Return to Essay Menu
Chapter III – Government and Politics
A Voice from the 21st Century
By, Timothy Bowling
Chapter III – Government and Politics
- The Anatomy of Power in History -
This author in his youth once watched a documentary series on the life of King Henry VIII of England. Near the end of the king’s life, he became a cripple, obese and in constant pain from ulcerated sores. This old, pathetic and sick man, in a constant mental haze brought on by the advanced stages of syphilis seemed an unlikely person to be anything but the subject of someone’s charity. Instead though, the most puissant were terrified of his power. This couldn’t help but leave a powerful impression.
Obviously physical or mental ability did not necessarily lock in power over others as it does in other animal species where the old are routinely driven off or killed by the more agile. Rather, the power the king wielded came to him through armies who maintained that power because of a climate that gave the old man legitimacy for that position. In short, he had absolute power because everyone thought he did and to question that could bring about a very real and horrible death.
The explanation cannot be that facile. Indeed, a society that has come to this point did not get there without a lot of groundwork. In pre-historic times no doubt we worked much like the other animals. The strong ruled by merit of their physical power, and could just as easily lose that power when that strength faded. As time moved on, leaders maintained power through those that supported them, and these supporters received benefits as long as that leader remained at the head.
When a leader died, those supporters stood to lose their positions of privilege. Perhaps they might have to contend with the enmity of the new leader, maybe from an opposing faction with supporters of his own, for maintaining power in another when it was felt it should have been his all along. A good illustration comes from 1485. Henry VII, the first Tudor king of England, tried to back date his reign to before the Battle of Bosworth that deposed and killed Richard III for the sole purpose of then being free to charge those loyal to the previous king with treason.
There are examples of the chief supporters of chieftains ritualistically put to death and buried with him. This served many practical functions, whether stated to be because the final resting place must remain secret to the chieftain needing servants in the next world. Mainly, though, it probably had its origins with getting rid of the old guard to preclude competition in the new one. As we will see in coming examples, changes in government often brought about bloodbaths and still do to this day.
This quickly necessitates the need to establishing lines of legitimacy, originally mostly hereditary, to protect those who supported leaders of the past. If everyone knows who unquestionably succeeds, then we avoid the problems of a transferal of power which very often could include a civil war. This also was in no small way influenced by the ego of the ruler who took comfort in the fact his seed was the basis of a dynasty of rulers for as long as they existed. In some areas, rulers even pronounced their heir a co-ruler to ensure the smooth transition at his death.
To maintain this power entire social apparatuses of support are created. Beyond the obvious armies required, we also have a class of priests and religion convincing everyone this person rules by the pleasure of God or gods, and can therefore not be questioned. In some societies these rulers were proclaimed to be gods themselves in human form. The ancient Egyptians are a case in that point of god-kings, and even the Rome eventually went down that path due largely to Egyptian influences. Up until the last century the emperors of Japan were claimed to be divine, though historically this did not always give them ultimate power.
In Europe after the fall of Rome we no longer had god-kings, but we certainly had men, and a few women, who viewed themselves as God’s spokespeople here on earth. The Divine Right of Kings came from the writings of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans.
"Let
every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God:
the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the
power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to
themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the
evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and
thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for
good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the
sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon
him that doeth evil.”
Paul probably wrote this to reassure Romans in political authority that Christians were no threat to their power. Having this in Scriptures gave the pretext, however, for monarchs to establish power as unquestioned in matters temporal, with the support of an equally absolutist Church. They in turn supported the Church, pocked with occasional rivalries of jurisdiction, as supreme in matters spiritual. The coronation of the king became a religious rite. Taking the example of King David, the monarchs were anointed with oil and ordained and consecrated for the role of king.
Unfortunately, skills do not necessarily transfer across generations, and dynastic lines can die out. History is dotted with civil wars and king-making when a king lost his power base, whether through political climate, incompetence or even madness brought about by illness and genetic in-breeding. This was especially true in Rome, for example, where the succession was not always clearly defined. Yet it was still common enough when the order of succession was highly structured, as the English war of the Roses gives ample testament.
