Rousseau, Cont.

Herein follow the last of the quotes from The Social Contract. I don't really want to add commentary for them; just putting them out there to be contemplated is enough.

2-9. …A body which is too big for its constitution gives way and falls crushed under its own weight.

2-10. Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.

3-1. I warn the reader that this chapter requires careful reading, and that I am unable to make myself clear to those who refuse to be attentive. (IMO, this should be attached to every PMSO document that goes out, or better yet, edited and tattooed on my forehead.) J

3-2. In a perfect act of legislation, the individual or particular will should be at zero; the corporate will belonging to the government should occupy a very subordinate position; and, consequently, the general or sovereign will should always predominate and should be the sole guide of all the rest. (I wonder what our current legislatorial ratio would be.)

3-4. Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.

3-6. With a long enough lever, the world could be moved with a single finger; to sustain it needs the shoulders of Hercules.

3-15. As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home: when it is necessary to meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home. By reason of idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to enslave their country and representatives to sell it.

3-15. In a well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies: under a bad government no one cares to stir a step to get to them, because no one is interested in what happens there, because it is foreseen that the general will will not prevail, and lastly because domestic cares are all-absorbing.

4-1. When, among the happiest people in the world, bands of peasants are seen regulating affairs of State under an oak, and always acting wisely, can we help scorning the ingenious methods of other nations, which make themselves illustrious and wretched with so much art and mystery?

4-1. Finally, when the State, on the eve of ruin, maintains only a vain, illusory and formal existence, when in every heart the social bond is broken, and the meanest interest brazenly lays hold of the sacred name of "public good," the general will becomes mute: all men, guided by secret motives, no more give their views as citizens than if the State had never been; and iniquitous decrees directed solely to private interest get passed under the name of laws.

4-3. …In a State that is well constituted, [good sense, justice, and integrity] are common to all the citizens.

4-7. Men always love what is good or what they find good; it is in judging what is good that they go wrong.