Perhaps you have heard of Machiavelli, 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527 Now you should hear of Étienne de la Boétie November 1, 1530 – August 18, 1563.
Machiavelli instructs Princes how to rule and stay in power.
La Boétie instructs us how to rid ourselves of Tyrants and secure the liberty of the individual.
You decide which instruction is more important to you.
La Boétie planted a valuable seed. A seed that he knew would not bear fruit in his own time. His discourse was caled: The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.
This fruit is now mature for those who can taste it's addictive sweetness.
I am so very pleased to have come across this familiar friend again.
I raise my glass in toast to you Monsieur Étienne de la Boétie and to your essential perceptions, that remain as fresh and poignant across the centuries as fresh and potent as herbs picked from the garden of mankind's most noble aspirations.
Excerpts and my thoughts based on Murray N. Rothbard's Introduction. http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.asp
[Introduction to The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de la Boétie, written 1552-53. Translated by Harry Kurz for the edition that carried Rothbard’s introduction, New York: Free Life Editions, 1975
Reason, La Boétie explains, teaches us the justice of equal liberty for all. For reason shows us that nature has, among other things, granted us the common gift of voice and speech. Therefore, “there can be no further doubt that we are all naturally free,” and hence it cannot be asserted that “nature has placed some of us in slavery. Sounds like America's Founding fathers stating that our natural right to free speech PRECEDES the Government and therefore is not granted by government.
The tyrant, indeed, has nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had not cooperation from you?
La Boétie concludes his exhortation by assuring the masses that to overthrow the tyrant they need not act, nor shed their blood. They can do so “merely by willing to be free.”
I'm thinking here about Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. .... Non-violent Non-cooperation with oppression. A
ll rule rests on the consent of the subject masses, and the great value of natural liberty. For if tyranny really rests on mass consent, then the obvious means for its overthrow is simply by mass withdrawal of that consent. The weight of tyranny would quickly and suddenly collapse under such a non-violent revolution.
As for elected they would seem to be “more bearable,” but they are always intriguing to convert the election into a hereditary despotism, and hence “surpass other tyrants ... in cruelty, because they find no other means to impose this new tyranny than by tightening control and removing their subjects so far from any notion of liberty that even if the memory of it is fresh it will soon be eradicated.
Does this sound like The Patroit Act?
Moreover, he states that, “having several masters, according to the number one has, amounts to being that many times unfortunate
In modern times, La Boétie adds, rulers present a more sophisticated version of such propaganda, for “they never undertake an unjust policy, even one of some importance, without prefacing it with some pretty speech concerning public welfare and common good.” Reinforcing ideological propaganda is deliberate mystification.
Spreading Democracy?
Remember , this is written in the mid 1500's !
It could have been written a few hours ago.....
Properly pronounced not, as might be thought, La Bo-ay- see, but rather La Bwettie (with the hard t).
280 days till Oct. 28, 2011 - Dr. Carl Calleman Alternative Mayan Calendar End date
700 days till Dec. 21, 2012 - Conventional Mayan Long Count Calendar End Date
High Mayan Council Predicts Physical Pole Shift anytime from now until 2015
426,750 Years till the end of the Vedic Age of Kali Yuga (Cycle of 4 Yuga's/Ages)
13-Moon Date: Moon 7 Day 11 . Gregorian Date: Jan.20. 2011
बेगिन विजार्ड वावेस्पेल्ल (२) ऑफ़ तिमेलेस्स्नेस.
Shawn O'Neal © Copyright 2011 Republish with author credit .
