The General Human Pattern of social organization is a head male and usually his mate in charge (a king, football quarterback, dictator) with his loyal inner circle (the royal court, the in kinds, the junta). The rest of the population is “out”. The guy in charge stays in charge as long as:
1. He controls a critical resource, like Chinese water empires or trade routes, like Mohammed and his merry band of theives
2. Has recognition as such (divine right of kinds, enough guns to outgun the competition)
3. Doesn’t kill so many underlings that the rest vote with their feet to leave
This article suggests that we should be happy with another Clinton or Bush as President, because, hey, they’re born and bred to rule. As long as the trains run on time and we all get our annual visit with the socialized medico, life is good, so having a say doesn’t matter so much.
Of course, power corrupts, or it attracts the corruptible. And those who seem given a divine right (or A-OK to do anything) will do anything. Ban the religion you don’t like, execute those who annoy you, raze buildings to improve your view.
Democracy is an improvement over the General Human Pattern in that it recognizes that underlings have rights. Constitutional limits and checks and balances on powers help protect those rights.
Saying we should be A-OK with a fall back to more primitive patterns of behavior while keeping our modern technology is like terrorists who force women into burqas because Mohammed did it, but explosives and AK-47s are acceptable. Picking and choosing, taking the worst from the past and enforcing it into the present with the most advanced technology.
I hope this article is a joke. Because anyone who believes a “let the idiot rule because his father did a decent job, screw the better candidate because he has the wrong name” is a step in a very wrong direction.
Thank you for your response.
The real reason certain people are “born to rule” has less to do with their control of water canals or whatever and more to do with the only real “superpower” that exists. It’s called charisma, and it’s the power to get people to obey you out of love rather than fear. Some people are born with this superpower and some are not; here in the West, we call a person with charisma a “born leader” — the no-nonsense captain of the football team, for example, or the stern-but-wise teacher all the kids love, or the bright-eyed and witty schoolgirl who, though perhaps not the most physically attractive girl in school, still commands an army of loyal girlfriends and a herd of starry-eyed boys using nothing but sheer charm.
Charisma tends to run in families. Of course, this is no guarantee that any given menber of a “gifted” family will be charismatic; it is merely another trait that gets passed down in families. Charisma is furthermore not limited to “good guys”; most of history’s most horrible tyrants have possessed great personal charisma.
Yes, autocracy has risks. The powers of an autocrat (or an authoritarian government) are essentially unlimited, and can be used for great evil. However, the same can also be said of a democratic government. Sure, “Constitutional limits and checks and balances on powers” are there, and theoretically our government cannot exceed its constitutionally-delimited powers. But in the final analysis the Constitution is a piece of parchment, and, given the right circumstances, the U.S. government can assume powers that far exceed those specified in the Constitution. The President has executive powers about which most world dictators could only dream: he can, upon his own authority. confine innocent U.S. citizens to concentration camps, confiscate their property, declare the existence of a state of war, federalize National Guard troops and send them into the cities to confiscate guns, restrict travel on Federal-Aid highways (i.e. all highways) to “official traffic only”, shut down the air, water, and rail transport networks, commander the public airwaves, confiscate personal property for government use, suppress trade unions, nationalize vital industries, tear screaming children from their dead mothers’ arms and deport them, and send in stormtroopers to burn little kids alive inside their own homes.
And these are only the things that the courts have approved! Given a national emergency, he could pretty much do anything — suspend habeas corpus, order national curfews, cancel all passports, herd all Irishmen into gas chambers, order the euthanasia of every person over 65 — anything. Yes, such acts would be illegal, but (as Andrew Jackson famously pointed out) in the end, the Congress and Supreme Court have no means of actually preventing a president from doing anything he wishes to do; the Army has the power to defeat any challenger or combination of challengers for the executive power; as long as the Army goes along with him, the President of the United States — or of any country — has unlimited personal power.
The progression of power in the Roman state is instructive. The Romans were never big on democracy, and so the Roman Republic was controlled by the Senate, who chose the Consuls (and, in time of emergency, the Dictators) that held the actual executive power. In time, however, it became obvious that the toga-dpared aristocrats in the Forum had no means of enforcing “the will of the Senate and people of Rome” on an ambitious general with a Legion or two of personally-loyal soldiers at his back. Julius Caesar was acclaimed dictator for life by the Senate not because he charmed it out of them, but because his power was a fait accompli.
As with Rome in 44 BC, so today: in the final analysis every leader — Princeps, President, King, or whatever — is nothing more than the man (or woman) who can compel the Army to follow him.