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Editor's Introduction To:
To A Different Drum

Reginald Bretnor

David Hume may have given us the most important statement in political science.

"As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. 'Tis therefore on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and military governments, as well as the most free and popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the emperor of Rome, might drive his harmless subjects like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination; but he must at least have led his mamalukes or praetorian bands like men, by their opinion."

In a word, one may rule through force and fear; but there must still be some way to convince the police and other agents of power.

Now true: this century has brought us refinements the old tyrants never heard of. The Soviet Union, having learned from the Czars, sets all against all, so that no one knows who is an agent of State Security; and to this they added the innovation of consigning sane people to madhouses in order to cure them of their rebellion. Still, a government based on no more than fear is a government ready for collapse. Arthur Koestler, who had every reason to know, said that the necessary and sufficient condition for the collapse of the Soviet system was the free circulation of ideas within it; hence the Soviet dedication to keeping their subjects ignorant of true conditions and attitudes in the West.

Of course in the far future we will have remedied all that. Government will be rational, and command universal respect.

Perhaps.

 

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