“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
(Mussolini)
Leave it to Il Duce to sum up the chasm between extremism – of both the Left and Right – and the moderate realism of Alexis de Tocqueville (d. 1859):
“What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?”
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