Posted by
Hueguenot on Monday, October 15, 2007 1:31:40 PM
For quite awhile, I have thought that one could classify people as one of three types.
The first type live and work under the conviction that for a free society to function, each person must govern himself. They do so with self-restraint, and raise their children to do likewise.
The second type, for whatever reason, cannot or will not govern themselves, are a constant danger to others, and are constantly impinging on their liberty.
The first type believe that one of the few legitimate roles of government is to restrain the predations of the second type upon the first. The first would have an easier time dealing with the second but for the presence of a third.
This third type may or may not govern themselves but can always be identified by a feverish desire to govern others. Often they belong to a kind of "governing class," and a lack of belief in either God or kings does not preclude their operating as if by divine right. Unfortunately, they act out their desires to govern others with a baffling indifference to restraining the second type of person and a perverse interest in directing the lives of the first type, all the while exempting themselves from the strictures they impose on both.
The first type can handle the second type, but God save us all from the third.