The Line between Freedom and Tyranny

The Roman People had a saying (Most Honoured Lord) which came from the mouth of Marcus , the Censor, and expressed the prejudice against Kings which they had conceived from the memory of the Tarquins and the principles of their commonwealth; the saying was that Kings should be classed as predatory animals. But what sort of animal was the Roman People? By the agency of citizens who took the names Africanus, Asiaticus, Macedonicus, Achaicus and so on from the nations they had robbed, that people plundered nearly all the world. So the words of Pontius Telesinus are no less wise than Cato's. As he reviewed the ranks of his army in the battle against Sulla at the Colline Gate, he cried that Rome itself must be demolished and destroyed, remarking that there would never be an end to Wolves preying upon the liberty of Italy, unless the forest in which they took refuge was cut down. There are two maxims which are surely both true: Man is a God to Man, and Man is a Wolf to Man. The former is true of the relations of citizens with each other, the latter of relations between commonwealths. In justice and charity, the virtues of peace, citizens show some likeness to God. But between commonwealths, the wickedness of bad men compels the good too to have recourse, for their own protection, to the virtues of war, which are violence and fraud, i.e. to the predatory nature of beasts.--Thomas , from "On the Citizen"

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Subheadings for all posts on Standing Rule

Every post will have, at the least, one subheading and, at the most, three subheadings.

The three possible subheadings are:
1) A matter before the Court, meaning what follows will be about current events or other matters in the news that are important to me or that I have something important to say about.
2) Let them eat cake, meaning what follows will be about matters trivial, as compared to the first part.
3) Cato esse, quam videri, bonus malebat, meaning what follows will be a polemic of some sort, usually related to political theory or economics. I leave it to you, gentle reader, to discern the meaning of the Latin phrase.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Must read

A matter before the Court
has just posted this knock-out on her blog.

Scary stuff, and I see no reason to doubt any part of this piece. One portion sticks out at me:
2. All negotiations by Republicans had to go through - the architect of 40 years of failed immigration policy - promising the same result we have received before: a terribly broken immigration system
For those unfamiliar with the history of immigration policy, it was Kennedy that championed the . And when he did, he promised that because of this reform:
... Our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same.... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, S. 500 will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia.... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.
How does that "final analysis" look now, Mr. Senator?

Posted by robeiae at 11:13 AM

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