Pocket Empires
Cleon I on Imerial Destiny
Jo Grant

Excerpted from "The Great Empire of Futurity," The Third Imperium Review, Volume 6, Issue 23, pp. 426-430. The complete article can be found in The Making of the Third Imperium Series at Shaaak University AAB.


The Sylean people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of Stellar Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality, these facts demonstrate at once our disconnected position as regards any other polity; that we have, in reality, but little connection with the past history of any of them, and still less with all antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future only; and so far as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our empire is destined to be the great nation of futurity.

It is so destined, because the principle upon which a nation is organized fixes its destiny, and that of equality is perfect, is universal. It presides in all the operations of the physical world, and it is also the conscious law of the soul -- the self-evident dictates of morality, which accurately defines the duty of man to man, and consequently man's rights as man. Besides, the truthful annals of any nation furnish abundant evidence, that its happiness, its greatness, its duration, were always proportionate to the feudal recognition in its system of government. . . .

What friend of human liberty, civilization, and refinement, can cast his view over the past history of the totalitarian regimes and bureaucracies of antiquity, and not deplore that they ever existed? What philanthropist can contemplate the oppressions, the cruelties, and injustice inflicted by them on the masses of mankind, and not turn with moral horror from the retrospect?

The Imperium is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no reminiscences of battle fields, but in defence of humanity, of the oppressed of all worlds, of the rights of conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement. Our annals describe no scenes of horrid carnage, where men were led on by hundreds of thousands to slay one another, dupes and victims to emperors, kings, nobles, demons in the human form called heroes. We have had patriots to defend our homes, our liberties, but no aspirants to absolute, unchecked rule; nor have the Imperial people ever suffered themselves to be led on by wicked ambition to depopulate the land, to spread desolation far and wide, that a human being might be placed on a seat of supremacy.

We have no interest in the scenes of antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of nearly all their examples. The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of the Gods in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past. We are the empire of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no stellar power can. We point to the everlasting truth on the first page of our imperial declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of other worlds, that "the gates of hell" -- the powers of bureaucracy and totalitarianism -- "shall not prevail against it."

The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of Imperial greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the empire of many worlds is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish in space the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High -- the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a spiral arm -- its roof the firmament of the globular cluster haloed heavens, and its congregation an Union of many Worlds, comprising hundreds of happy trillions, calling, owning no man master, but governed by God's natural and moral law of equality, the law of brotherhood -- of "peace and good will amongst men.". . .

Yes, we are the empire of progress, of individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement. Equality of rights is the cynosure of our union of worlds, the grand exemplar of the correlative equality of individuals; and while truth sheds its effulgence, we cannot retrograde, without dissolving the one and subverting the other. We must onward to the fulfilment of our mission -- to the entire development of the principle of our organization -- freedom of conscience, freedom of person, freedom of trade and business pursuits, universality of freedom and equality. This is our high destiny, and in nature's eternal, inevitable decree of cause and effect we must accomplish it. All this will be our future history, to establish in the galaxy the moral dignity and salvation of man -- the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the universe, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has the Imperium been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great empire of futurity?


Shamelessly adapted from "The Great Nation of Futurity," The United States Democratic Review, Volume 6, Issue 23, pp. 426-430.

 


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