To avoid wars and the inevitable plagues, economic disruptions and famine that follow them, a legitimate heir to a monarch was indeed a time of joy for people. Interesting situations could arise, however, where no heir was produced for various reasons. A monarch, even if popular and accepted as totally legitimate, would be badgered incessantly to name the heir of their throne by nervous ministers and subjects. Oft times this was not in the monarch’s interest, since factions would develop around the up and coming heir, and they could lose their thrones through usurpation or worse. A leader who designated his heir in a situation where it was not clear often designated his potential murderer. Caligula, anxious to be emperor had Tiberius smothered by pillows in his dotage. Even as late as the childless Elizabeth I of England the fear of being usurped later in life kept her quiet on the matter of succession until her death. Very likely, she did not name an heir at all, but it was generally announced that she had to avoid civil war.
Kings ruled absolutely, occasionally tempered by peers and parliaments, and by the time of original example of Henry VIII the concept of nation states were well formed and power was becoming more centralized. Yet by the 17th century we have people who begin to consider the king to have his power from the law of the state, and not as a religiously ordained position.
By this time the Church that supported centuries of kings was in itself in a major western schism, with many nations calling themselves protestant. Many of the kings had rejected the authority of the Church in their own kingdoms, installing new hierarchies of clergy. The continuity enjoyed by Charlemagne’s one pope, one emperor mandate was in its death throws, and the violent changes that came as a result paved the way for the severe curtailment of royal power or even the abolition of monarchy altogether. It would also bring with it a completely different attitude towards government.
Sir Edward Coke, as Attorney General in England under Elizabeth I and James I, wrote of the supremacy of common law over the will of the king. King James, a firm adherent of the divine right of kings, was naturally upset by this opinion that common law could not be contradicted by the crown. He spent a time in prison, but as no charges could be found, he eventually was released. He came back to Parliament and headed the commons as speaker in the time of James’ son King Charles I who believed in the divine right of kings just as adamantly. Coke instigated the Petition of Right in one of Charles’ Parliaments which the king accepted as he was desperate for money. Parliament cited precedent from the Magna Carta and other ancient English law to establish basic rights for a monarch’s subjects.
Items in this petition would be very familiar to a modern American familiar with the Constitution. One can’t be capriciously arrested without breaking the law, and the billeting of troops in private homes was forbidden. Taxes could not be collected by the king without the authority of Parliament, which had been the law since the 12th century, but had been largely ignored by Charles.
King Charles did not see that the times were changing and remained intransient to the end. They cut off his head, a morbid echo of his grandmother Mary Queen of the Scots, after a bloody civil war. England’s only experiment with republican government ensued, which turned rapidly into a puritanically influenced dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell. Eventually a king was recalled, the son of their victim of regicide, but with much diminished powers.
This was, despite the violence, tame in comparison to the revolution in France where an abusive monarch and parasitic noblemen lived in incredible opulence while the people of France went hungry. As conditions for the people worsened, there eventually came a boiling point. This led to a violent rejection of monarchy, the concept of nobility, and a rejection of the hierarchal Church that had supported them.
A reign of terror followed that lasted many years. The blood flowed so freely in the streets of Paris that the beasts were afraid to cross the roads because of the smell of it. The King, Queen, all noblemen not actively supporting the republic, clergy and their sympathizers were summarily slaughtered across the nation. In addition to the executions, mobs entered prisons with arrested royalists inside and killed them on their own initiative.
