To Retrieve Free Government, Part II

From yesterday’s post regarding thoroughly corrupted republics, Machiavelli* found that even when a few wise laws are passed, corrupt institutions in society and government will turn the law away from their intended, good purposes.

To possibly recover, one of two things must happen. Either prudent men along the way step in to introduce reforms as incremental corruption is detected, or a large single stroke of reform is necessary when the debasement of society and government is evident to all. Since the republic in his discussion is already thoroughly corrupt, it would appear that the first of his possible solutions has been overcome by events.

Still, what Machiavelli determined in his thought experiment comports with reason. If restoration of free government is to be brought about at all, it follows that it can arrive either incrementally in small steps, or quickly all at once. One or the other.

In the first case, the assumption of organic reform within republican norms happens slowly. Since even corrupt republics like ours in 2016 are outwardly self-governing, and men do not take well to abrupt changes, whatever change can be peacefully brought about will arrive gradually. Also, since it is assumed as a starting point that the republic is extremely corrupt, it follows that those who propose and lead a movement, those prudent men, toward reform will be the very few, those with the leadership qualities and sense of the traditions of the republic to shame a debased people to reform their nation. This natural aristocrat within the republican tradition doesn’t inflame the populace to put their trust in his person, he asks them to put trust in fundamental ideas from the founding of the republic.

As for the second case involving lightning-fast single strokes, Machiavelli refers to princes. “Prince” is a broad term for one who assumes all power, a person who assumes all sovereignty. When a critical mass of the people attempt to give up that which is unalienable, their sovereignty, and place their freedom in the hands of a prince, the republic is gone. For Machiavelli, when abrupt changes are to occur to government they can only happen through strongmen, those with the force of arms behind them to subdue foes.

Also from yesterday’s post: ”It is only on the rarest of occasions that a good man will wish to become prince through evil means. Correspondingly rare is the evil man who intends to govern well.” Good men being good, they will not assume powers they don’t have. On the other hand, men with evil intent in the course of pursuing power can hardly be expected to do good once they are in power. If examined carefully, there is a distinct difference to discern between the appeal of the natural aristocrat who exhorts the nation to return to higher ideals, and the slick demagogue who whips up raw passions.

When posters to conservative websites consider what is to be done to turn back the Leftist tide, the talk sometimes turns to the inevitability of violence, a second civil war. As with Machiavelli, reason compels them to seriously doubt the possibility of peacefully cleaning up corrupt institutions. It is hoped that the general in this conflict would be a Washington rather than a Napoleon, a Cincinnatus who will just go home to his farm after doing his duty. Yet are we to expect a good man to overthrow our existing, corrupt institutions in government and society, only to impose new establishments that actually serve to secure God-given freedom? Can raw force actually be the spring of a restored republic?

It would appear, as Machiavelli concluded, that both peaceful and less than peaceful approaches are not likely to restore free government.

When I first came across this chapter from Machiavelli some years ago, my heart raced in hope that he would offer a panacea, a silver bullet to reverse the accelerating tyranny and restore free government. While my unrealistic expectations are fairly well dashed, the rise of non-establishment presidential candidates this year is without doubt a reflection of widespread disgust with our existing institutions. Perhaps our nation is not so thoroughly corrupt as Machiavelli’s assumed republic.

The question is whether widespread disgust can be turned toward the good of the nation, or will it be commandeered by Machiavelli’s evil man who has no intention of doing good. I cannot give up hope that it can be turned toward the former and away from the latter. What took a hundred years to soil cannot be cleansed overnight. Incremental reform is still possible.

We the Constitutionalists, the keepers of the patriotic flame, must continue. Our Declaration and Constitution are our sheet-anchors, and despite the ongoing storm, they will always be there as everlasting handholds to the first principles of freedom.

The nation yearns for reform and the restoration of free government. Let’s provide it.

Reference:
* Machiavelli, Niccolo. Discourses on Livy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Book I, Chapter 18.

The money quote:

”It is only on the rarest of occasions that a good man will wish to become prince through evil means. Correspondingly rare is the evil man who intends to govern well.” Good men being good, they will not assume powers they don’t have. On the other hand, men with evil intent in the course of pursuing power can hardly be expected to do good once they are in power. If examined carefully, there is a distinct difference to discern between the appeal of the natural aristocrat who exhorts the nation to return to higher ideals, and the slick demagogue who whips up raw passions.

So true, but one inclined to have their raw passions whipped up will seldom examine anything carefully. The two cerebral functions, higher cortical vs limbic are at odds with one another, and only rarely occur simultaneously.

The question is whether widespread disgust can be turned toward the good of the nation, or will it be commandeered by Machiavelli’s evil man who has no intention of doing good.

And here we are.

I cannot give up hope that it can be turned toward the former and away from the latter. What took a hundred years to soil cannot be cleansed overnight.

It can, but the cleaning fluid isn't water, it is thicker, and the stuff that irrigates Mr. Jefferson's tree.

One of three things will happen:

Nothing much, just the 'winners' will change, the siphoned off money will go into different offshore accounts and the recipients will be different, but the masses will continue to toil in servitude to the very leviathan they abhor, with a different face on the wall.

