chosen by lot. But in matters of government it is difficult to know who has the most skill, and very far from certain that a politician will use his skill in the public interest rather than in his own or in that of his class or party or creed.

Thomas Jefferson presciently warned against such immoral collective behavior: “We believe—or we act as if we believed—that although an individual father cannot alienate the labor of his son, the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labor of all their sons, of their posterity, in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our vices, our passions or our personal interests may lead us. But I trust that this proposition needs only to be looked at by an American to be seen in its true point of view, and that we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority.”23 A few years later, Jefferson expressed even more trepidation: “[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [the war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.—They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party;—often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community;—and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils, and modified by mutual interests.—However combinations or associations of the above descriptions may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, and to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.—

Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world. Justly understood it is sacred next to those which we appropiate in divine adoration; but in the mouths of some it means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote its good. It is not strange that the licentious should tell us a government of energy is inconsistent with liberty, for being inconsistent with their wishes and their vices, they would have us think it contrary to human happiness. . . . A government capable of controling the whole, and bringing its force to a point, is one of the prerequisites for national liberty. We combine in society, with an expectation to have our persons and properties defended against unreasonable exactions either at home or abroad. If the public are unable to protest against the unjust impositions of foreigners, in this case we do not enjoy our natural rights, and a weakness of government is the cause. If we mean to have our natural rights and properties protected, we must first create a power which is able to do it, and in our case there is no want of resources, but a civil constitution which may draw them out and point their force. . . . Some men are mightily afraid of giving power lest it should be improved for oppression; this is doubtless possible, but where is the probability. The same objection may be made against the constitution of every state in the union, and against every possible mode of government; because a power of doing good always implies a power to do evil if the person or party be disposed. The right of the legislature to ordain laws binding on the people, gives them a power to make bad laws. The right of the judge to inflict punishment, gives him both power and opportunity to oppress the innocent; yet none but crazy men will from thence determine that it is best to have neither a legislature nor judges. If a power to promote the best interest of the people, necessarily implies a power to do evil, we must never expect such a constitution in theory as will not be open in some respects to the objections of carping and jealous men. The new Constitution is perhaps more cautiously guarded than any other in the world, and at the same time creates a power which will be able to protect the subject; yet doubtless objections may be raised, and so they may against the constitution of each state in the union. . . . If, my countrymen, you wait for a constitution which absolutely bars a power of doing evil, you must wait long, and when obtained it will have no power of doing good. I allow you are oppressed, but not from the quarter that jealous and wrongheaded men would insinuate. You are oppressed by the men, who to serve their own purposes would prefer the shadow of government to the reality.

He told them to wait quietly, to pay attention to their marine, to attempt no new conquests, and to expose the city to no hazards during the war, and doing this, promised them a favorable result. What they did was the very contrary, allowing private ambitions and private interests, in matters apparently quite foreign to the war, to lead them into projects unjust both to themselves and to their allies—projects whose success would only conduce to the honor and advantage of private persons, and whose failure entailed certain disaster on the country in the war. [8] The causes of this are not far to seek. Pericles indeed, by his rank, ability, and known integrity, was enabled to exercise an independent control over the multitude—in short, to lead them instead of being led by them; for as he never sought power by improper means, be was never compelled to flatter them, but, on the contrary, enjoyed so high an estimation that he could afford to anger them by contradiction. [9] Whenever he saw them unseasonably and insolently elated, he would with a word reduce them to alarm; on the other hand, if they fell victims to a panic, he could at once restore them to confidence. In short, what was nominally a democ racy was becoming in his hands government by the first citizen.9a [10] With his successors it was different. More on a level with one another, and each grasping at supremacy, they ended by committing even the conduct of state affairs to the whims of the multitude.

As the result of its systems and of its efforts, it would seem that socialism, notwithstanding all its self-compaceny, can scarcely help perceiving the monster of legal plunder. But what does it do? It disguises it cleverly from others, and even from itself, under the seductive names of fraternity, solidarity, organization, association. And because we do not ask so much at the hands of the law, because we only ask it for justice, it alleges that we reject fraternity, solidarity, organization, and association; and they brand us with the name of individualists. We can assure them that what we repudiate is not natural organization, but forced organization. It is not free association, but the forms of association that they would impose upon us. It is not spontaneous fraternity, but legal fraternity. It is not providential solidarity, but artificial solidarity, which is only an unjust displacement of responsibility. Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds Government and society. And so, every time we object to a thingbeing done by Government, it concludes that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of education by the State--then we are against education altogether. We object to a State religion--then we would have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about by the State then we are against equality, etc., etc. They might as well accuse us of wishing men not to eat, beacuse we object to the cultivation of corn by the State.