As in England, the experiment with republicanism in France rapidly degenerated into a dictatorship. Robespierre, a Frenchman of Irish blood, ruled over France and eliminated his rivals with the aid of the revolution’s inveterate tool, the guillotine. As the pace of the executions increased, the dictator’s popularity was eroded, and they eventually shot him in the face and broke his jaw before sending him to the guillotine himself the following day. Instead of recalling a monarch, a young up and coming general of nefarious genius named Napoleon impressed his countrymen with military successes and was named consul, and eventually declared himself emperor.After a brief taste of empire wherein the entire continent became embroiled in war, the French also returned to a monarchy, although unlike in England, it proved to be short lived. The age now known as the Enlightenment had produced writers that introduced the idea that all men are equal, and no hereditary claims could be made to wield power. By 1848 all the nations of Europe were in a state of revolution between the last vestiges of autocracy and a rising middle class. Notable exceptions were England which had made its peace between the middle class and the monarchy by taking away much of the king’s power (or by this time queen’s power, as the popular Victoria now sat on the throne), and Russia which had no middle class to speak of.
- The Rise of the Individual and a Consenting Governed -
For centuries the European powers had been exploiting the resources and colonizing new continents discovered to them in the Americas. Generations of Europeans born, lived and died in this “new world” and eventually began to think of themselves with their own national identity as Americans, rather than Europeans.
Familiar with the writings of the Enlightenment authors, and producing authors and political philosophers of equal caliber, political discontent reached the shores of the western hemisphere. At first it was economically motivated, since their resources were being taken by their colonial masters without the benefits given to citizens in the old country. Quickly though, the ideas of liberty and self determination became watchwords in a rebellion for independence. Because it was successful, this rebellion is now known as a revolution.
The British American colonies had clearly outgrown the parent. The king in England was a German by blood and prone to fits of madness. The time was ripe for the formation of a new nation of federated sovereign states. Highly educated and brilliant men reflected their time and wrote the Constitution in a bold experiment that placed the individual as superior to the state.
When examining this Constitution, it is important to note the entire document does not say anything about what the individual owed to the state, but rather how the individual was to be protected from the state. The individual became paramount and the state became their servant with only enough power to maintain peace and order. A simplistically brilliant system of checks and balances was placed between branches of the government to keep any one of them from becoming too powerful, guarding against a tyrannical executive head, judicial tyranny, or an unrestrained assembly. A large part of the power was left to the states that made up the union to keep the federal government from becoming too centralized and omnipotent.
It was a marvelous experiment, and compromised between a complete democracy and recognizing elite that arose in every generation to guard against mob rule or the oppression of minorities. It is criticized in modern times because it did not deal with the oppression of slaves, the Native American tribes, women and non-property owners, but in the context of its time, the American Constitution was truly ground-breaking and revolutionary. It also left the door open for amendment as times changed and a previous weakness in it was discovered.
The Bill of Rights was the first ten amendments to this constitution, and was written to get all the states to sign it. After the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights, though, the amendments were usually used for capricious political whim. While it is great to abolish slavery or enfranchise women, the Constitution already stated that it should be so even though it wasn’t practiced or recognized. By amending, they seemed to imply the preamble of the establishment of justice and general welfare had to be modified to in order to include certain people.
It got worse, though. The issue of states rights against a federal government came to a peak, ostensibly over slavery. This civil war, more correctly a second American Revolution and the United States’ only one, is now presented as a far seeing North trying to destroy the injustice of slavery deeply embedded in the South’s agrarian economy. In truth, the abolishment of slavery was a nice side effect and merely a banner under which many would fight. The black man was thought down on as much in the north as in the south, and if the child labor laws that became necessary by the beginning of the 20th century are any indication, slavery was only abolished in name.
The main thing to change after the American Civil War was that the states of the Union were not sovereign and were in fact subservient to the federation of states, or federal government. Ironically resistance to the original forming of the United States was in large part based on the states’ fears of loss of their sovereignty, and was only possible after assurances were written into the Constitution. The sovereignty issue had been eroding over time, but the illusion of it was finally put to rest, and today it is rarely thought of. Amendments were written to stop southern incursions into the rights of former slaves, but in the process increased and consolidated this federal power.
The metamorphosis of the government is important, and fundamental changes in its founding principles reflected a modification of the rights of man championed by the original philosophes. This can be best illustrated by example.
