Politic of the General Will

Some folks get known for things they might rather wish they'd been forgotten for. The Duke of Valencia, Don Ramón María Narváez y Campos, died at Madrid on April 23, 1868. On his deathbed, he was asked to forgive his enemies. He said: "I have no enemies. I had them all shot."

That people found his parting words a scandal tells us that the times were not as inherently evil as the Duke made them. If people had accepted him and his deed as ordinary, nothing would have remained of his parting. He was outrageous. Or but....

Having made that point, an obvious one, we might benefit from looking at the idea of Stoicism as our up-coming "narrative." The man wasn't out in the night shooting people with his pistole. He was Political Power personified. Why? If people disliked him, how did he attain and retain power and act on it as he wished? Yes, we even get things we don't like if we want such. The Duke's enemies must too have wanted such a system. Even if they fought against him, still they must have wanted it or there would not have been such a system in place for them to fight against. If not, it would never have come about in the first place. The Duke's enemies must simply have been on the wrong end of the gun. We get what we want. Protest the outrageousness of it? I'm not convinced.