Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the Constitution. One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being. ... The peoples owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength.-- Rudolf Rocker (1873-1958), German-born American anarcho-syndicalist anarchist, writer, and social activist, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Ch. 5 "The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism" (1938)
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