In 1909 an amendment was written to allow the taxing of incomes, which was ratified in early 1913. Taxing of incomes had been done for short periods before, such as during the Civil War, and Congress was authorized under Article I of the Constitution to directly tax as long as the taxes were uniform and apportioned between the states. By taxing incomes in the manner they do, the government was challenged by the Constitution.
There are basically two types of taxes, direct (capitation) and indirect. Indirect tax is placed on optional services and was the method intended by the Founding Fathers, since direct taxation was unjust and inequitable, an idea reflected in Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution states,
“No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken"
Direct taxes were to be apportioned between the states, not the individual. In a tax code written millions of words long, Congress established income taxes while implying but never saying that the taxes were direct. The Supreme Court had already ruled that the 16th Amendment did not nullify Article I, Section 9, so technically the income tax remains optional since Congress does not have the power to tax directly unless in proportion to the populations of the state and the amount is enumerated. In practice, however, none of this is the case. The rationale was that by calling it an excise tax and not a direct tax on revenue. Since the Federal Reserve notes we use are not technically money but representations of money helped them get around the Constitution.
The matter of income tax, its constitutionality, an Internal Revenue Service and why a Federal Reserve Board of unelected private bankers are issuing currency for Congress are beyond the scope of this book and has been the subject of books elsewhere. The matter important to our purpose is that the federal government was changing, often in seeming contradiction to opinions of the framers.
With money pouring in, the federal government grew larger and more powerful. It spent beyond what it could collect, so eventually made gold illegal and issued fiat currency which it could print as the needs came up, or as spendthrift politicians found it expedient to do so. With this came inflation, which allowed for another, more subtle tax, while the public remained blissfully unaware.
By artificially adjusting interest rates, economic cycles became extreme and could be adjusted to create conditions favorable to an election year. In the last century several market crashes, brought about after government propping up of businesses through credit manipulation that should have died natural deaths, were followed by lean times of high unemployment. The 1930’s were called the Great Depression, and desperate the people allowed the government to do as it pleased to rectify the conditions prevalent. They even re-elected a president four times keeping him as executive head until his death, when the unwritten rule established by the first president was that only two should be served.
By the end of that time and the ensuing world war born of this world wide economic disaster, all people were given a number, their incomes garnished again for their old age, and new taxes were introduced on everything from telephone lines to excess profits. America’s federal government became a centralized super-power and in a game of political and economic chess with its former ally and chief rival, the Soviet Union, spheres of influence were developed globally over political ideology that left many smaller nations as pawns. These nations could also play the super-powers against each other in order to get financial and technical aid.
Increasingly in the 20th century, and accelerating rapidly in our own, the individual as master of his or her government is dying. While the brilliance of the Constitution and the system of balances set up in the 18th century slowed the process down, government has done what it has always done. The ... [idea not complete]
- Socialism and Communism -
This rivalry mentioned leads us to the subject of socialism and communism. The Soviet Union, as the second super-power during this time, was dominated by Russia and the political theories that instigated her revolution earlier in that century. Communism, its adherents and detractors dominated the political landscape of the world through most of the last half of the 20th century. One of the last European nations to topple an absolute monarch, the leaders of the revolution took advantage of hardships brought about by a devastating war which left the Russian czar unpopular and the Russian people desperate and hungry.
Vladimir Lenin was the pseudonym taken by the radically opinioned and highly educated Vladimir Ulyanov. His brother executed as a revolutionary, and he himself expelled from University for his radical beliefs and even once exiled to Siberia, he eventually came to lead the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party. The Bolsheviks in the October Revolution staged a coup against the provisional government that had toppled the czar and replaced it with communism inspired by the writings of the Prussian born political and social philosopher Karl Marx.
