Fahrenheit 9/11

Indeed, the only way to secure the continuance of a popular state is to keep it at war, and create enemies if they do not already exist. This was the chief reason which led Scipio the Younger to try and stop the razing of Carthage. He had the wisdom to foresee that a warlike and aggressive people like the Romans would fall to making war on each other, once all external enemies were disposed of.

Jean Bodin, 1576


Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often driven by want and prompted by envy to invade his possessions. (...) The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, requires the establishment of civil government.

(...)

The rich, in particular, are necessarily interested to support that order of things, which can alone secure them in the possession of their advantages.

Adam Smith, 1776


Governments and the ruling classes no longer take their stand on right or even on the semblance of justice, but on a skilful organization carried to such a point of perfection by the aid of science that everyone is caught in the circle of violence and has no chance of escaping from it. This circle is made up now of four methods of working upon men, joined together like the limes of a chain ring.

(...)

The fourth method consists in selecting from all the men who have been stupefied and enslaved by the three former methods a certain number, exposing them to special and intensified means of stupefaction and brutalisation, and so making them into a passive instrument for carrying out all the cruelties and brutalities needed by the government. This result is attained by taking them at the youthful age when men have not had time to form clear and definite principles of morals, and removing them from all natural and human conditions of life, home, family and kindred, and useful labor. They are shut up together in barracks, dressed in special clothes, and worked upon by cries, drums, music, and shining objects to go through certain daily actions invented for this purpose, and by this means are brought into an hypnotic condition in which they cease to be men and become mere senseless machines, submissive to the hypnotiser. These physically vigorous young men (in these days of universal conscription, all young men), hypnotized, armed with murderous weapons, always obedient to the governing authorities and ready for any act of violence at their command, constitute the fourth and principal method of enslaving men.

Leo Tolstoy, 1893