#tyranny

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. ↗

— Edmund Burke

#laws #sort #tyranny #worst

BLOODY LIPS The bloody wound Of the gladiator Gurgles out life's end. The cries of acclimations from the stands Fill the sky with raging tigers. Waving their arms about to incite the masses The aging notables add an air of dignity to the arena. Making their separate entries they K N E E L over the still-warm corpses Of the young. Their withered lips they pose Upon the fresh flowing wounds And, to prolong their lives – so they believe, Suck, ravenously suck out the blood, blood, blood. Fresh blood from the sun Flowing into filthy veins As into sewage pipes, And thus the Heart of the Nation is abandoned. ↗

— Visar Zhiti

#bloodsport #gladiators #oppression #tyranny #vampire

There are only two roads, victory for the working class, freedom, or victory for the fascists which means tyranny. Both combatants know what's in store for the loser. ↗

— Buenaventura Durruti

#class #combatants #fascists #freedom #know

Tens of thousands of brave Americans died to break the chains of British tyranny so that the principles of our Declaration of Independence could take fold and flourish in the birth of a new nation. ↗

— Jim Gerlach

#brave #break #british #chains #could

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. ↗

— John Hay

#him #rarely #resists #seen #tyranny

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#fears #government #liberty #people #tyranny

Sometimes labeling is only useful, like with OCD. Once you're labeled you can be treated. On other occasions labeling leads to tyranny, like with childhood bipolar disorder in the U.S. ↗

— Jon Ronson

#childhood #disorder #labeled #labeling #leads

The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles. ↗

— Jeff Cooper

#bill-of-rights #constitution #evil #freedom #good-and-evil

By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of central planning was, because ti can't think. The comedy of law's sterile logic--large POISON signs warning against common sand, spending twenty-two years on pesticide review and deciding next to nothing, allowing fifty-year-old white men to sue for discrimination--is all too reminiscent of the old jokes we used to hear about life in the Eastern bloc. Judgement is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it. ↗

— Philip K. Howard

#bureaucrats #human-judgment #law #regulation #responsibility

As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#bigotry #despotism #equality #hypocrisy #know-nothings