Marx, an economically unsuccessful man living in England, co-wrote with his associate Friedrich Engels the “Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei” known to us as the Communist Manifesto. The work can be read with a great deal of amusement at the extremes of his hyperbole, with images of burgeois mothers selling their children in order to know a profit. To Marx, social philosophy came down to economic elements in a struggle between the workers (the prolotariet) and those that harnessed their labors for their own gain and benefited from their labor (the burgeois).
Lenin also embraced Marx’s opinions in “On the Jewish Question” which spoke out on the influence of religion on government. This Leninist form of Marxist social and political theory provided a strong, totalitarian central government with the last say on labor and wealth distribution, and a firm stand as atheists in the matters of religion.
At first the socialist model had to be tempered with some private enterprise, but the ruthlessness of Lenin’s implementations paved the way for the monster Stalin who’s forced collective farming and industrialization in an effort to bring Russia into the modern age resulted in the death and imprisonment of millions. Even before the concentration camps of Hitler, mass genocide was already taking place in Russia. The question must be asked, how did this system become so dominant? For this we must review World War II.
Largely contributed to by French demands of punitive actions against Germany after the first world war, and the British Churchill’s food blockades, the situation in Germany was boiling out of control. Inflation was occurring so rapidly that salaries negotiated weekly would be worth nothing by the time a laborer was paid. There was starvation, poverty and desperation, and in this environment Adolf Hitler was able to come to power and institute the Nazi socialist state.
It is widely held among many that facism is the diometrically opposing philosophy of communism. This couldn’t be further from the truth. This myth was largely held in education circles sympathetic to socialism in the west, and taught in the schools as fact. In both, the state was dominant, and business was only held privately in name under facism. What was produced and how was still dictated by the state.
Stalin sided with Britain and France against Germany. The fact that he was arguably a larger mass murderer than Hitler was put aside, and Germany was soundly defeated with the rising star of the United States’ military might. This time the allies did not wait for a treaty to punish the Germans. The war was fought punitively. Civilian population centers were bombed insessantly laying ancient cities with no strategic military value to rubble. The baroque music capital of Dresden was annihilated by a massive arial bombardment and much of that music has now been permanently lost. The Germans had unleashed a horror on the world, and the allies in turn unleashed one of their own on them.
After the surrender, the country was divided in four parts and given to the victors. Ethnic Germans were taken by the Soviets for forced labor in reperations (ie, slavery). While France, England and the United States combined their three quarters of the country to form a Federal Republic of Germany, the Soviet section became the German Democratic Republic and communist. The capital city of Berlin was similarly divided and recombined, and a wall dividing western Berlin from the communist east became a symbol of the “iron curtain” which formed across Europe.
Iron Curtain was a name given to this phenomena by Churchill when he realized too late that his hatred of anything German and his efforts to destroy them utterly had created a power vacumn in Europe that the Soviets quickly and aggressively filled. Eastern European countries became Soviet sattelites, and the stage was set set for the long Cold War of the 20th century.
By the 1980’s conditions were beginning to go badly for the Soviets. Internal political and black market corruption, largely generated by neglecting the human characteristic of pre-occupation with self-interest, took its toll. There also came financial bankruptcy in keeping up with a richer west as they aggressively engaged in an arms race. Eastern European and Asian ethnic and nationalistic sentiments began to swell, and no longer able to control the changes, the Soviet Union broke apart into many nation states in 1991. Former satellites regained their independence, and in time the artifical boundaries of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia would give way to states reflecting national identities.
In a symbolic high point, the Berlin wall was knocked down, and Germany reunified into one nation. Leninist communism was discredited as a failed theory, though in fairness it was more the result of its draconian totalitarianism. Despite being popularly desparaged, many tenants of socialism remain increasingly embraced by the western republics.
- Internationalism -
As the world rebuilt, a United Nations was formed, with key positions given to the victors of the great conflict. Ostensibly to this new body would allow nations to resolve disputes without going through the devastation of the last World War, which by this time had to be distinguished with roman numerals. Most nations would sign on. The United States federal government was authorized to sign treaties and used that authority to enter the nation into this international organization. It was not however a treaty but in fact a charter being written by a world body. By signing on, the country was a signatory to a constitution that was never consented to by the governed.
