B

“You do not imagine that I wish to confine power, authority, and distinction to blood and names and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. . . . Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it, and would condemn to obscurity everything formed to diffuse luster and glory around a state. Woe to that country, too, that, passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation as a preferable title to command. Everything ought to be open, but not indifferently, to every man. No rotation; no appointment by lot; no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty or to accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.”
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

“The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial, positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state and the due distribution of its powers a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician rather than the professor of metaphysics.

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate...”
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

“Çift Sütun (Twin pillar) politikası, Nixon'ın başkanlıgı döneminde Ortadogu'daki Amerikan çıkarlarını korumak için geliştirilen yaklaşım. Bu dönemde
ABD, Sovyetler'in Ortadogu'ya yayılması konusunda ortak endişeleri paylaşan Suud i Arabistan ve Iran yönetimlerini destekleyerek Amerika'nın bölgesel
çıkarlarını korumayı benimsemiştir. Söz konusu politika, Suudi Arabistan'ın
petrole dayalı güçlü finans kaynakları ile Iran'ın büyüyen askeri gücü birleştirilerek Körfez'de Amerikan politikalarını uygulayacak bir araç tesis etme fikrine dayanmaktadır.”
― Selin M. Bölme, İncirlik Üssü: ABD’nin Üs Politikası ve Türkiye

“Cox'a göre bir yapının temelinde maddi güç ilişkileri varsa,
bir zorlama potansiyeli de vardır. Burada güçlü olan eger gerekli oldugunu düşünürse, zayıfa iradesini kuvvet kullanarak diretebilmektedir. Ancak zayıf olan, var olan güç ilişkilerini meşru
kabul ederse, o durumda güçlünün kuvvete başvurmasına gerek kalmaz. Güçlüler misyonlarını "baskın olmak" ya da "diktatorya kurmak" olarak görmez, "hegemonya oluşturmak" olarak görürlerse bunu başarabilirler. Başka bir deyişle, zayıfların
kendi liderliklerine gösterdikleri rızayı korumak için tavizler
vermeye hazırlarsa ve eger liderliklerini kendi özel çıkarlarından çok evrensel ve genel çıkariara hizmet ediyor olarak sunabilirlerse, baskınlıklarını kanıtlamak için kuvvete başvurmak
zorunda kalmayabilirler.”
― selin m. bölme