The word “justice,” as still used in the law, is more similar to Plato’s conception than it is as used in political speculation. Under the influence of democratic theory, we have come to associate justice with equality, while for Plato it has no such implication. “Justice,” in the sense in which it is almost synonymous with “law”—as when we speak of “courts of justice”—is concerned mainly with property rights, which have nothing to do with equality. The first suggested definition of “justice,” at the beginning of the Republic, is that it consists in paying debts. This definition is soon abandoned as inadequate, but something of it remains at the end. There are several points to be noted about Plato’s definition. First, it makes it possible to have inequalities of power and privilege without injustice. The guardians are to have all the power, because they are the wisest members of the community; injustice would only occur, on Plato’s definition, if there were men in the other classes who were wiser than some of the guardians. That is why Plato provides for promotion and degradation of citizens, although he thinks that the double advantage of birth and education will, in most cases, make the children of guardians superior to the children of others. If there were a more exact science of government, and more certainty of men following its precepts, there would be much to be said for Plato’s system. No one thinks it unjust to put the best men into a football team, although they acquire thereby a great superiority. If football were managed as democratically as the Athenian government, the students to play for their university would be chosen by lot. But in matters of government it is difficult to know who has the most skill, and very far from certain that a politician will use his skill in the public interest rather than in his own or in that of his class or party or creed.

Meanwhile, in a lecture at the Sverdlov University two years later, under the pressure of outside events and interior realities, Lenin spoke with a precision which left little doubt about the indefinite continuation of the proletarian super-State. "With this machine, or rather this weapon [the State], we shall crush every form of exploitation, and when there are no longer any possibilities of exploitation left on earth, no more people owning land or factories, no more people gorging themselves under the eyes of others who are starving, when such things become impossible, then and only then shall we cast this machine aside. Then there will be neither State nor exploitation." Therefore as long as there exists on earth, and no longer in a specific society, one single oppressed person and one proprietor, so long the State will continue to exist. It also will be obliged to increase in strength during this period so as to vanquish one by one the injustices, the governments responsible for injustice, the obstinately bourgeois nations, and the people who are blind to their own interests. And when, on an earth that has finally been subdued and purged of enemies, the final iniquity shall have been drowned in the blood of the just and the unjust, then the State, which has reached the limit of all power, a monstrous idol covering the entire earth, will be discreetly absorbed into the silent city of Justice. Under the easily predictable pressure of adverse imperialism, the imperialism of justice was born, in reality, with Lenin. But imperialism, even the imperialism of justice, has no other end but defeat or world empire. Until then it has no other means but injustice. From now on, the doctrine is definitively identified with the prophecy. For the sake of justice in the far-away future, it authorizes injustice throughout the entire course of history and becomes the type of mystification which Lenin detested more than anything else in the world. It contrives the acceptance of injustice, crime, and falsehood by the promise of a miracle. Still greater production, still more power, uninterrupted labor, incessant suffering, permanent war, and then a moment will come when universal bondage in the totalitarian empire will be miraculously changed into its opposite: free leisure in a universal republic. Pseudo-revolutionary mystification has now acquired a formula: all freedom must be crushed in order to conquer the empire, and one day the empire will be the equivalent of freedom. And so the way to unity passes through totality.

Primary Duty of Lesser Magistrates is Threefold: First, they are to oppose and resist any laws or edicts from the higher authority that contravene the law or Word of God. Second, they are to protect the person, liberty, and property of those who reside within their jurisdiction from any unjust or immoral actions by the higher authority. Third, they are not to implement any laws or decrees made by the higher authority that violate the Constitution, and if necessary, resist them.

Is not a mixed government the principle of Moses, and the Jewish Church, the theory of Aristotle, the practice of every nation which is not being ruined? Have we not an obvious mixture, our sovereign lord the Pope, our lords the Cardinals his continual council, and the prelates in council “virtually” representing the visible Church? Are commands such without sanction? Are those laws which “public approbation hath not made such”? Is not consent and user the essence of valid law? How far are unjust laws to be obeyed? Need they be considered laws at all, if we understand S. Thomas aright? Can any government exist or claim rights apart from the consent of the governed? Is there vested in any governor secular or ecclesiastical the dominion over the property and lives of individuals? Can any power, however appointed, dispense with the precepts of natural law? These and such like questions were actually asked; they form the basis of political discussion until the days of Locke.