At first the world body had little teeth. It became rapidly and permanently corrupted and inefficient, and the larger nations ignored it when it suited them to do so. It was an additional tool in the dangerous game already mentioned which ran concurrently with an arms race that could ensure mutual self-destruction with nuclear weapons.
Eventually, even though it had an abysmal history of maintaining peace through the use of arms under its auspices, unilateral actions taken by sovereign nations began to mount incredible international and domestic political pressure against the governments of the nations wielding it. Soldiers sworn to their nation’s defense were conscripted to serve as the defenders of the U.N.’s policies, and talks of direct taxation of the world’s citizenry began.
From the strongest man becoming chief, the rise of autocrats, the recognition of the rights of the common man to one world oligarchy, we stand now at a cross roads. Central power, always the greatest amount of power possible and thus most prone to corruption, now stands against local power and the individual as sovereign and master of his government.
- An Approaching Storm? -
With economies all based on the standard of a fiat dollar and national central banks meeting internationally to manipulate interest rates an interesting stage is being set. Mismanagement and unlucky chance happening in localized pockets is devastating to a locale, but now anything that may go wrong will be felt around the entire globe at once. Any disaster initiated will begin one that will be universal in nature.
With economic disaster, the lesson of history is that there will be war over diminishing resources and the rise of demagogues as the populations desperately search for someone to lead them out of unpropitious circumstances and hardship. Now that the people are increasingly conditioned to think in international terms, and the socialist state as the ultimate provider of their needs all with sentiments of nationalistic sovereignty on the wane, by extrapolation of past example it is quite possible this could lead to a single entity or demagogue controlling the entire human race for the first time in its long history.
Another very interesting development is population demographics. Because of cultural and economic pressures, the richer nations are experiencing zero and even negative growth, while poorer populations are booming. Even the richer nations are changing as immigrants from the third world are replacing traditional populations. As an example, it is estimated that over half of Dutch children are not even Dutch.
The history of the world is full of human migration and populations supplanting indigenous ones. Cultures can become dominant and then eventually go extinct. One thing of which we can be certain, the world will be a very different place in a hundred years. Dominant cultures, wealth distribution, prevalent attitudes, religions and governments will all reflect these changes. We are living in a period of history characterized by flux on a scale probably never seen before.
This becomes important because changes bring uneasiness to people, and often resistance. Signs of it are everywhere, from social issues and lifestyles to international relations. These signs manifest themselves as reactionary movements, such as ultra nationalism or religious fanaticism. Add to this the explosive changes brought about in knowledge and technology that are changing how we live every day. To illustrate how far things have changed, this author’s grandmother went to school in a horse-drawn cart. Today, it is against health regulations to keep such an animal unless zoned as rural, and children are generally driven to school in a bus.
For now, at least, it must be pointed out that the standard of living is higher than it has ever been. With medicines and nutritional information, we are leading longer and healthier lives. Many benefits are known, but it is not the governments that have brought this about except in that they may have given free reign to people working in their own self-interest – i.e., a market economy. If anything, the results of over-regulation, loopholes benefiting and sating the greed of the wealthy, as well as the credit and trade manipulation already mentioned, have allowed the governments to stifle what could have been accomplished.
- The Human Need for Leadership -
There is little example of peaceful anarchy in history. Except in chaotic times of great barbarity, usually between governments agreed on or imposed, most of human history has had government and leadership. The question naturally arises, what part of the human equation requires other people to define how people should live, often at the cost of brutal exploitation?
A careful study of this question leaves us with multiple answers. If Homo sapiens sans civilization are animals where the strongest individual controls the weak until someone stronger replaces them, it is in the interest of the majority to have a code that protects them. While this protection may not include protection from the dominant individual, it may provide security against outside competing groups. The rise of feudalism in Europe after the fall of Rome certainly was a case in point.
