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YTP PHILOSOPHY
THE
REALITY
"...Popular
sovereignty entails not only rights, but responsibilities
as well: if we are masters of our own society, then it is
up to us to make it work. During most of our history we have
looked upwards-first to the crown and then the state-as if
to a benign parent, ready to scold us when we have been naughty
but also obliged to look after us, "from cradle to grave."
That needs to change. We have to see that habit for what it
is-a feudal leftover, a relic from the time when those at
the bottom looked to their masters for succor. Even the cherished
welfare state has its roots in the old class system, in which
a permanent elite felt obliged to care for a permanent proletariat.
The paternalists and socialists who built it were (and are)
people of the noblest intentions, but their creation turned
too many of us into passive recipients-as grateful for a state
handout as (royal) subjects on a Maundy Thursday, bowing their
heads to receive a purse from a kindly king. We need to make
the move from passive to active, from subject to citizen-from
political infancy to adulthood."
—Jonathon
Freedland
"Bring Home the Revolution"
©2000. You The People,
Inc. All rights reserved.
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