I knew we’d be accused of rewarding incompetence, of throwing public money down a rat hole. But I believed we had gotten taxpayers a reasonable deal, not just in the financial terms of the loan, but by avoiding even more severe damage to the economy. I’d soon get some early validation of that when Hank Greenberg, AIG’s hard-driving former chief executive and a major shareholder in the firm, visited me to complain that the Fed had been given too much equity in AIG, too much of the upside. I was a bit shocked by the audacity; basically, he wanted us to give back a big chunk of the company. I told him we hadn’t done the deal to make money, and we’d be happy to sell him back some of the equity if he’d be willing to take some of the risk. But what interested me was Greenberg’s confidence that we’d get a positive return from AIG, rather than the tens of billions in losses that everyone else seemed to expect. He’d be right about that, but only because of the force of the government’s actions to stabilize the company and the broader financial system over the next few years. He and other AIG shareholders would end up suing the federal government, claiming that we had been unjustly harsh to the firm we rescued.

No one thinks it unjust to put the best men into a football team, although they acquire thereby a great superiority. If football were managed as democratically as the Athenian government the students to play for their university would be chosen by lot. But in matters of government it is difficult to know who has the most skill, and very far from certain that a politician will use his skill in the public interest rather than in his own or in that of his class or party or creed.

This way of seeing things makes it impossible to distinguish free states from tyrannies, just rulers from unjust rulers, or healthy regimes from abusive regimes. In practice, it would mean that whatever political group happens to wield power, by arms or by propaganda, is, ipso facto, legitimate. Yet the whole point of the Declaration and the Constitution was to found a government on something more than accident and force.

This way of seeing things makes it impossible to distinguish free states from tyrannies, just rulers from unjust rulers, or healthy regimes from abusive regimes. In practice, it would mean that whatever political group happens to wield power, by arms or by propaganda, is, ipso facto, legitimate. Yet the whole point of the Declaration and the Constitution was to found a government on something more than accident and force. If rights and political legitimacy are created by accident and force, then there is no moral difference between the dictatorship of a military strongman and a free state governed by fair laws; whatever the political authorities choose to call “just” is so, by definition.

Handling Resignations   In the course of an organization’s work, boards and officers may be confronted with the resignation of a fellow officer, board member, or committee chairman. There are two reasons people resign from office. The first reason is that something arises in the personal life of the officer that demands his or her time and attention. The officer feels at this time that he or she can’t fulfill the duties of the office and do justice to the organization, so the officer submits a resignation. The second reason is that there is a rift or severe disagreement within the organization. An officer may become angry, disheartened, or vengeful, so he or she submits a resignation. The first thing that the organization should do after it receives a resignation is to figure out why the person is resigning. If the organization really needs this person’s active input, it should find a way to keep him or her. If the person is resigning because of lack of time, then perhaps the organization can appoint an assistant to help with the work. If the person is resigning because he or she can’t attend the meetings, the organization should consider changing the meeting date and time. If the person submits his or her resignation because of organizational problems, the organization needs to look at how its members communicate with each other. Perhaps the members need to be more willing to allow disagreements and hear what others are saying. If an organization strictly obeys the principle of majority rule while protecting the rights of the minority, it can resolve problems in an intelligent, kind, and civil way. A resignation should be a formal letter that includes the date, the name of the person to whom it is addressed, the reason for the resignation, and the person’s signature. The person resigning can mail his or her letter to the secretary or hand it to the secretary in person. Under no circumstance should the secretary or president accept an oral resignation. If a resignation is given to the officer this way, he or she should talk with the person and find out the reasons for the resignation. Perhaps just talking to the person can solve the problem. However, an officer who insists on resigning should put it in writing and submit it to the secretary. This gives the accepting body something to read and consider. Every resignation should be put to a vote. When it is accepted, the office is vacant and should be immediately filled according to the rules for filling vacancies stated in the bylaws. If an officer submits a resignation and then decides to withdraw it, he or she can do this until a vote is taken. It is unjust for a secretary or governing body not to allow a withdrawal of the resignation before a vote is taken. The only way a resignation can’t be withdrawn is if some rule of the organization or a state statute prohibits it. When submitting the resignation, the member resigning should give it to the secretary only and not mail it to everyone in the organization. (An e-mail resignation is not acceptable because it is not signed.) Sending the resignation to every member only confuses matters and promotes gossip and conjecture in the organization. If the member later decides to withdraw his or her resignation, there is much more explaining to do. The other members may see this person as unstable and not worthy of the position.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: YOU IN? Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings!” Acts 5:29 The English historian Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.” People can’t seem to help themselves. When they get a taste of power, they often abuse it and lord it over everyone else. That includes legislators, chief executives, and even judges (and justices of the Supreme Court). Laws, made under the guise of authority, are sometimes bad laws that oppress the innocent. If a law is unjust and opposed to God’s laws, we need to oppose it. Throughout our history—most famously with the abolitionist movement—Americans have done just that. Like the apostles, we must obey God’s eternal moral law rather than the human-made law of the moment. Our Founding Fathers were suspicious of government power—especially the power of the federal government—because they too understood that power corrupts. We should always view government power suspiciously and reject it when it oversteps its bounds. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Today, pledge to support candidates for office who actually believe in limited government as set forth in our Constitution and who give paramountcy to God’s eternal law.

