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Quotation of the Day…

… is from page 811 of Paul Johnson’s splendid 1991 book, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830:

The common assumption is that intellectuals and soldiers are natural enemies.  Not so.  Intellectuals tend to be fascinated by power, not least military power, and are only too anxious to harness the soldiers to the chariots of their ideas.  Equally, the soldiers and the politicians who both direct and are carried along by them have no objection to attaching intellectual horsepower to their gun carriages.

Yep.

And ordinary people, accepting without questioning the creationist myth that consciously exercised centralized power must lie at least at the root – if not spread thoroughly throughout the branches – of social order, accede to the schemes of intellectuals teamed with soldiers and other deployers of force.

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