Government & History

Since men love freedom, and the freedom of individuals in society requires some regulation of conduct, the first condition of freedom is its limitation; make it absolute and it dies in chaos. So the prime task of government is to establish order; organized central force is the sole alternative to incalculable and disruptive force in private hands. Power naturally converges to a center, for it is ineffective when divided, diluted, and spread.
Monarchy seems to be the most natural kind of government. If we were to judge forms of government from their prevalence and duration in history we should have to give the palm to monarchy; democracies, by contrast, have been hectic interludes.
When it is hereditary it is likely to be more prolific of stupidity, nepotism, irresponsibility, and extravagance than of nobility or statesmanship
The complexity of contemporary states seems to break down any single mind that tries to master it.
Hence most governments have been oligarchies—ruled by a minority, chosen either by birth, as in aristocracies, or by a religious organization, as in theocracies, or by wealth, as in democracies.
If the majority of abilities is contained in a minority of men, minority government is as inevitable as the concentration of wealth; the majority can do no more than periodically throw out one minority and set up another.
In some cases outworn and inflexible institutions seem to require violent overthrow. But in most instances the effects achieved by the revolution would apparently have come without it through the gradual compulsion of economic developments
Since wealth is an order and procedure of production and exchange rather than an accumulation of (mostly perishable) goods, and is a trust (the “credit system”) in men and institutions rather than in the intrinsic value of paper money or checks, violent revolutions do not so much redistribute wealth as destroy it. There may be a redivision of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as in the old. The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.
Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign. Education has spread, but intelligence is perpetually retarded by the fertility of the simple. A cynic remarked that “you mustn’t enthrone ignorance just because there is so much of it.” However, ignorance is not long enthroned, for it lends itself to manipulation by the forces that mold public opinion. It may be true, as Lincoln supposed, that “you can’t fool all the people all the time,” but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
Democracy is today sounder than ever before. It has defended itself with courage and energy against the assaults of foreign dictatorship, and has not yielded to dictatorship at home. But if war continues to absorb and dominate it, or if the itch to rule the world requires a large military establishment and appropriation, the freedoms of democracy may one by one succumb to the discipline of arms and strife. If race or class war divides us into hostile camps, changing political argument into blind hate, one side or the other may overturn the hustings with the rule of the sword. If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all; and a martial government, under whatever charming phrases, will engulf the democratic world.

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Biology & History

History is a fragment of biology: the life of man is a portion of the vicissitudes of organisms on land and sea.
We are subject to the processes and trials of evolution, to the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest to survive.
So the first biological lesson o...

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Religion & History

Nature and history do not agree with our conceptions of good and bad; they define good as that which survives, and bad as that which goes under.
Religion does not seem at first to have had any connection with morals. It was fear that first made the gods. Only when priests used these ...

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Character & History

Society is founded not on the ideals but on the nature of man, and the constitution of man rewrites the constitutions of states.
Human beings are normally equipped by “nature” with positive and negative instincts, whose function it is to preserve the individual, the family, the group...

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History & The Earth

Human history is a brief spot in space, and its first lesson is modesty.
History is subject to geology.
Climate no longer controls us but it limits us.
Geography is the matrix of history, its nourishing mother and disciplining home.
The influence of geographi...

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Economics & History

All economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.

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Hesitations

The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding.
We must operate with partial knowledge, and be provisionally content with probabilities.
Since man is a moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the earth, a spore of ...

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History & War

War is one of the constants of History and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. “Polemos pater panton” said Heracleitus; war, or competition, is the father of all things, the potent source of ideas, inventions, institutions, and states.
Peace is an unstable equilibrium,...

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