But as tragic as the unjust and brutal murder of Jesus was, it created a demonstration that leads us to the truth. Jesus was aware of the significance of this, which is why he did not resist the events that ultimately led to his death. But to understand this significance, we must “see” what happened on a different level—in and through the Spirit.   Jesus himself said he was “in” this world but not “of” this world. In other words, Jesus operated within our time-space dimension that is governed by science, physics, and nature, but he was also part of a spiritual or SUPERnatural world or realm that is not limited by these laws. We are also part of that same realm! The same eternal Spirit that put Jesus there puts us there too. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Repent (metanoia), for the kingdom of heaven is here.” You might remember that metanoia means to change the way we use our minds. In other words, Jesus was saying that the SUPERnatural realm—the kingdom of heaven—is accessible to us right now, but it requires us to connect to that higher dimension within us by changing the way we use our minds. We do this by thinking in and through those deeper feelings!   Does that sound a bit too naïve and simplistic to you? If so, then you are in the right place! Jesus said unless you put your old, fixated beliefs aside and open your mind like a little child, you cannot see that dimension, let alone get in. How do you connect with and access this heavenly powerhouse within the eternal Spirit? By being a Bible scholar or following a stringent routine of meditation and other spiritual disciplines? No! We simply open our minds, put aside mental limitations, and trust those deep feelings inside us. Then express these feelings between us! There is nothing too hard about that, is there? It’s just a matter of changing the way we use our minds, and then joy and freedom begin to flood us. 

BY THE SWEAT OF THEIR BROW YOU SHALL TAX THEM? This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Romans 13:6 Onerous taxes hurt hard workers, slam job creators, and make us less competitive against other nations. High government spending is unsustainable and leads to national bankruptcy. Printing more dollars only leads to inflation and squeezes out private borrowing. High taxes, excessive regulation, and an ever-expanding welfare state discourage enterprise and undermine our nation’s work ethic. Politicians and bureaucrats always want to expand the size of government, and they will take inaction on our part—our failing to protest against taxes, regulations, and unnecessary government programs—as not only a sign of approval, but a signal to expand government’s reach even further. Only when a law contradicts God’s higher authority can we disobey it, and our obligation to pay taxes doesn’t rise to that level, doggone it. But what we can do is elect politicians willing to support freedom, reward hard work, and honor savings and investment by rolling back unnecessary taxes, government programs, and regulations. To do that, we need to do more than vote; we need to volunteer on campaigns, and we need to help educate our neighbors, friends, and community about the consequences we all suffer when government plays fast and loose with our tax dollars. We need to show how big government is unjust government, robbing hardworking Peters to pay bureaucrat-preferred Pauls.

