Template:Masses
"The masses continue with an appetite for benefits and the habit of receiving them by way of a rule of force and violence. The people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others... institute the rule of violence; [1] and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder,[2] until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch." [3]
Polybius saw the downfall of the republic a 150 years before the first Emperor of Rome and 175 years before the birth of Jesus Christ and John the Baptist.
The authoritarian State uses force and violence to become the Benefactors of the people. They force one class of citizen to provide for another. Proverbs 23 warned and Christ forbid that type of socialist government.
- ↑ Matthew 11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
- ↑ Luke 16:16 The law and the prophets [were] until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.
- ↑ "But when a new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have become so accustomed to freedom and equality that they no longer value them, and begin to aim at pre-eminence; and it is chiefly those of ample fortune who fall into this error. 6 So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. 7 And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. 8 For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the houses of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; 9 and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch" Polybius: The Histories (composed at Rome around 130 BC)Fragments of Book VI, p289