Sections (TOC) :
• 1
179 Words; 960 Characters
• 2
110 Words; 687 Characters
• 3
10 Words; 78 Characters
• 4
36 Words; 213 Characters
• 5
108 Words; 681 Characters
• 6
10 Words; 75 Characters
• 7
98 Words; 570 Characters
Sections (Content) :
• 1
So, by going along to vote and by the very act of voting, the voter acknowledges that he is not free and awards the person for whom he is voting the power to set him free; he is admitting that he is oppressed and agreeing that the authorities have power to raise him up again; he makes a declaration of his desire to see justice instituted and surrenders to his delegates all authority to judge in the matter.
Very well. But is not the granting of such powers to one or more men tantamount to my forswearing my liberty, my fortune and my rights? Is it not a formal admission that that man or those men — who may set me free, raise me up again, sit in judgment of me — also have the capacity to oppress, ruin and judge me ill? Indeed, it is impossible for them do anything else, given that, having transferred all my rights to them, I now possess none and in clinging to those rights they are merely looking to their own protection.
• 2
Do not look to us for solidarity with oppressive laws, inquisitorial regulations, murders, military executions, imprisonments, transfers and deportations — the immediate crisis by which the country is being ground down. Beat your own breast and prepare yourselves for the judgment of history, you maniacs for government! Our consciences are clear. It is enough that, through a phenomenon that defies all reason, we must endure a yoke that you manufactured alone; it is enough that you have placed in pawn, along with your own possessions, that which was not your own — what ought to have been inviolable and sacred — the liberty and fortunes of the rest of us.
• 3
Perfect democracy and despotism appear to be the opposite extremes...
• 4
...in a republic, the candidates for office must look downward, to gain the suffrages of the people; in a monarchy, they must turn their attention upwards, to court the good graces and favor of the great.
• 5
Built up by the middle classes to hold their own against royalty, sanctioning, and at the same time strengthening, their sway over the workers, parliamentary rule is preeminently a middle-class rule. The upholders of this system have never seriously affirmed that a parliament or a municipal council represent a nation or a city. The most intelligent among them know that this is impossible. The middle class has simply used the parliamentary system to raise a barrier between itself and royalty, without giving the people liberty. But gradually, as the people become conscious of their interests and the variety of their interests multiply, the system can no longer work.
• 6
...changes in government are above all formal and not substantive.
• 7
Inequality of rights is created by a combination in one part of the community to exclude another part from its rights. Whenever it be made an article of a constitution, or a law, that the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, shall appertain exclusively to persons possessing a certain quantity of property, be it little or much, it is a combination of the persons possessing that quantity to exclude those who do not possess the same quantity. It is investing themselves with powers as a self-created part of society, to the exclusion of the rest.
Chronology :
March 12, 2020 : Power -- Added.
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