"Every nation has the government it deserves" -- Joseph de Maistre

[mike12...@gmail.com]

In other words, all politicians we do not like assuming they are corrupt and useless, are elected by us.

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http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2010/01/every-nation-has-government-it-deserves.html

October 27, 2014

"Every nation has the government it deserves" - and the criminals, drugs and donuts...


FAMOUS MISINTERPRETED QUOTE:

"Every nation has the government it deserves."
("Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite.")

Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821)
French-speaking Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer and diplomat
Comment in a letter he wrote in August 1811, later published in Lettres et Opuscules Inedits (1851)

Whenever Election Day draws near, I am reminded of this famous quote by Joseph de Maistre. He wrote this aphorism in 1811 when he was serving as the King of Piedmont-Sardinia's envoy to Russian Czar Alexander I. At that time, Alexander was introducing reforms that were moving Russia toward a European-style constitutional government. It's ironic that Maistre's quote is now commonly used to suggest that citizens should get more involved in politics, actively push for more democratic governments and rebel against tyrants. Maistre disliked democracy and believed that hereditary monarchies were a divinely-sanctioned, superior form of government. For example, he opposed the French Revolution and supported restoration of the French monarchy. And, in his 1811 letter, Maistre was actually expressing his negative views of Alexander's reform policies in Russia. He said a European-style constitutional system would be "over the heads" of the Russian people. One early translation of Maistre's aphorism in that letter was: "Every nation has the government which it is fit for." This paternalistic translation may best capture what Maistre really meant. The more familiar translation -- "Every nation [or 'country'] has the government it deserves" -- is often wrongly attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville and Abraham Lincoln. They never said it. Maistre did, but what he meant by it is probably different than what most people think.

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THE FAMOUS VERSION ABOUT CRIMINALS:

"Society has the criminals it deserves."

("La société a les criminels qu'elle mérite.)
Alexandre Lacassagne (1843-1924)
French physician and criminologist

In "L'homme criminel comparé a l'homme primitif," Bulletin du Lyon médical (1882)

This is often translated as "Every society has the criminals it deserves," to parallel Maistre's quotation. It comes from a longer comment Lacassagne made about the justice system: "Justice shrivels up, prison corrupts and society has the criminals it deserves." ("La justice flétrit, la prison corrompt et la société a les criminels qu'elle mérite.")

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ROBERT KENNEDY'S RESPONSE:

"Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on."
Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968)

U.S. Attorney General and Democratic politician
In his book The Pursuit of Justice (1964)