Pamphlet 4

When walking home at night your journey is interrupted by a man who violently attacks you before carrying you off. When you ask why he has kidnapped you, he simply replies that he has taken you for your own safety into his empire. Is this an enterprising politician? No! It is a brigand!

A king that attacks another nation without declaring it is not a king but a brigand. The empire launched surprise attacks against the people of Royale this month, and called it protecting them. Any attacks against other states the emperor has carried out are politically illegitimate and acts of pure terrorism. But if only this was all he did.

War gives no right to inflict any more damage than is necessary for victory; the cultural genocide of the conquered peoples brought into the empire and actual genocide of some races is the act of an evil man.

The right of conquest has no other foundation than the law of the strongest, which is, in contrast, a weak law to balance a constitution on.

The emperor enslaves conquered peoples into vassals. We are under no obligation to obey except through fear of reprisals. As I have said previously, it is our moral right to gather the strength to free ourselves under the law of might makes right which the emperor has previously established. There can be no true peace; a state of war between us must continue.

It will always be absurd to say 'I hereby admit you into my servitude, wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I will respect it so long as I please and you shall respect it so long as I wish.' Thus it is absurd to gain so many citizens through fear and conquest.