Pierre Josheph Proudhon on government

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To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-ridden, regulated, penned up, indoctrinated, preached at, checked, appraised, seized, censured, commanded, by beings who have neither title, nor knowledge, nor virtue. To be governed is to have every operation, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, endorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected.

To be governed is, under pretext of public utility and in the name of the general interest, to be laid under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, exhausted, hoaxed and robbed; then, upon the slightest resistance, at the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, annoyed, hunted down, pulled about, beaten, disarmed, bound, imprisoned, shot, judged, condemned, banished, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and, to crown all, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon



QFT!! !! !!

ruveyn

And you are paranoid enough to swallow this nonsense whole without gagging.

Last edited by Sand on 12 Jun 2010, 1:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That pretty much sums up how I felt when I was a government employee.

But, I don't think that I felt any better when I was a private sector employee. Except when I was an itinerant English teacher in Asia.

Anyway, I do tend to use cash whenever possible when shopping, to avoid having my purchases observed, whether by the government or some other entity.

However, I will buy things on the computer, and avoid the state sales' taxes.

If you are not paranoid, you don't know what is going on.

ruveyn

Rabidly against Jews topic

Here was another enlightened political visionary from the 19th centruy who advocated expelling Jews from France. Best to take Pierre with a jaundiced eye.

Proudhon was right about government and wrong about Jews.

ruveyn

Another? Who were the the others?

A sordid list of racist writers topic

How many would you like me to list?

hitler
Proudhon
Drumont
Thomas Aquinas
Schopenhaur
Le Pen
David Irving

Don't forget Voltaire. He was not particularly fond of Jews either.

ruveyn

How was hitler politically enlightened? He was a sloppy populist who appealed to the base elements of fear and tribalist hatred (racism/bigotry) to achieve his means. He has more in common with Sarah Palin than with most political thinkers.

I would put Palin more in line with certain Stalinist elements, actually, based on her Luddism and anti-elitism wrapped in nonsensical populist diatribes.

The F***it list topic

Yup, Voltaire is another. And no, hitler was no enlightened visionary. This was a rare attempt to be sarcastic on my part.

Your comparing hitler with Sarah Palin is stretchingly different.

Yes and no. I was drawing comparisons to the fact that Hitler had no history of political involvement before the beer parties and was an artist originally. Likewise, Palin was originally a cheerleader and wanted to be a media personality and had no otherwise involvement in politics or government. They both appeal to the lowest common denominator in people who are vastly ignorant on the topics at hand and both have much more questionable associates that anyone bothers to investigate (her husband is an Alaskan secessionist who has expressed anti-American viewpoints frequently in the past). They also both appeal to the militaristic side (and what "real man" doesn't like killing people who are the "enemy"?).

Sarah Palin's target of hate would be the usual targets that it has been for such circles in the past years: Muslims, illegal immigrants from Hispanic countries, and anything outside of Christian law (homosexuals, atheists, social progressives). Likewise, Hitler appealed against outsiders who were seen as taking away wealth from the "rightful citizens" (Jews in his case, as opposed to Hispanics) along with the other normals (homosexuals, atheists, social progressives).

Edit: also...

When I challenged hitler specifically, I meant that I didn't know of any circles who considered his ideology to be anything politically original or particularly enlightened.

The quote is true enough if you live in North Korea, Botswana, Saudi Arabia, etc. In functioning democracies, one is not 'at the first word of complaint,' 'bound, imprisoned, shot, judged, condemned, banished, sacrificed, sold.' To pretend that this quote applies to the sort of places most WP members live in is petty and petulant.

When you said "another" I thought you had in mind another person or persons from 19th century France, so I was just wondering who.
But if there are other figures (in addition to the ones above) from other times and places whose works you think we should treat with caution on account of their opinions about Jews, I would probably be interested.
Voltaire has already been mentioned. I've heard that Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Mikhail Bakunin, HL Mencken, Tacitus, Cicero, Edgar Degas, George Bernard Shaw, Roald Dahl, Immanuel Kant, TS Eliot, Denis Diderot, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were anti-Semites too.

I would say about half of the things referred to in the quote do apply to the functioning democracy that is Britain.
That's not to say I think the problem is 'government' in itself so much as bad government, though of course all governments have the potential to go bad.