Military Oppression -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sections (TOC) : ---------------------------------- * 1 32 Words; 184 Characters * 2 18 Words; 134 Characters * 3 129 Words; 745 Characters * 4 66 Words; 394 Characters * 5 41 Words; 230 Characters * 6 53 Words; 328 Characters * 7 93 Words; 595 Characters * 8 67 Words; 398 Characters * 9 28 Words; 187 Characters * 10 56 Words; 319 Characters * 11 16 Words; 126 Characters * 12 21 Words; 146 Characters Sections (Content) : ---------------------------------- * 1 [Random Second French Republic Pamphlet] The soldier was a child of the people, and should serve to liberate them, and not permit himself to be used as part of a police force. * 2 [Federation of the National Guard]...permanent armies which have never been anything other than the instruments of despotism. * 3 [Anonymous American: ] ...these politicians. They insist on governing us and living off our labor. They tax us, eat our substance, conscript us, draft our boys into their wars. All the myriads of men who live off the Government depend upon the Government to tax us, and, in order to tax us successfully, standing armies are maintained. The plea that the army is needed for the protection of the country is pare fraud and pretense. The French Government affrights the people by telling them that the Germans are ready and anxious to fall upon them; the Russians fear the British; the British fear everybody; and now in America we are told we must increase our navy and add to our army because Europe may at any moment combine against us. * 4 ["Hugo"] It was a cruel and brutal confrontation. As the federal police troops entered the city with tanks and firearms against unarmed citizens, I imagine we felt something akin to what the indigenous people of Mexico and Oaxaca must have felt when the Spanish arrived. We didn't really know how their weapons worked. We had seen tanks before, but they had never been used against us. * 5 Every state, by the defeat of its troops, may be turned into a province; every army opposed in the field today may be hired tomorrow; and every victory gained, may give the accession of a new military force to the victor. * 6 Times may come, when every proprietor must defend his own possessions, and every free people maintain their own independence. We may imagine, that against such an extremity, an army of hired troops is a sufficient precaution; but their own troops are the very enemy against which a people is sometimes obliged to fight. * 7 We have already observed, that where men are remiss or corrupted, the virtue of their leaders, or the good intention of their magistrates, will not always secure them in the possession of political freedom. Implicit submission to any leader, or the uncontrolled exercise of any power, even when it is intended to operate for the good of mankind, may frequently end in the subversion of legal establishments. This fatal revolution, by whatever means it is accomplished, terminates in military government; and this, though the simplest of all governments, is rendered complete by degrees. * 8 ...the clamor for an increased army and navy is not due to any foreign danger. It is owing to the dread of the growing discontent of the masses and of the international spirit among the workers. It is to meet the internal enemy that the powers of various countries are preparing themselves; an enemy, who, once awakened to consciousness, will prove more dangerous than any foreign invader. * 9 ...the main function of the bureaucratic and military machinery of any capitalistic state, the suppression of the workers, could not operate in any event against workers in arms. * 10 ...he now understood why the army was organized as it was. It was indeed quite necessary. No rational form of organization would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told to do so. * 11 ...the continual state of war, which exists among semi-barbarous societies... introduced slavery at the remotest era. * 12 [Von Hübner, Austrian ambassador to France] In 1830 the bourgeoisie was victorious, in '48 the people, on 4 December 1851, the army. Events : ---------------------------------- Military Oppression -- Added : April 09, 2020 About This Textfile : ---------------------------------- Text file generated from : http://RevoltSource.com/