The Big Picture

"The revolution was Velvet because it stemmed from the beliefs of the common man. It was a cultural groundswell. Too often, revolutions are about power and attempting to grab control of the enforcement structure. They result in less liberty for the populace, as the new regime feeds on the dying carcass of the old establishment. If a revolution is to create more freedom, it must be derived from general popular consent and have as its goal simply to reject the prevailing sovereigns rather than to capture command, much like the American Revolution and Velvet Revolution were. Only then will there be the necessary cultural institutions present for liberty to thrive. Such an outcome is more secession than revolution. Otherwise, the result will be simply bloodshed and more tyranny as the French Revolution and Bolshevik Revolution showed." Unknown
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...participation [in the electoral process] is an instrument of conquest because it encourages people to give their consent to being governed by the state. Stemming from a sense of fair play deeply embedded in the human psyche, people generally obey the principle that those who play the game accept the outcome. Those who participate in politics are no less committed even if they are consistently on the losing side. ...This scheme of politics is remarkably ingenious in the way it exploits the natural inclination of humans toward fair play, loyalty and cooperation in process of subjecting them to conquest. - Alvin Lowi, Jr., originally for Economic.net

...the real occupation of the governors is either to plunder or to steal, as will best answer their purpose ...the art of administering those governments has been so to vary the means of seizing upon private property, as to bring the greatest possible quantity into the public coffers, without exciting insurrections. Those governments which are called despotic, deal more in open plunder; those that call themselves free, and act under the cloak of what they teach the people to reverence as a constitution, are driven to the arts of stealing. These have succeeded better by theft than the others have by plunder; ...Under those constitutional governments the people are more industrious, and create property faster; because they are not sensible in what manner, and in what quantities, it is taken from them. -Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders in the Several States of Europe - Resulting from the Necessity and Propriety of a General Revolution in the Principle of Government," written between 1792 and 1795

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