Posted on 06/11/2022 8:31:43 PM PDT by neverevergiveup
Better to Die Than Not Live Free
Everything gives umbrage to a tyrant.
If a citizen have popularity, he is becoming a rival to the prince. Consequently, he is stirring up civil strife, and is a suspect. If, on the contrary, he flee popularity and seclude himself in the corner of his own fireside, this retired life makes him remarked, and he is a suspect.
If he is a rich man, there is an imminent peril that he may corrupt the people with his largesses, and he becomes a suspect. Are you poor? How then! Invincible emperors, this man must be closely watched; for no one is so enterprising as he who has nothing. He is a suspect! Are you in character somber, melancholy, or neglectful? Then you are afflicted by the condition of public affairs, and are a suspect.
If, on the contrary, the citizen enjoy himself and have resultant indigestion, he is only seeking diversion because his ruler has had an attack of gout, which makes his majesty realize his age. Therefore he is a suspect. Is he virtuous and austere in his habits? Ah! he is then a new Brutus with his Jacobin severity, censuring the amiable and well-groomed court, and he is a suspect.
If he be a philosopher, an orator, or a poet, it will serve him ill to be of greater renown than those who govern, for can it be permitted to pay more attention to the author living on a fourth floor than to the emperor in his gilded palace? Such a one is a suspect.
Has one made a reputation as a warrior—he is but the more dangerous by reason of his talent. There are many resources with an inefficient general. If he is a traitor he can not so quickly deliver his army to the enemy. But an officer of merit like an Agricola—if he be disloyal, not one can be saved. Therefore, all such had better be removed and promptly placed at a distance from the army.
Tacitus tells us that there was anciently in Rome a law specifying the crimes of "lèse-majest." That crime carried with it the punishment of death. Under the Roman republic treasons were reduced to four kinds, viz.: abandoning an army in the country of an enemy; exciting sedition; the maladministration of the public treasury; and the impairment by inefficiency of the majesty of the Roman people.
But the Roman emperors needed more clauses, in order that they might place cities and citizens under proscription. Augustus was the first to extend the list of offenses that were "lèse-majest" or revolutionary, and under his successors extensions were made until none was exempt. The slightest action was a state offense.
A simple look, sadness, compassion, a sigh, or even silence became "lèse-majest" and disloyalty. One must needs show joy at the execution of a parent or friend lest one should perish.
Citizens, liberty must be a great benefit, since Cato disemboweled himself rather than have a king. And what king can we compare in greatness and heroism to the Csar whose rule Cato would not endure? Rousseau truly says: "There is in liberty as in innocence and virtue a satisfaction one can only feel in their enjoyment and a pleasure which can cease only when they have been lost."
Stupid enough to post this as NEWS, apparently.
Written 13 years AFTER Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” speech before the Virginia house of Burgesses.
Gee, thanks.
You’re welcome.
Stupid enough to not know that if you have any other nationality you are not naturally an American.
Natural born citizens only have ONE.
That was the whole point of the clause.
DesMoulins was one of Robespierre’s buds until Max decided he and the rest of the Girondins were not pure enough for the incorruptable’s taste. He and Danton and a passel of their cronies got shortened a head. The Girondins were just another group of terrorists. Danton, who for reasons I cannot fathom is constantly presented as some sort of tragic figure, was personally responsible for organizing and financing the September Massacres to make sure the government could not go back on its revolutionary trajectory. Being weepy for Camille because he had a pretty wife and all is like people who make that slick weasel Bukharin some sort of hero and get emotional about Godfather Joe offing him with his Marxist know it all buddies.
Well it almost sounds like they want us to get so depressed we just off ourselves. They want us dead any way possible.
At least fight and make them work for it. May take some with you.
Freedom is an illusion.
Three years after this was written the whiskey rebellion started.
Our version of bread and circuses is more effective than anything ancient Rome ever attempted or could even imagine as possible.
We actually did things like making the poorest people the most likely to be obese, a condition that has never existed in all of history until now.
Freegards
This.
We aren’t doing any good if we’re dead.
Humblegunner, Take your medicine!
I’ve been saying for a while that I am glad to be nearer to the end than the beginning. The way things look like they are headed, the end looks pretty good. That doesn’t mean I won’t fight the good fight.
Better for THEM to die if we can’t live free
It’s a very simple solution. And I predict many of them are going to find out just how simple it is
Yeah, thats a better solution
“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
-- Emiliano Zapata
(It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.)
“Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods”
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome
They prefer security to freedom. Secure that someone will always permit, and provide for, their appetites.
1984 is the stick. Brave New World (sex & soma) is the carrot.
Gen. Patton would have said it is better to kill than not live free. Just saying.
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