Ambrose Bierce Quotes
POLICE, n. An armed force for protection and participation.
Bierce, Ambrose. The Devil's Dictionary. The Neale Publishing Company, 1911.
His plan was that at the end of WWII, the 4 nations would police the world to be sure that the “4 Policemen” would be sure that no other Hitler could ever even start to invade neighboring countries. Ironically, he strongly suspected that the Nationalist Chinese would not be able to do this for the Pacific and assumed that the US would have to carry that area as well, but he didn’t doubt the ability of the Russians to police Eastern Europe but didn’t suspect that it would be Russia herself who militarily and covertly would encroach on other Eastern European countries.
It is a common misconception that anarchists would not have any societal mechanism for preventing and combatting crime. Anarchists believe in the long run that with anarchism the reasons and motivations for crime will disappear, but until then they generally have been willing to use force to protect against force being used against the citizens. To critics, this seems to be government, and a government which uses force. Anarchists have never well detailed how they would manage such a seemingly conflicting situation.
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. His book The Devil's Dictionary was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature"; and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (also published as In the Midst of Life) was named by the Grolier Club as one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900.
