/lit/ - Literature

>Sophistry and cleverness are an aid to lawlessness; rites and music are symptoms of dissipations and licence; kindness and benevolence are the foster‑mother of transgressions; employment and promotion are opportunities for the rapacity of the wicked. If lawlessness is aided, it becomes current; if there are symptoms of dissipation and licence, they will become the practice; if there is a foster‑mother for transgressions, they will arise; if there are opportunities for the rapacity of the wicked, they will never cease. If these eight things come together, the people will be stronger than the government; but if these eight things are non‑existent in a state, the government will be stronger than the people. If the people are stronger than the government, the state is weak; if the government is stronger than the people, the army is strong. For if these eight things exist, the ruler has no one to use for defence and war, with the result that the state will be dismembered and will come to ruin; but if there are not these eight things, the ruler has the wherewithal for defence and war, with the result that the state will flourish and attain supremacy.

Democracy is the closest thing a nation can come to anarchy. Has a democracy ever won a major war against another power of equal size? A strong unified state will always win against a disorganized stateless democracy. The only reason British parliamentarianism was so successful was because historically it was an oligarchy of ruling elites headed by a king. Even the prime minister of Britain was chosen on merit by the king up until around WW2. Technically they still are, but the British monarch has lost most its power by now. The state needs a learned minority to lead it, not the uneducated multitudes.