Grace Canceled: How Outrage is Destroying Lives, Ending Debate, and Endangering Democracy by Dana Loesch 4/ 5 stars Great book! Book summary: “Popular talk radio host and political activist Dana Loesch confronts the Left's zero-tolerance, accept-no-apologies ethos with a powerful call for a return to core American principles of grace, redemption, justice, and empathy. Diving deep into recent cases where public and private figures were shamed, fired, or boycotted for social missteps, Loesch shows us how the politics of outrage is fueling the breakdown of the American community. How do we find common ground without compromising? Loesch urges readers to meet the face of fury with grace, highlighting inspiring examples like Congressman Dan Crenshaw's appearance on Saturday Night Live.” “Socialists’ two favorite rhetorical tools are envy and shame, and the platform they build on is identity politics. It’s culturally sanctioned prejudice… Identity politics is a tactic of statists, who foster resentment and envy and then peddle the lie that a bigger government can make everything FAIRER. These feelings justify the cruelty inherent in identity politics. Democrats’ favorite tactic is smearing as a ‘racist’ anyone who disagrees with them, challenges their opinion, or simply exists while thinking different thoughts.” -p. 20 “Democrats still need the socialists to maintain power, but it’s a dangerous trade. Going explicitly socialist would doom the Democrats to the dustbin of history. Instead, they’re refashioning the party: It believes wealth is evil, government is your church and savior, and independence is selfishness. Virtue is extinct- ‘virtue signaling’ has replaced actual virtue.” -p. 24 “The socialist definition of social justice ignores merit, neuters ambition, and diminishes the equity of labor. Equal rewards for unequal effort is unjust and fosters resentment.” - pp. 26-7 “The state purports to act on behalf of ‘the common good’. But who defines the common good? It has long been the justification for monstrous acts by totalitarian governments. ...In this way, the common good becomes an excuse for total state control. That was the excuse on which totalitarianism was built. You can achieve the common goal better if there is a total authority, and you must then limit the desires and wishfulness of individuals.” -p. 27 “Socialism is the enemy of charity because it outsources all compassion and altruism to the state. Out of sight, out of mind, they may think-- an overarching theme throughout socialism and communism (and one is just a stepping-stone to the other)... What need is there for personal ambition if government will provide, albeit meagerly, for all your needs from cradle to grave?” -pp. 32-3

When Yemen’s Imam Ahmad bin Yahiya (1881–1962) died in his sleep, Republican military officers quickly sought to overthrow the ancient, religiously-based Hamid al-Din dynasty. The Republicans claimed that Saudi Arabia had unjustly seized the Jizan and Najran provinces from Yemen in 1934 and demanded their return. King Saud’s government rejected that claim and supported the Yemeni royalists with arms, money, and subsidies to cooperative tribes. Egypt’s President Nasser—who supported the socialist, Arab Nationalist Republicans—hoped to add Yemen to the United Arab Republic that he had created with Syria, and to use the country to overthrow the House of Saud.28 Today, King Salman fears that Iran has similar intentions in Yemen.

He has now completed two books, the first on how investment dealers “fee-farm” over half of the life savings of many clients, and this second book about conditions which allow quiet professional corruption to remain hidden from the public, and ignored by authorities. What drives me? (in the authors words) I hope to have an impact upon the #1 cause of disability, disease, and stress in society today. I believe I have some unique perspectives on this from my experience. For example, the #1 cause of disability, disease, and stress is fear of economic uncertainty. In my experience, the #1 cause of fear of economic uncertainty, is unfairness between those who are protected and enriched within the “lifeboats” of certain professions, corporations or institutions, and those who are not so protected. There are different levels of protection by the law, and immunity from having to adhere to the law, depending upon the wealth, power or status of those involved. Justice systems simply do not often “look upwards” to investigate and prosecute those of great wealth, power and status. These rigged systems of governance, finance, justice etc, cause unfairness, injustice, and repeal the laws of poverty for a few very lucky people, and repeals the chances of prosperity for billions of others. A small few win by corruption, while the rest of society must lose by default. This is a broken system. The unfairness of rigged and/or broken systems, causes imbalances sufficient to destroy entire societies. Societies can literally shake themselves apart with the human vibration of living in an unjust, unfair world. At time of writing this, I am the chairperson of the volunteer Canadian Justice Review Board of Canada, working to better understand one of societies most valuable social systems,

It was so unjust, being skewered for getting caught being honest. What did the public want? Lies? That was what they usually got, if they got anything at all. Most were just too stupid to realize it. They let the government get away with exaggerations, obfuscations, misdirections and lies of omission. They let politicians hide behind claims of committee work, confidentiality and national security. The truth was, the CIA and FBI and their European equivalents had all searched extensively for Ivan and none of them had found him.  Jo

So despite all the lovely comforting stuff we are told, senior police understand very well that the primary function of policing is to protect property. Despite all the pretence about serving the people, and some of the genuinely good and difficult work police have to do, such as dealing with rape victims and missing children, the police are primarily enforcers for the state and for the state of things as they are. When this is understood you can make sense of ‘illogical’ police activities like spying on justice campaigners or environmental activists as if they were the Mafia, to the extent of going undercover and marrying members of activist groups. If you delude yourself into thinking the police’s primary function is to serve the people none of this makes any sense . 14 When masses of the public protest government injustice, such as millions protesting against an unjust war, it’s obvious that the police are there to protect the state, not ‘the people’.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.1 —Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

The State is not God. The State’s authority is not limitless. They don’t get to do whatever just seems good to them. Men should not give unlimited obedience to civil government. In fact, men have a duty to oppose any in authority when they make unjust or immoral laws.

