"Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed."
With those words, and a brief, brilliant legal career, Étienne de la Boétie set the stage for centuries of resistance to tyranny. That resistance played out just down the street in Nashua, New Hampshire, even as freedom lovers were announcing an award for the long-dead "freedom philosopher."
"I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over," he wrote, "but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces."
These legendary phrases have repeatedly reached out from the 16th century and inspired revolts of nearly every kind. Today, they inspired another milestone for the French writer.
"The Politics of Obedience is certainly worthy of the honor it receives," says Jeremy Furbish of FreedomBookClub.com
Furbish, or more accurately the folks who use his website, just awarded La Boétie's classic "Book of the Year" for 2009. The prize goes to books which rank the highest on surveys conducted throughout the year at FreedomBookClub.com.
As talk show host Gardner Goldsmith announced this award at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum...he reminded his audience that two of their number were missing, having just been arrested a few miles away. They were protesting the seizure of a pot smoker, using La Boétie's formula of peaceful non-cooperation. Both were released that night.
"The Politics of Obedience: the Discourse of Voluntary Servitude," was written while La Boétie was a law student at the University of Orleans. It was a free-thinking hot spot of its time. His teacher was branded a heretic and died at the stake during a Huguenot rebellion in 1559.
"The Politics of Obedience, in its very timelessness, made the work ever available to be applied," continues Furbish. La Boétie was heavily influential in the Huguenot uprisings in later 16th century
France and the enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries. Furbish believes he had a profound impact on Gandhi as well.
Other books vanquished but honored in this contest:
Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon, by Michael E. Veal
What Has Government Done to Our Money, and the Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, by Murray N. Rothbard
I Must Speak Out: The Best of the Voluntaryist, by Carl Watner
The Market for Liberty, by Linda and Morris Tannehill
Live Free of Die: Essays on Liberty by New Hampshire Libertarians by Gardner Goldsmith and Paul Goldsmith
Alongside Night, by J. Neil Schulman
Against Intellectual Monopoly, by David K. Levine and Michele Boldrin
Drop Dead Gorgeous, by Wayne Simmons
Songs of Freedom: Tales from the Revolution, by Darryl W. Perry, Jim
Davidson, Tom Woods, Voltairine de Cleyre (and more)
End the Fed, by Ron Paul
Our Enemy, The State, by Albert Jay Nock
Ultimately La Boétie's , seemingly ancient efforts outshone all these prodigies in the contest. He was a mighty butterfly, whose wing-flapping half-a-millennium in the past...continues to trigger hurricanes of noncooperation.
For more information:
http://FreedomBookClub.com
The Free Talk Live BBS
Author
Topic: Near 500 Years later, La Boétie still fuels revolt (Read 1050 times)