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“I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant [or an oligarchy of a few or many tyrants: legislatures/Congress] who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him [them]; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation! Yet it is so common that one must grieve the more and wonder the less at the spectacle of a million men serving in wretchedness, their necks under the yoke [civil law: admiralty, UCC], not constrained by a greater multitude than they… Shall we call subjection to such a leader cowardice?...If a hundred, if a thousand endure the caprice of a single [or a few, or many] man, should we not rather say that they lack not the courage but the desire to rise against him, and that such an attitude indicates indifference rather than cowardice? When not a hundred, not a thousand men, but a hundred provinces, a thousand cities, a million men, refuse to assail a single man [or a gaggle of men] from whom the kindest treatment received is the infliction of serfdom and slavery [via civil law contractual consent], what shall we call that? Is it cowardice? …When a thousand, a million men, a thousand cities, fail to protect themselves against the domination of one [or many men] man, this cannot be called cowardly, for cowardice does not sink to such depth…What monstrous vice, then, is this which does not even deserve to be called cowardice, a vice for which no term can be found vile enough…”

Etienne de La Boetie, “The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude”

Melancton 6 Dec 4
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