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| Gaetano Mosca April 1, 1858—Nov. 8, 1941 Sicilian jurist and philosopher |
It is natural for young people to feel a need of enthusiasms, of having before them a type, a model, that represents an ideal of virtue and perfection which each one seeks, as far as he can, to imitate. The model that has been set before the eyes of young people in France, and in other countries, has not been, as it could not have been, the knight who dies for his lady, his faith and his king. Much less has it been the public servant, the magistrate, the soldier, the uncompromising custodian of law and order. It has been the militant revolutionist pure and simple. It has been the champion of liberty and equality, the man who has fought tyrants and rebelled against constituted powers, who in defeat has endured their persecution intrepidly and in victory has overthrown and often supplanted them.Reprinted from The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca, p.311-312, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1939
In view of the fact that sympathy for rebels has been so assiduously cultivated, and that our school children have been taught that everything that rebels have done has been noble and generous, it is natural that currents of sentiments and ideas in each new generation should incline toward doctrines that justify rebellion and teach its necessity. No Bastilles are left to storm. No Swiss Guards of a Charles X are left to be chased from the Louvre. Italian, Greek, Polish unities are all but achieved. The Neapolitan government that was defined as the negation of God is a memory so remote that people are even beginning to judge it impartially. In a world so free of monsters, the spirit of rebellion can only turn upon institutions that have survived old revolution, or upon the men who stand at the head of them and have often been old revolutionaries themselves.
Also see: Ponderable Quote From "The Ruling Class" by Gaetano Mosca
