tomjmaxwell on Nostr: “When a people is constituted – that is, ordered by the principle of sovereignty ...

“When a people is constituted – that is, ordered by the principle of sovereignty – it is collectively responsible for maintaining this sovereign order, maintaining the laws. Within this space of sovereignty, responsibility is collective. Someone who does not rise up against tyrant and crime, but allows crimes to happen, himself becomes a tyrant and a traitor. ‘The cruelty of pity’ is therefore not just a figure of rhetoric; it means that allowing political crime means becoming criminal oneself. The logic of natural right thus associates a theoretical humanism (it is in the name of humanity that one must act) with a situational anti-humanism (the life of a man or a people is worth nothing if they betray their humanity). The sentiment of revolutionary humanity does not lead to protecting suffering bodies above everything else, regardless of who and where they might be. The object is to protect above all humanity as a group constituted politically by its respect for declared natural right, from the most local to the most cosmopolitan level. We might say that this sentiment of humanity is entirely on the side of political life, sometimes accepting the need to despise the ‘fine day of life’ that may conceal within it the oppression of the whole human race.”

- Sophie Wahnich, In Defence of the Terror