Lawrence Lessig Quotes
When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.
Lawrence Lessig, Founder of Stanford University Center for Internet and Society, Founder and chairman of the Creative Commons, Keynote address, symposium sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, October 10, 1998
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The Irish had been concentrating so long on fighting for independence that when they got it, they were not prepared to operate a government and different jurisdictions scrambled for power, most not wanting the control government to have much if any.
This is a very important quotation. It explains in great part, why there have been so few internal revolutions in Muslim countries. Al-Ghazi’s interpretation of Islamic Law and Theology concluded that even if the ruler is incompetent, corrupt, or destructive he should be supported and obeyed by all good Muslim citizens. The reason was that anarchy and/or chaos was an evil much worse for the Islamic community. There was one exception in the case of a ruler who was blasphemous or did not follow Islam. Then it was the duty of good Muslims. Since then, the ruler of an Islamic state, first seeks to ingratiated himself with the clergy. In Saudi Arabia, for example, the Royal Family gives enormous sums to all the clerics. They then urge dissidents and would be revolutionaries to accept the Royal Family with its flaws and shortcomings and accept their lack of freedom and human rights. And they tell all that the King and his family are all religious and support Islam. Therefore any revolt would be a tantamount to a sin. The Christian world had a different technique for inhibiting Revolution. Christian rulers claimed the Devine Right of Kings—that God had selected and ordained the king to lead. Regime change was contrary to the word of God. In a sense, the Islamic approach is more intellectually honest and seems to have worked much better than the Christians who have had so many revolutions. Better that is from the rulers point of view. From a democratic, Jeffersonian point of view revolting against an evil ruler was almost a moral obligation, and Al-Ghazali’s principle is all wrong and is keeping the Muslim countries from reaching democracy.
1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor. England had occupied Iraq, expecting to be welcomed by the natives, but like the George W. Bush ill-fated invasion almost a century afterward calls for withdrawal were met by the same rationale for maintaining the occupation. The English policy makers like the Bush administration were expecting a more welcoming reaction. See {585250}.
In this quotation, the conservative hero, Mises, sounded like an anarchist or a libertarian.
This is another example of the anarchistic and libertarian streak in Mises philosophy.
Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but withdrew before the primaries.