The Incarnation changes everything...The meaning of the Pentecost is that the religion of both the Father and the Son are to be fulfilled in the religion of the Spirit, that God is no longer in Heaven but in human society and communication, wherever men come together in His name. Christ's stay on earth was only the beginning of his presence... The ambiguity of Christianity on the political plane is perfectly comprehensible: when it remains true to the Incarnation, it can be revolutionary, but the religion of the Father is conservative...Claudel and Jacques Rivière were right in saying that the Christian is a nuisance to the Establishment because he is always somewhere else and one can never be sure of him. But the Christian makes revolutionaries uneasy for the very same reason: they feel he is never completely with them. He is a poor conservative and an unsafe bet as a revolutionary. There is just one case where the Church itself calls for insurrection: when a legal power violates divine law. But one has never in fact seen the Church take a stand against a legal government for the simple reason that it was unjust or back a revolution simply because it was just. On the contrary, it has been seen to favor rebels because they protected its tabernacles, its ministers, and its property. God will not fully have corne to the earth until the Church feels the same obligation toward other men as it does toward its own ministers, toward the houses of Guernica as toward its own temples.

One effect of the civil rights struggle in the past ten years has been to convince a generation of young Negroes that their place in society is no longer predetermined at birth. We demonstrated that segregationist barriers could be toppled, that social relations were not fixed for all time, that change was on the agenda. The federal government reinforced this new consciousness with its many pronouncements that racial integration and equality were the official goals of American society. The reactionaries would tell us that these hopes and promises were unreasonable to begin with and should never have been advanced. They equate stability with the preservation of the established hierarchy of social relations, and chaos with the reform of that unjust arrangement. The fact is that the promises were reasonable, justified, and long overdue. Our task is not to rescind them--how do you rescind the promise of equality?--but to implement them fully and vigorously. This task is enormously complicated by the polarization now taking place on the race issue. We are caught in a vicious cycle: inaction on the poverty and civil rights fronts foments rioting in the ghettos; the rioting encourages vindictive inaction. Militancy, extremism, and violence grow in the black community; racism, reaction, and conservatism gain ground in the white community.

The lesser magistrate doctrine declares that when the superior or higher civil authority makes unjust/immoral laws or decrees, the lesser or lower ranking civil authority has both a right and duty to refuse obedience to that superior authority. If necessary, the lesser authorities even have the right and obligation to actively resist the superior authority.

Mueller instead resurrected FARA from the near dead to go after people with the threat of jail time. The willful failure to register as an agent under FARA can result in five years in federal prison. Mueller also threatened to file FARA charges against former National Security Advisor Flynn to pressure him to cooperate—even though, again, Flynn had nothing to tell. Mueller would ultimately bring seven FARA cases, rivaling the total number brought by the DOJ in the prior fifty years. Nearly all of these were done in the context of plea deals, meaning Mueller did not have to test them in court. Good-government types would laud Mueller for resurrecting a law against “shadowy” lobbying. But justice is never served by arbitrary or surprise shifts in the prosecutorial system. The most unjust law is one that is enforced only when it serves the purpose of catching the unwary. Mueller exploited the unsuspecting for his own ends. And his untoward tactics would end up boomeranging on the very Democrats who’d celebrated him.

…The just man does not allow the several elements in his soul to usurp one another's functions; he is indeed one who sets his house in order, by self-mastery and discipline coming to be at peace with himself, and bringing into tune those three parts, tike the terms in the proportion of a musical scale, the highest and lowest notes and the mean between them, with all the intermediate intervals. Only when he has linked these parts together in well-tempered harmony and has made himself one man instead of many, will he be ready to go about whatever he may have to do, whether it be making money and satisfying bodily wants, or business transactions, or the affairs of state. In all these fields when he speaks of just and honorable conduct, he will mean the behavior that helps to produce and preserve this habit of mind; and by wisdom he will mean the knowledge which presides over such conduct. Any action which tends to break down this habit will be for him unjust; and the notions governing it he will call ignorance and folly. (My emphasis.)

