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If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by refra...more

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If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don’t have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going...more

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If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is to hold a...more

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We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens—like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It’s never entirely clear what ...more

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So how do the people resist unjust authority, which, we all agree, they must and should do and have done in the past? The best solution anyone has com...more

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The real origin of the democratic spirit - and most likely, many democratic institutions - lies precisely in those spaces of improvisation just outsid...more

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What if freedom were the ability to make up our minds about what it was we wished to pursue, with whom we wished to pursue it, and what sort of commit...more

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The police can use violence to say, expel citizens from a public park because they are enforcing duly constituted laws. Laws gain their legitimacy fro...more

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This is of course why violence is so often the preferred weapon of the stupid. One might even call it the trump card of the stupid, since (and this is...more

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In American prisons, which are extraordinarily violent places, the most vicious form of punishment is simply to lock a person in an empty room for yea...more