“Violence will not address the grievances of the Egyptian people, and suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away… Around the world governments have an obligation to respond to their citizens… All governments must maintain power through consent, not coercion. That is the single standard by which the people of Egypt will achieve the future they deserve.” — Barack Obama[37][38][39]
Why thumbs down?
Because he doesn’t realize the irony in the bolded text. All governments (assuming we are talking about nation-states) deal in coercion.
Sure, but they can only maintain power through consent.
What do you suppose would happen if they did not have that?
I don’t consent to the theft of taxation, yet if I don’t pay it the government will come to my house and put a lein on it, take me to jail with a semi-automatic weapon in my face.
but there are hundreds of thousands just like you, who hate it, but know that it’s not worth losing your life/freedom over, so you set your jaw and pay up. Even worse, there are a hundred million who don’t care/actively support taxation and the government.
Over all, Barack Obama is correct in saying that he has the consent of the governed here.
Green has a point here. As long as majority of people see government as legitimate, State will exist.
That’s not the point I’m making here. Obama isn’t saying that government is allowed to have strength merely by people believing in it’s legitimacy. Sure that is the case, but that is irrelevant. Obama said it “must”, in a normative sense, ignoring that the very concept of political discourse is how to go about coercing people.
Oh I definitely agree. Totally hypocritical for a man whose salary is extracted involuntarily from people, and spends his time directing mountains of stolen loot to piously lecture on coercion. Laughable, really.
They don’t need the consent of all people to exist. That the state exists and is viewed as legitimate by the majority of people does not mean that it is a government by consent only and in all of its actions. I’m sure most statists would disagree with cetain actions of government, which are therefore not by their consent. I don’t think the US government ever has consent for 100% of its actions by 100% of what it calls its citizens. The government is therefore always partly by force rather than consent. The best discussion of this issue is, I think, Lysander Spooner’s ‘No Treason’.
and La Boetie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.