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Legitimacy Quotes

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Legitimacy Quotes

“What is the ethical legitimacy of any system in which one has to hope the most privileged sliver of global society decides, in large enough numbers, that a sufficient number of children have been murdered to warrant choosing a different brand of couscous? That enough migrants have been caged or drowned to make a particular vacation spot unappealing? That the well-being of Congolese children outranks the desire for ever more powerful smartphones?”

WarSocietyEthicsPrivilegeEveryday LifeDisruptionLegitimacyMigrants
Book:One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
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“The authority of science promotes and encourages the activity of observing, comparing, measuring and ordering the physical characteristics of human bodies. Cartesian epistemology and classical ideals produced forms of rationality, scientificity and objectivity that, though efficacious in the quest for truth and knowledge, prohibited the intelligibility and legitimacy of black equality. In fact, to "think" such an idea was to be deemed irrational, barbaric or mad.”

ThinkingHumansIdeasFactsBodyFormBlackActivityAuthorityIdealsMadCompareCharacteristicsQuestsIrrationalRationalityHuman BodyObservingObjectivityMeasuringLegitimacyEpistemologyBarbaricTruth And Knowledge
Author:Cornel West
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“America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. By trying to seize far more power than is necessary over American citizens, the federal government is destroying its own legitimacy. We face a choice not of anarchy or authoritarianism, but a choice of limited government or unlimited government .”

NeedsTryingGovernmentAmericaFacesLawChoicesCitizensPrisonAnarchyDestroyingFewerFederal GovernmentUnlimitedAuthoritarianismLimited GovernmentAmerican CitizensLegitimacyAuthoritarian Government
Book:Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty
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“As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king's firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict.”

ThinkingHas BeensWould BeSonKingsConflictOur TimeFormulasRulersNaiveSuccessionIdentifyingLegitimacy
Author:J. M. Coetzee
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“In brief, nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires the ethnic boundaries should not be cut across political ones, and, in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state a contingency already formally excluded by the principle in its general formulation should not separate the power holders from the rest.”

ShouldStatesPoliticalGivenPrinciplesCuttingParticularTheoryBoundariesNationalismExcludedLegitimacyContingency
Book:Nations and Nationalism
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“The danger is not only that these austerity measures are killing the European economies but also that they threaten the very legitimacy of European democracies - not just directly by threatening the livelihoods of so many people and pushing the economy into a downward spiral, but also indirectly by undermining the legitimacy of the political system through this backdoor rewriting of the social contract.”

PeoplePoliticalSocialEconomyDemocracyDangerKillingPushingContractsThreateningPolitical SystemsLivelihoodSpiralsLegitimacyRewritingUnderminingAusteritySocial ContractDownward SpiralBackdoor
Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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“As the corporation's size and power grew, so did the need to assuage people's fears of it. The corporation suffered its first full-blown legitimacy crisis in the wake of the early-twentieth-century merger movement, when, for the first time, many Americans realized that corporations, now turned behemoths, threatened to overwhelm their social institutions and governments.”

PeopleNeedsFirstsGovernmentSocialCenturyMovementGrewFirst TimeCrisisInstitutionsSizeCorporationsThreatenedTwentieth CenturyLegitimacySocial InstitutionsMergersBehemoth
Book:The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
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“Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.”

StatesBigsFormChallengesHugeEntrepreneurOilCorporationsAgricultureSteelMarketplaceLegitimacyBig CorporationsBig Oil
Book:Matters of fact and of fiction: essays, 1973-1976
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“The appalling crackdown that we witnessed in Hama and other Syrian cities on 30 and 31 July only erode the regime's legitimacy and increase resentment. In the absence of an end to the senseless violence and a genuine process of political reform, we will continue to pursue further EU sanctions.”

EndsPoliticalProcessCitiesViolenceIncreaseAbsenceGenuinePursueReformRegimesResentmentJulySanctionsLegitimacyHamasErodePolitical ReformSenseless Violence
Author:William Hague
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“We often imagine that the court serves as a sort of neutral umpire controlling the warring political branches. But this is mostly myth. The justices of the Supreme Court are themselves actors in the struggle for power, and when they intervene, they think carefully about how their decisions will affect the courts own legitimacy and authority.”

ThinkingPoliticalActorsJusticeDecisionStruggleImagineAuthorityCourtMythSupremeBranchesImagine ThatSupreme CourtUmpiresLegitimacy
Author:Noah Feldman
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“[The American public demands] a sense of legitimacy from and in the presidency. There is more to this than dignity, more than propriety. The president is expected to personify our betterness in an inspiring way, to express in what he does and is, not just what he says, a moral idealism which, in much of the public mind, is the very opposite of politics.”

WayMindDoePresidentMoralDemandDignityOppositesExpectedIdealismPresidencyLegitimacyPropriety
Author:James David Barber
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“To be true to its constitutional role, the Supreme Court should refuse to be drawn into making public policy, and it should strike down legislation only when a clear constitutional violation exists. When judicial activists resort to various inventions and theories to impose their personal views on privacy and liberty, they jeopardize the legitimacy of the judiciary as an institution and undermine the role of the other branches of government.”

ShouldGovernmentViewsLibertyRolesClearPolicyTheoryInstitutionsCourtVariousRefuseStrikesSupremeInventionBeing TrueBranchesPrivacyActivistLegislationSupreme CourtResortsViolationJudicialPublic PolicyJudiciaryLegitimacyJeopardizeBranches Of GovernmentPersonal Views
Author:Mark Levin
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“There are skeptics who do not come to their view because they have a source of income from carbon polluters. I don't mean to imply that they're all in that category at all. There are also those who are also not motivated by ideological resistance for any role of government. But I don't know of any arguments or any presenters of arguments that overturn the consensus that I think have gained any legitimacy.”

ThinkingKnowsMeanGovernmentViewsRolesSourceArgumentIncomeResistanceMotivatedCategoriesCarbonConsensusIdeologicalSkepticLegitimacyPresenterRole Of Government
Author:Al Gore
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