To be governed...

Oath Breakers

Charles Burris

Lew Rockwell once said that all governments would be totalitarian if they could get away with it. “Ours” is definitely trying. With an imperial presidency, an acquiescent Congress, a complaisant and compliant judiciary, an officious and intrusive bureaucracy, and a national security state that is making us less secure at home by its reckless interventionism abroad, are plunging us toward tyranny and civilizational collapse. Their solemn oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution were either hollow empty words they mumbled with their fingers callously crossed behind their backs or uttered with an arrogant hubris they misbelieved to be patriotic zeal regarding the true meaning of duty, honor, and fidelity towards that decaying parchment document and what it stands for.


“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”

― Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1851)

General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.”

Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/oath-breakers/