Abstract
At times, politics and disorder seem to be synonymous. Aristotle concluded a long time ago that man is by nature a political animal. In systems terms, this means that each individual will exercise initiative—usually to his or her own advantage—in a sociological group that strives to mold if not subdue that initiative for the benefit of the group and its other members. Strives. The political animal usually finds a way to avoid being caged.
A portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others—which makes them cooperate with each other more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively.
—John Stuart Mill
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Notes
General Accounting Office Special Report GAO/HR-93–13, Internal Revenue Service Receivables, December 1992. The figure for 1992 was $111 billion. Subsequent reports indicate that the annual rate has risen to $130 billion.
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (chap. 23), Great Books of the Western World, vol. 40 [2nd ed., 1990, vol. 37].
Gene Smith, When the Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson (New York: William Morrow Company, 1964), pp. 53–83ff.
Durant, Age of Napoleon, p. 72.
At the $4.25 minimum-wage rate (scheduled to be increased), annual earnings equal to 1000 times that wage are $8,840,000. Hundreds of celebrities make more than that.
Durant, Age of Napoleon, p. 153.
Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (London: Michael Joseph, Ltd., 1984), pp. 246–259.
The incident occurred when Captain Charles Wilkes, commanding the U.S.S. San Jacinto, boarded and searched the British vessel Trent on the high seas, taking two Confederate diplomats into custody. Great Britain vaguely threatened to declare war on the Union unless the United States apologized and released the prisoners. Lincoln complied, though the majority of the cabinet and perhaps the Union citizenry were against it.
Mostafa Rejai, “The Professional Revolutionary,” Air University Review, March-April 1980, p. 90.
George F. Will, The Leveling Wind (New York: Viking, 1994), p. 352.
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© 1997 George M. Hall
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Hall, G.M. (1997). Nations and Government. In: The Ingenious Mind of Nature. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6020-7_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6020-7_17
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