Unceasing warfare gives rise to its own social conditions, which have been similar throughout the ages. One such condition is a permanent state of alertness to ward off attack. Another is the rule of the autocrat. —CAMMAR PILRU, Ixian Ambassador in Exile Treatise on the Downfall of Unjust Governments

The primary duty of the lesser magistrates regarding the doctrine of the lesser magistrates is threefold. First, they are to oppose and resist any laws or edicts from the higher authority that contravene the law or Word of God. Second, they are to protect the person, liberty, and property of those who reside within their jurisdiction from any unjust or immoral laws or actions by the higher authority. Third, they are not to implement any laws or decrees made by the higher authority that violate the Constitution, and if necessary, resist them.

The framers of the Constitution understood clearly that majority rule was the first principle of democratic government and the essential means of expressing a popular will. It was the method by which “the people” asserted itself politically and acquired self-consciousness. But the Founders, almost without exception, believed that democratic majority rule posed the gravest threat to a republican system. It stood for collective irrationality or, as Madison put it, the “wishes of an unjust and interested majority.”27

Constitutional government, the balance of power, legal guarantees, the whole edifice of political civilisation slowly built up over the course of the ages and always incomplete, is calmly pushed aside. They accept an absolute State, allegedly in the service of the Revolution; they are not interested in the plurality of parties and the autonomy of working-class organisations. They do not protest against lawyers bullying their clients and accused persons confessing to imaginary crimes. After all, is not revolutionary justice directed towards the ‘radical solution of the problem of coexistence’, whilst ‘liberal justice’ applies unjust laws?

America thus stepped forward in the modern age and added to the art of beauty gift of the Renaissance and to freedom of belief, gift of Martin Luther and Leo X, a vision of democratic self government: the domination of political life by the intelligent decision of free and self sustaining men. What an idea and idea for its realization--endless land of richest fertility, natural resources such as Earth seldom exhibited before, a population infinite in variety, of universal gift, burned in the fires of poverty and caste, yearning toward the Unknown God; and self reliant pioneers, unafraid of man or devil. It was the Supreme Adventure, in the last great battle of the west, for that human freedom which would release the human spirit from lower lust for more meat, and set its feet to dream and sing...And then some unjust God leaned, laughing, over the ramparts of heaven and dropped a black man in the midst. It transformed the world. It turned democracy back to Roman Imperialism and fascism; it restored caste and oligarchy; it replaced freedom with slavery and withdrew the name of humanity from the vast majority of human beings.

Privileged groups have other persistent methods of justifying their special interests in terms of general interest. The assumption that they possess unique intellectual gifts and moral excellencies which redound to the general good, is only one of them. Perhaps a more favorite method is to identify the particular organisation of society, of which they are the beneficiaries, with the peace and order of society in general and to appoint themselves the apostles of law and order. Since every society has an instinctive desire for harmony and avoidance of strife, this is a very potent instrument of maintaining the unjust status quo. No society has ever achieved peace without incorporating injustice into its harmony. Those who would eliminate the injustice are therefore always placed at the moral disadvantage of imperiling its peace. The privileged groups will place them under that moral disadvantage even if the efforts toward justice are made in the most pacific terms. They will claim that it is dangerous to disturb a precarious equilibrium and will feign to fear anarchy as the consequence of the effort. This passion for peace need not always be consciously dishonest. Since those who hold special privileges in society are naturally inclined to regard their privileges as their rights and to be unmindful of the effects of inequality upon the underprivileged, they will have a natural complacence toward injustice. Every effort to disturb the peace, which incorporates the injustice, will therefore seem to them to spring from unjustified malcontent. They will furthermore be only partly conscious of the violence and coercion by which their privileges are preserved and will therefore be particularly censorious of the use of force or the threat of violence by those who oppose them. The force they use is either the covert force of economic power or it is the police power of the state, seemingly sanctified by the supposedly impartial objectives of the government which wields it, but nevertheless amenable to their interests. They are thus able in perfect good faith to express abhorrence of the violence of a strike by workers and to call upon the state in the same breath to use violence in putting down the strike. The unvarying reaction of capitalist newspapers to outbreaks of violence in labor disputes is to express pious abhorrence of the use of violent methods and then to call upon the state to use the militia in suppressing the exasperated workers. Perhaps it is a little too generous to attribute good faith to such reasoning, particularly since the privileged classes are not averse to the policy of augmenting the police power of the state with their own instruments of defense and aggression. The use of company police in labor disputes has resulted in more than one scandal of cruel oppression in the United States.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also prison.

