Over the years I’ve discovered that I have a conservative* brain. It believes truly in the rule of law, that institutions despite their failures are necessary for human welfare, that education is good all 'round for everybody, that babies should never be thrown out with bathwater, that consensus is always better than force. Above all, it believes that to be humane will always be better than being cruel.
And yet my heart is a flaming anarchist. I would love nothing better than to take the whole rule by which human society and the natural world have always worked – who may over who must, strength over weakness, power over powerlessness, success over failure – and just throw it all right out the window. Take all the flags, weapons, money, and trophies in the world and just toss ‘em.
[*That's "conservative" in the original sense of the term, not the lazy journalist designation for radical far-right extremists.]
William Blake, The Dance of Albion, c.1794
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