Another facet of the answer lies in the ego of dominant individuals to control others. There are many in history and today who feel it is their manifest destiny to control the world and form it to their concept of how the universe should be at the expense of the liberties of others. Without empathy for others of their own species, they exhibit psychopathic actions that bring them satisfaction through the use of fellow humans as tools to their own end. This satisfaction can be realized as material gain, self-aggrandizement, or having their person remembered for their accomplishments for all posterity. A type of immortality is established in their own minds, if you will.
Thousands of years have passed, yet every
school child knows such names as Julius Caesar,
Most humans are satisfied to go about their lives, pursuing interests, raising children, and all the other facets of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While the selfish human characteristic of thinking others should do as they say and think as they do is present in various degrees, it is limited to people associated with them in their daily lives. The aberrant individuals who think on larger scales over whole civilizations and societies are nonetheless not a rare anomaly. Luckily most are unable to achieve goals of domination because of inability, circumstance, and most of all, competition.
We’ve already reviewed why a person would want power and why someone would support that power for position and privilege. A detailed look at why the general population would submit to the authority of someone else becomes a bit more involved. There seem to be three main reasons for allowing this domination – instilled belief, security and resignation.
If a person is raised by influences religious and secular that gives them a belief that a leader or government rightfully holds the position by virtue of right or legitimacy, they will put up little resistance to that authority. Firstly, because it is all they know, and secondly because they believe in it as a good thing themselves. Patriotism is considered a virtue, and sentiments for nation states run high. These people are the easiest to dominate, because one acting as he should because he is convinced to do so is proper, requires little supervision. He acts by his own mores and beliefs, and is a good citizen.
Security is a second reason. When people feel threatened and unable to defend themselves, they look to the strong to defend them. Whether danger comes from an invading tribe, competing ideology, or scarcity of resources, people are willing to give up personal liberties to authority they would never consider giving up to maintain a sense of security.
An illustration from our own times would be the aftermath of the recent devastating terrorist attacks caused by a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalist expansion. The citizens of the United States have allowed an entire government Department of Homeland Security to be created to protect them at the sacrifice of many liberties and personal inconvenience. This allows them, though, to sleep comfortably at night in a safety that is largely illusionary. The government that was unable to protect them from the original attack is now blindly trusted to protect them from future ones.
In Germany earlier in the last century, a hungry and destitute populace fell victim to demagoguery, placing collective blame for their ills on everyone else. They especially singled out, among others, Jews, gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals and the mentally retarded. The result was an ancient culture of beauty and refinement unleashing a nightmarish horror. While extreme, this is a common human theme. In times of trouble, people are willing to give away all their personal freedom in order to be secure in their way of living and even their physical lives. Whether witch hunts, the search for communists or the latest tendency to disallow due process to people accused of child molestation, leeway is given to authority to do what it needs to do to protect them.
The third reason is resignation. Inasmuch as there will be those who insist on ruling, and will often have enough henchmen to support them, most people will feel little choice but to accept the authority to avoid losing all they have or being imprisoned or killed. The condition of life must become dire indeed for individuals to challenge authority and governments placed on them. These rebellions have happened with frequency in our collective history, but are always an expensive business in terms of life and resources.
- Government as a Reflection of Self Image -
It is interesting to note that major trends in popular governance have changed as the attitude humanity has had about itself has changed. This is also true of all reflections of human endeavor, and will be elaborated later in a chapter on art and music, but a brief comment on this phenomenon as it relates to government at this time would not be remiss.
When the people of Europe were faced with an unexplained and sometimes magical existence that was merely a pre-cursor to eternity, authority was more often accepted as total lest they anger authority claiming to be from God. Their lives were cheap, short and could be snuffed out suddenly. As sophistication increased, they then came to the realization that being created in God’s image in a cosmos that could be explained by often times facilely contrived mechanical rules made humanity the crowning creation and center of that universe. Man was important as a species, but still subject to the unquestioned authority of those divinely placed in charge. As that authority was questioned, and abandoned, the individual became paramount and government merely a necessary evil for common defense.