The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It's not an inspiration; it's a threat.

The debate became vicious. And Dad and I went from merely talking about providing compassionate alternatives to abortion, to actively working to drag evangelicals, often kicking and screaming, into politics. By the end of the Whatever Happened to the Human Race? tour, we were calling for civil disobedience, the takeover of the Republican Party, and even hinting at overthrowing our “unjust pro-abortion government.

Few men or women in our lifetimes have been so unjustly vilified in the popular media as the late Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court. If you are not a lawyer who read his opinions, if you know nothing about Justice Scalia other than what you have read in the popular press, you have surely been deceived into believing that this man was some sort of archconservative who could regularly be counted upon to side with the government and trample the constitutional liberties of the poor and the powerless. The truth is much more complicated than that. While Justice Scalia was, by his own admission, exceptionally stingy in refusing to accept arguments about constitutional rights that involved some aspect of general "liberty" that are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution—rights like abortion, or same-sex marriage—when it came to the defense of constitutional liberties that are explicitly described in the Constitution, no other recent member of the Supreme Court was so uncompromisingly passionate and liberal in refusing to water down those protections.

The presence of those cameras finally acknowledges," he said to me, "that justice systems anywhere, anytime, have never cared whether justice was achieved or not. Like Roman games, justice systems are ways for unjust governments--and there is not other sort of government--to be enormously entertaining with real lives at stake.

But as the British Empire pulled up its tent pegs and struck camp to head home, I realized that there would be anger and resentment towards my race. The white man has given India many things of great value but he has also taken far more than his share and, in many cases, imposed unjust prejudices and priorities on people who have lived under the yoke of foreign domination for nearly a century and a half. Whatever reprisals occur might not take the extreme forms of violence that erupted in 1857, when my grandfather and other family members were slaughtered during the Mutiny. Nevertheless, if politics spills into the streets it is a scourge that turns friends into adversaries, reducing human behaviour to a brute contest in which all rules are abandoned and there can be no victor, only the vanquished. Some journalists have described it as the ‘law of the jungle’, which is an odious comparison, for in the absence of man, most jungles exist in peaceful harmony, governed by laws of nature and the eternal, equitable balance between life and death.

All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and Associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, controul, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the Constituted authorities are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprizing minority of the Community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the Mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modefied by mutual interests. However combinations or Associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, and to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Healing for the Native Ministry. It says in part: For the policy of genocide and for the ongoing unjust policies of the United States government, we ask your forgiveness. . . . For the destruction of the Native family structure through the demoralization of Native American men, for placing your children in foster homes and boarding schools, and for the subservient positions forced on your women, we ask for your forgiveness. For over three-hundred broken treaties, for the myth of “Manifest Destiny,” and for the notion that Native people stood in the way of progress, we ask your forgiveness. For the sins of the church, for withholding the true gospel, for misrepresenting Jesus Christ, and for using religion in an attempt to “civilize the Natives,” we ask your forgiveness . . . We ask for . . . Forgiveness for taking your land at gunpoint and for forcing you on to barren reservations . . . Forgiveness for the policy of our government of genocide toward the Native Americans . . . Forgiveness for the broken treaties . . . Forgiveness for the ongoing policies of the government . . . Forgiveness for misrepresenting the gospel to our Native American forefathers. When your fathers asked us for truth we gave them white man’s religions. When your fathers asked for God we withheld the true gospel of Jesus Christ.47

kings are ordained by God, and established by the people, to procure and provide for the good of those who are committed unto them, and that this good or profit be principally expressed in two things, to wit, in the administration of justice to their subjects, and in the managing of armies for the repulsing their enemies: certainly, we must infer and conclude from this, that the prince who applied himself to nothing but his peculiar profits and pleasures, or to those ends which most readily conduce thereunto, who contemns and perverts all laws, who uses his subjects more cruelly than the barbarous enemy would do, he may truly and really be called a tyrant, and that those who in this manner govern their kingdoms, be they of never so large an extent, are more properly unjust pillagers and free-booters, than lawful governors.

Thoreau: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.