1. Trump: I have given orders for overwhelming retaliation. 1,000 missiles against Iran if it tries to assassinate me. “The orders have already been given,” he said
2. If anything threatens the existence of the Russian state, nuclear weapons will be used, the Kremlin spokesman said in an interview with Die Weltwoche.
3. Mitsotakis on Marfin: We are delivering justice, having already sentenced those arrested without evidence
4. Argos: The 20-year-old who was shot by police officers died – The expert report that refutes their claims
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The greatness of a civilization is not measured by the size of its armies, the strength of its economy, or the reach of its military technology.
It is measured by its willingness to recognize that there are values higher than the State itself.
Higher than the State stands human life.
Higher stands liberty.
Higher stands justice.
Higher stands the intrinsic dignity of every human being.
Whenever rulers forget this hierarchy, they lead nations toward domination.
Whenever citizens accept its inversion, the State ceases to be a political institution and becomes an idol.
And every idol eventually demands sacrifice.
History teaches us that the first sacrifices are always human beings.
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Diotima:
“The polis exists for the sake of living well.”
— Aristotle, Politics
One of the oldest and most enduring questions of political philosophy remains as urgent today as it was in classical Greece:
Does the State exist for human beings, or do human beings exist for the State?
The answer to this question determines not merely the nature of government but the moral foundation of civilization itself.
Classical Greek political thought was profoundly human-centered. For Aristotle, the State was never an end in itself. It existed so that citizens might achieve eudaimonia—a flourishing life grounded in virtue, justice, and reason. Political authority was conceived as an instrument serving humanity, never as an object of worship.
Whenever this principle is reversed, the State ceases to serve humanity and begins demanding that humanity serve the State.
This reversal lies at the heart of one of the greatest political pathologies of modern civilization.
Recent events merely remind us of a much older and recurring phenomenon.
Public statements by world leaders threatening overwhelming military retaliation, including the possible use of nuclear weapons whenever the existence of the State is perceived to be at risk, reveal a common political logic that transcends ideology, geography, and political systems.
The supreme value is no longer the preservation of human life.
It is the preservation of State power.
Within this framework, millions of lives may become expendable if their sacrifice is deemed necessary for the survival of the political order.
Such reasoning exposes the deepest contradiction of modern politics.
It is no longer justice that is sacralized.
Nor humanity.
It is power itself.
From Creon to the Modern State
Sophocles’ Antigone remains perhaps the greatest political tragedy ever written.
Creon is not simply a tyrant.
He represents the perennial belief that the State is the sole source of law and legitimacy.
Antigone challenges that belief with a principle that has echoed across twenty-five centuries:
There exist laws higher than the commands of rulers.
There exist moral truths beyond political authority.
Human dignity is not granted by governments.
It precedes them.
Whenever political authority claims absolute legitimacy, the tragedy of Antigone begins anew.
The difference is that today’s Creons command technologies capable not merely of destroying a city but of threatening civilization itself.
The Logic of the State Knows No Ideology
One of the greatest illusions of our age is the belief that political absolutism belongs exclusively to authoritarian regimes.
History demonstrates otherwise.
The same political logic has appeared under monarchies, military dictatorships, communist regimes, liberal democracies, and theocratic states alike.
Flags change.
Ideologies change.
The underlying principle remains astonishingly constant:
The State comes before the human person.
Under this doctrine, wars, mass surveillance, political repression, forced displacement, concentration camps, and even genocide have repeatedly been justified in the name of national security, historical destiny, revolution, democracy, or patriotism.
The slogans differ.
The idolatry remains the same.
When Justice Serves Power
The same mentality manifests itself within domestic political life.
Whenever public officials appear to prejudge legal responsibility before judicial processes are completed, or whenever allegations of state misconduct are approached primarily through the lens of protecting institutional prestige rather than fully establishing the truth, legitimate concerns arise regarding the health of the rule of law.
The true purpose of justice is not to protect power.
Its purpose is to place limits upon power.
Otherwise, justice risks becoming merely another instrument through which authority legitimizes itself.
Montesquieu observed that every holder of power is naturally inclined to extend it until confronted by limits.
Constitutional government exists precisely to establish those limits.
Tocqueville’s Warning
Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw a new form of despotism.
It would not necessarily rely upon terror.
Instead, it would emerge through an ever-expanding administrative State that gradually assumes responsibility for every aspect of public life while citizens increasingly surrender their own autonomy.
Freedom rarely disappears overnight.
More often, it is surrendered gradually—through the comforting belief that the State knows better than free citizens what is good for them.
Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil
Hannah Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism produced one of the most profound insights of modern political thought.
History’s greatest evils are not always committed by fanatics.
They are frequently carried out by ordinary individuals who cease thinking independently and come to regard obedience to institutions as the highest moral duty.
When obedience replaces conscience, injustice easily acquires the appearance of legality.
Karl Popper and the Open Society
Karl Popper argued that democracy should never be judged by the virtue of those who govern.
Its true measure lies in whether citizens possess peaceful means of removing their rulers and retaining the unrestricted freedom to criticize them.
The essential question is not whether governments are good.
It is whether institutions prevent even good governments from becoming arbitrary.
The Crisis of Both Rulers and the Ruled
Plato maintained that every political community reflects the character of its citizens.
Consequently, the present crisis is not merely a crisis of rulers.
It is equally a crisis of the ruled.
Whenever citizens quietly accept that State power stands above human dignity, they become participants—however passively—in the elevation of political authority into an object of devotion.
Freedom disappears not only when governments abolish it.
It also disappears when citizens cease considering it their highest political responsibility.