It was a short journey to question everything as a reasonable course to find truth, and the belief of a created man as the center of universe gave way to an animal that evolved into self awareness and elaborate social structures. As this image of collective self became prominent, the worth of man as individual was degraded, and the God of former times was largely replaced by the state as the ultimate authority in all matters of human intercourse.
- The Illusion of Government --
As previously alluded to, a semblance of republicanism and collective choice is maintained, but increasingly the founding fundamentals of governments are ignored with less and less dissent as the rich and powerful monopolize all but the smallest and highly localized key positions of the nation state. This has led to voter apathy as the realization of control over their government had become rather symbolic. This apathy then signals those who would hold power that more power can be had if one is just bold enough to grasp it.
In the United States attorney generals, congressmen and presidents of both prominent political parties have run slip-shod over the most basic matters in constitutional law with little political outcry. The Constitution itself has become a mere poker chip in the political quest for power in election years. Executive Orders have been abused with increasing frequency by the office of president when desired legislation did not get passed by the congress, totally bypassing the separation of powers so wisely adapted from Montesquieu and the Federalist Papers. President Clinton on the day of the inauguration of the next president was signing multiple orders of executive pardon for his cronies.
Actions of tyranny and impropriety can be over-looked if coated with enough hyperbole on issues that mean nothing, but can strike responsive chords in the voters. Repetition of rallying phrases of ideology help keep the capricious focused, and creating a “we” and “them” dichotomy to maintain party loyalty. This is entirely by design, but the horrible reality is that the dichotomy is maintained by two groups in collusion with each other to maintain control. Independent philosophies and ideas or common people are helpless to break in at any significant level and are dismissed during public debate or in news coverage by media.
Interests hoping for influence are only too happy to support these parties in power which become more alike with each passing election. This is done through media, bribes and promises of support. Politicians seeking power pander to the organized interests and all those with money that can help pay the millions necessary to capture voter attention in campaigns full of televised sound bytes and rich in platitude.
All the while, government which by its very nature is parasitic of its citizenry’s labor and produces nothing, becomes more and more involved in an increasing number of details in people’s lives. This can range from the economy to cattle research and from education to art exhibits. It also can monopolize industries such as space exploration and crowd out private enterprise by creating services of it own, such as in the case of home mortgages.
Such omnipresence is an expensive endeavor, and to pay for it, tax rates increase, new taxes are added and, when all else fails, the governing spends in deficit. Generations yet unborn are saddled with debt incurred by the generations before them, and money leaving the country for imported goods and services returns in the form of government bonds held internationally against that debt. Numbers involved in that debt are staggering and growing exponentially. Much of it is owed from one government agency to another, as in moneys collected for social security being plundered for other political purposes.
Pure mathematics limits how far this can go, but there is as yet little real effort to control it. The possible global economic disaster alluded to earlier can only seem inevitable unless there is a radical change in the status quo and the philosophy of anything for political expedience. A call to fiscal discipline is critical, but highly unpopular to a voting public whose support must be maintained.
- The Beauty and Horror of Entropy -
As in all things, this system is self-correcting. Whether done through self-achieved discipline, or social turmoil, all things remain in balance. We may consider ourselves above nature, but we are subject to its rules.
The landscape of history provides repeated example of good systems being created, their corruption caused by sated and spoiled progeny of the founders, the decay introduced by those who would take advantage of the corruption for personal gain, and then the destruction of the system. This destruction can be caused by new groups in ascendancy or by the collapse of the system itself when it fails to illicit the faith in those that live within it. Usually it is a combination of both, and the greater the civilization has risen, the more catastrophic the crash.
With the lesson repeated over and over in history, only changing the names, places and dates, the pattern should perhaps be more conspicuous even to the most casual observer. It can be hoped wisdom has been gained and the pangs of change can be minimalized. With human nature unchanged, this devoutly to be wished outcome seems unlikely.
