Pamphlet 3

We say that we extend the bounds of the empire because the empire offers peace. But I would point out that dungeons offer peace too; do you truly wish to spend your time in those?

Cows live in peace in a herd too. They don't think, or vote, or read. They calmly follow their herder as he leads them to slaughter.

You can sell yourself to a king, as the first Imperials did, giving their bodies to our Emperor. But you cannot lawfully give up your children's rights for them. Their freedom is theirs. Hence a government is legitimate only if each new generation is able to accept it; the emperor has not given us that choice. His government is illegitimate.

The empire continuing in this fashion, without us having a say in how it is run, asks us to renounce our choices and our freedoms. To renounce freedom is to renounce humanity and one's duties as an individual. If you take away all freedom of the will, you strip a man's actions of all moral significance. No man living inside this empire can be truly good nor truly evil; there is no moral struggle to those without free will.

If a group of people promises solely to obey their master it ceases to be a society; once there is a master they are no more than cattle and an owner. The body politic is annihilated.

As they say in Auld Tharian, Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium. (Better perilous freedom than peaceful slavery.)

Would you stand up for your own freedom? Would you stand for the freedoms of others? Consider: are you a man or a slave?