I Used to Rule the World

Qi Ji Guang calls our attention to some lyrics.

This song from Coldplay is called "Viva La Vida", and it tells the story about the fall of the French monarch Louis XVI during the Revolution of 1789. A great lesson about the destiny of empires when they become corrupt and oppressive. One of the lyrics sing about how the king used to "roll the dice and watch the fear in his enemies' eyes", but now, his kingdom is collapsing all around him, and revolution has exploded, advancing closer and closer every day. Indeed, even the album art depicts the storming of the Bastille by French revolutionaries.

Every JBT, wannabe JBT, and those who want to forcibly disarm the citizenry should listen to this song and realize that a ruler's power are given to them by the people. When a ruler turns into a despot and begins to threaten the lives and liberties of the citizens they are supposed to defend, the consequences are serious.

As an old Chinese saying goes: "The poor masses would never stand a chance against the provincial kings and the provincial kings would never stand a chance against the court mandarins, however, the provincial kings and the court mandarins should take care not to invoke the poor masses to rise to arms either".

In this short but surreally beautiful song, valuable lessons of history are summarized, from Sun Tzu's "Art of War," to Machiavelli's "The Prince," to the works by John Locke to the Declaration of Independance.

And every ruler should consider this.