Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Quote of the Day - de Tocqueville

“After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” - Alexis de Tocqueville -

2 comments:

The Angry Capitalist said...

The social theory we call socialism has its origins dating back to the French Revolution. Various social commentators and philosophers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Robert Owen, and Henri de Saint-Simon all contributed in some ways to its philosophical development. Each building on the previous work of others until Marx and Engels codified the concept by encapsulating it into a workable theory which they called scientific socialism. Born of man’s corrupt nature socialism represents mans desire to create a utopian paradise free from struggle and strife where equality reigns supreme. Since its inception proponents of the theory have dedicated all of their efforts into tossing out the existing order and supplanting it with what they considered a huge leap forward in the development of human thought. Nothing could be farther from reality for this supposed leap forward is, when all of the platitudes and self aggrandizement are removed, the complete opposite, It is a return to the savage state once occupied by prehistoric man...

More At:
http://www.hostileopposition.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Since the French Revolution ... the key concept they have used to overturn the natural economy (which is the free-market economy) and the natural state of society (which is inevitably beset by imperfections and inequalities, since man is imperfect and each individual is different) is ....

CHANGE!