Sublime
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Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man, an
... See moreAlexis de Tocqueville • Democracy in America, Volume I and II (Optimized for Kindle)
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Grove Art)
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That was Walter Lippmann’s point of view, for example, to mention probably the dean of American journalists—he referred to the population as a “bewildered herd”: we have to protect ourselves from “the rage and trampling of the bewildered herd.” And the way you do it, Lippmann said, is by what he called the “manufacture of consent”—if you don’t do i
... See morePeter Mitchell • Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale Agrarian Studies Series)
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A natural forest is illegible. A tangle of plants. This is inconvenient from the standpoint of harvesting lumber. How do you quantify yield? Can you even make a meaningful map of this... See more
Gordon Brander • Soulbinding Like a State
No one (except perhaps a tyrant) has a private life that can survive public exposure by hostile directive.