In the name of doing all the things the people wanted, they will be further stripped of their rights to travel, work, defend and trade among themselves, and engage in discourse over electronic and other media. The masses will tell themselves it is for the good of themselves and their country while stooping under the loss of freedom and fiscal burden that entails. After all, they won, didn't they? They will gladly refer former friends to the appropriate authorities for their dissent, to garner favor and perhaps a small reward for their loyalty, and maybe to keep their means of providing for themselves. Some will abuse that to feel important and garner rewards. They will tell themselves they have done 'the right thing' and sleep well at night.

The people they lost to will do the same thing as the person they supported would have, only they will now be the ones who are the dissenters instead of the faithful servants. For that reason the actions of those in power will seem more onerous and repressive, because they will not be perceived with the same emotional attachment as they would have been had their person won. The effect will be the same, but others will get the rewards, perks, and snazzy uniforms.

Incremental reform is still possible.

Not so much. When those in power acknowledge no rules by which they must play, no mere change in rules will restrain them. Rules will not matter, no matter their source. All that will matter is force.

TERRIFIC analysis, Smokin’ Joe. BTTT!

Victims of Lawful Plunder

Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.

Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws! Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.

It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution — some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.

How to Identify Legal Plunder

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.

Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

Legal Plunder Has Many Names

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.

Now, since under this definition socialism is a body of doctrine, what attack can be made against it other than a war of doctrine? If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd, and evil, then refute it. And the more false, the more absurd, and the more evil it is, the easier it will be to refute. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.

/Bastiat

Nice. I can't dispute any of your comments.

I'm just not ready to reach for a razor blade.

While most peoples are ruled through force, other nations with Western traditions have pulled back from the brink of despotism. The Roman republic and Stuart England come to mind.

Random comparison to my comments regarding high ideals and demagogues: The Civil Rights movement was grounded in our Declaration. MLK appealed to our best aspirations and traditions. The movement was hijacked by the likes of Jesse Jackson, Sharpton, Holder, Obama, Lynch . . .

It is so difficult to build and maintain free institutions and so easy to destroy them.

The Left cannot build; it can only destroy.

Bastiat did not have the legalized, actually institutionalized plunder of set-asides, preferences, and enforced opportunity enjoyed by a host of minorities, some of which amount to little more than proclaimed preferences.

The insidious nature of that is the never ending opportunity for those in power to recognize specific groups based on the most specious characteristic, deem them aggrieved, and proceed to transfer wealth through legislated or decreed guarantees of employment or other benefits.

It is a form of collective bargaining that requires no dues, no card, no membership fee, but reaps benefits to those who invoke it far beyond such guilds, which often at least require some skill and the willingness to use it.

To be certain, those in power reap the benefits of guaranteed support for them to remain in power or to gain power by the promise of tendering those benefits, and often more, should they be in power. In that way those who reap those benefits enjoy an ever increasing array of privileges and perquisites as vying factions seek their support.

Entirely familiar factions of this nature abound.

Little to take issue with, but the real hijackers of the Civil Rights movement were the likes of H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver (since repented, somewhat), Malcolm Little, and Huey Newton, to name a few.

It was the New Left's Communist influence that laid the philosophical foundations for the welfare state of today.

Those who genuinely wanted racial equality wanted the opportunity to work for their own betterment, the opportunity to be seen as equals in a united culture rather than in the parallel cultures and economies which were commonplace in the day; one set of restrooms, water fountains, everyone sit at the same lunch counter down at the five and dime without the rancor that was known in places.

In those days, Harlem was the district of nightclubs--the Beatles played at the Apollo, and successful businessmen had degrees from Howard or Tuskegee, and wore well-made suits, regardless of the color of their skin.

The hijacked Civil Rights Movement (by the New Left) had no room for Black success stories, only for a few elevated to prominence as prophet or martyr in order to push for the Socialist solutions to cultural problems and guarantee the enslavement of an entire class of victims the movement could use to retain power.

The Louis Farrakhans, Al Sharptons, and Jesse Jacksons are the pretenders to the throne, and bask in their status as perk bringers, but are hardly of the caliber of those men and women who sought a deeper enfranchisement in the capitalistic America they loved.

I know one person can make a difference, and at times in this nation's history, not to mention the world's, they have.

Noah, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed (it isn't always a good difference), Peter, Charles Martel, Charlemagne, Torquemada, Franklin, Lafayette, George Washington, Albert Einstein, to name a few, have done or said things which had a marked influence on the world which followed.

The difference can be good or evil (I left out a bunch of those--both ways), but it is there, nonetheless.

But we can't count on that other person to be there and make that difference in any given situation, nation, or time.

We can't wait on someone else to do it if we can. We might be that someone, who in our little way starts the ball rolling toward the sort of change this society needs.

Which requires that we stand up for that which is right.

Not convenient, not necessarily profitable, not necessarily expedient, but right.

When we give in to expediency we have weakened our position. We have compromised, and started the series of rationalizations that can lead to moral drift so severe we, in practice, are doing the opposite of the things we claim to adhere to in principle.

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