If the power and the self-confidence of a community grow, the penal law also always becomes milder…. It would not be impossible to imagine a consciousness of power in society such that society might allow itself the noblest luxury there is for it—to leave the one who injures it unpunished. “What concern are my parasites to me?” it might then say. “Let them live and prosper: I am strong enough for that!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (II.10)
Absalom, Absalom! 