It has been said that the difference between the two top generals of the late Marcos years is this:
👮🏽♂️ When Ramos is given orders, the West Point-trained officer asks "Why?"
👮🏽♂️ When Marcos gives orders to Ver, he never asks "Why?" When the dictator orders him to jump out the window, he salutes and answers. "From which floor, sir?"
The hyperbolic joke brings to mind John Calvin's teaching regarding the duty of lesser authorities to withstand the licentiousness of kings. For they were appointed by God as protectors of the people's freedom. Calvin wrote:
"For when popular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings . . . So far am I from forbidding these officially to check the undue license of kings, that if they connive at kings when they tyrannise and insult over the humbler of the people, I affirm that their dissimulation is not free from nefarious perfidy, because they fradulently betray the liberty of the people, while knowing that, by the ordinance of God, they are its appointed guardians."
📘 Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.20.31 (Beveridge translation)
No comments:
Post a Comment