>
>Spinoza on Politics
>
>...The last end of the state is not to dominate men, nor to restrain
>them by fear; rather it is so to free each man from fear that he may
>live and act with full security and without injury to himself or his
>neighbor. The end of the state, I repeat, is not to make rational
>beings into brute beasts and machines. It is to enable their bodies
>and their minds to function safely. It is to lead men to live by, and
>to exercise, a free reason; that they may not waste their strength in
>hatred, anger and guile, nor act unfairly toward one another. Thus the
>end of the state is really liberty.
>
>Freedom is the goal of the state because the function of the state is
>to promote growth, and growth depends on capacity finding freedom. But
>what if laws stifle growth and freedom? What shall a man do if the
>state, seeking, like every organism or organization, to preserve its
>own existence (which ordinarily means that office-holders seek to keep
>themselves in office), becomes a mechanism of domineering and
>exploitation? Obey even the unjust law, answers Spinoza, if reasonable
>protest and discussion are allowed and speech is left free to secure a
>peaceful change. "I confess that from such freedom inconveniences may
>sometimes arise; but what question was ever settled so wisely that no
>abuses could spring therefrom?" Laws against free speech are
>subversive of all law; for men will not long respect laws which they
>may not criticize.
>
> The more a government strives to
> curtail freedom of speech, the
> more obstinately is it resisted;
> not indeed by the avaricious, . . .
> but by those whom good education,
> sound morality, and virtue
> have rendered more free.
>
>Men in general are so constituted that there is nothing they will
>endure with so little patience as that views which they believe to be
>true should be counted crimes against the laws. . . . Under such
>circumstances they do not think it disgraceful, but most honorable, to
>hold the laws in abhorrence, and to refrain from no action against the
>government. . . . Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's
>neighbor are counted but a laughing-stock; and so far from such laws
>restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, they rather heighten
>them. Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata ["We always resist
>prohibitions, and yearn for what is denied us."].
>
>And Spinoza concludes like a good American constitutionalist: "If
>actions only could be made the ground of criminal prosecutions, and
>words were always allowed to pass free, sedition would be divested of
>every semblance of justification."
>
>The less control the state has over the mind, the better for both the
>citizen and the state. Spinoza, while recognizing the necessity of the
>state, distrusts it, knowing that power corrupts even the
>incorruptible (was this not the name of Robespierre?); and he does not
>look with equanimity upon the extension of its authority from the
>bodies and actions to the souls and thoughts of men; that would be the
>end of growth and the death of the group. So he disapproves of state
>control of education, especially in the universities: "Academies that
>are rounded at the public expense are Instituted not so much to
>cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them. But in a free
>commonwealth arts and sciences will be better cultivated to the full
>if every one that asks leave is allowed to teach publicly, at his own
>cost and risk." How to find a middle way between universities
>controlled by the state and universities controlled by private wealth,
>is a problem which Spinoza does not solve; private wealth had not in
>his day grown to such proportions as to suggest the difficulty. His
>ideal, apparently, was higher education such as once flourished in
>Greece, coming not from institutions but from free individuals
>—"Sophists"— who traveled from city to city and taught independently
>of either public or private control.
>
>Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
>by Daniel C. Dennett
>
http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/067003472X
>
>The Story of Philosophy - WILL DURANT
>
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671739166/
>
>An emperor who cares too much about clothes hires two swindlers who
>promise him the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth.
>This cloth, they tell him, is invisible to anyone who was either
>stupid or unfit for his position. The Emperor cannot see the (non-
>existent) cloth, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing
>stupid; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the
>suit is finished, they dress him in mime. The Emperor then goes on a
>procession through the capital showing off his new "clothes". During
>the course of the procession, a small child cries out, "But he has
>nothing on!" The crowd realizes the child is telling the truth. The
>Emperor, however, holds his head high and continues the procession.
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes
