Faith Long
Mr. Bradley
English 10
8 December 2010
Does Absolute Power Corrupt Absolutely?
Lord Acton believes in the quote “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.” What Lord Acton meant when he wrote this quote is when a leader is given full control over a group, whether it’s a small town or a whole country, the leader will almost always abuse his or her power in one way or another. Usually these ways consist of threatening their people, even if they’re passive threats, such as when the leader gives the people an option, but uses something they need to contradict it. There are three examples the provide evidence that Acton’s quote is true. Napoleon, for example, used the animal’s rations against them. He tells them they don’t have to
This quote agrees with Acton’s quote because ever since Jack had gotten control over the majority of the boys, he forced them to do everything he wanted through fear. A third and last example is the German warfare leader Adolf Hitler. Hitler was named the leader of the Nazi Party in July of 1921. Hitler had brutally taken over Germany and either killed or imprisoned all of the Jews. He managed to gain a group of people who agreed with his beliefs and were known as the Nazis. He was particularly a good leader of his followers until there were war threats being made. Hitler wanted to wage war but didn’t have an army and not much of a motivated reason to do so. After there were rumors spread that the Prussians were getting ready to attack Germany, he made the Nazi party go in as his army. This was abusing his powers as a leader over the Nazi group because they were his loyal followers and he threw them into many of their deaths, when most of them had argued about going to war. A quote that describes this is:
The war for Lebensraum that Hitler had always wanted had finally begun. Five years, eight months and six days of bloodshed and destruction lay ahead that would see some 40 million persons killed and much of the cultural heritage of Germany and Europe destroyed. The German people had surrendered their