Cowardice & Obsolescence

A tyrant is a craven who fears the unknown and seeks to defeat it by force exercised as control, but there is far more that is unknown than known—and always will be—so the tyrant is always a failure and civilization develops despite him (sometimes around him), never because of him. The truly enlightened can never suffer a tyrant, because they see all too clearly that his influence is entirely destructive, based as it is upon the repression of autonomy and the imposition of the unsought and the undesired upon the ill-defended.

Progress will continue to derive, as it ever has, from the aggregate enthusiasms not of bankers or corporations but of the curious and the creative, the idealists and the idea-ists. Change is both driven and adopted by individuals, and nations and societies which recognize and defend the inherent rights of individuals and do not interfere with their broadest freedom to do as they please shall reap the greatest benefit. Conversely, those which seek to impose order on disorder through the enforcement of artificial and ill-conceived limits shall see an increasingly limited production as a result, accompanied by a slide toward social sterility and global irrelevance.

A nation shall only be moral so long as it promotes and adheres to moral notions, be influential so long as its ideas are persuasive and satisfying, be a leader so long as it moves forward. When it begins to pervert its power and wealth merely to pursue more of same, it shall soon be lost, whatever the glory of its past.