“Servitude and mastery result from the struggle between the strong and the weak…and Blue Heaven has nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

In the Republic, Plato discusses with Adeimantus the benefits of specialization and the division of labor.

When the Roman Empire collapsed, society persisted and new regimes thrived.  Europe quickly became a patchwork of new and competing socio-political orders.

When the Roman Empire collapsed, society persisted and new regimes thrived.  Europe quickly became a patchwork of new and competing socio-political orders.

“Adamnan of [Iona] will help you, O women!

Give unto your prince all the good things that are you!”

“[A] Continent…will be discovered and conquered by your means…and since you expose yourself to such danger to serve us, you should be rewarded for it.”

The decrees of a tyrant are not law, but violent lawlessness. Are the decrees of a democratic legislature any better?

“This rule is the law of Nature…reduced by Christ our Savior…:  You will love the Lord your God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself.”

“Evil customs (be they never so old) are not to be suffered, but to be utterly abolished: and none may prescribe to do evil, whether king or subject.”

“Wicked princes [are much like] warthogs, which if they be suffered to have their snouts in the ground…will suddenly have in all the body.”

“For punishment of a tyrant among Christian men, the question is, whether it is lawful to kill such a monster and cruel beast covered with the shape of a man.”

“O miserable England[, plagued] by a tyrant…But how much more miserable shall you be by the wars that are most certain to come…God be merciful unto thee.”

Étienne de La Boétie, best known as the subject of Michel de Montaigne’s essay “On Friendship,” argues that political power is founded on people’s obedience.

La Boétie identifies several ways tyrants secure the cooperation of the oppressed.

“Navigation, trade, and commerce, in…the West-Indies, and Africa” is reserved exclusively to “the common united strength of the merchants…one General Company.”

Life in early colonial Virginia was as nasty, brutish, and short as it got for seventeenth-century Englishmen.

English monarchs used revenues from corporate charters to work around parliamentary control of the power to tax.

Native Americans lived happier and freer, “being void of care, which torments…so many Christians: They are not delighted in baubles, but in useful things.”