Posted on 09/07/2001 3:35:36 PM PDT by LadyJD
CENTRALIZATION DESTROYS CULTURE (AND LIBERTY)
There are many reasons why the establishment of a single, highly centralized world government, combined with the abolition or subordination of all national and more local govermnents, is a terrible idea.
Most (if not all) of these reasons center around three obvious, inescapable, and interrelated facts about the human condition. These facts are: (1) the inherent sinfulness, weakness, and corruptibility of human nature; (2) the fact that all governments are necessarily manned and operated by humans; and (3) the fact that governmental power tends to corrupt, and that absolute power tends to corrupt men absolutely.
But these reasons do more than merely suggest that a New World Order, if established, would necessarily lead to utter disaster for human societies, and to a tyranny of unprecedented scale and ferocity. In fact, these same reasons can (and have been) used to underscore the great problems, dangers, and costs inherent to a political society that is territorially large, and whose government is highly centralized.
Because the overall world-wide trend for the last two hundred years (or since the French Revolution) has been toward greater and greater political consolidation and centralization; it is important for thoughtful people today to begin counting the costs of centralization.
We can begin assessing the costs of centralization by considering how, historically speaking, greater and greater political centralization always coincides with a decline in those higher and more inspired activities of human genius which we call "high culture," or "the arts."
This connection between greater centralization and the decline of culture helps us to understand something that many of us have long since noticed and wondered about: why, in our world today, we have no Platos, no Dantes, no Da Vincis, no Shakespeares, and no Mozarts -nor anyone, for that matter, whose actualized artistic genius comes anywhere close to the lofty inspiration and power of these masters.
And of course, the hard truth is that, despite our enormous affluence, our much-touted technology and science, and our supposed sophistication and freedom of personal expression, the combined artistic, philosophical, and literary output of the world's societies for the past century has been at very low ebb, if not at an all-time low.
In the place of lives lived for the expression of wisdom and beauty, the technical mastery of artistic mediums, and divine inspiration; we have the abominable laziness, degeneracy, and banality of Madonna, Guns and Roses, Snoop Doggy-dog, militantly atheistic dung-art, and legions of "distinguished" philosophers and writers who are evidently incapable either of conceiving or of recognizing an original thought.
But if we care about the fate of high culture, and want to understand how and why political centralization tends to destroy it; we can find many of the answers we need in the writings of the great Scottish philosopher and historian, David Hume (1711-1776).
In his brilliant essay titled "On the Rise of the Arts and Sciences," Hume explains how nothing is more favorable to the rise of artistic genius, learning, and polite manners than "a number of neighboring and independent states," connected together by commerce only.
As Hume noted, where a number of neighboring countries have a great intercourse of arts and commerce among themselves, there is no single government structure present that can impose a stifling orthodoxy of expression upon all the inhabitants, either by favoring one mode of belief and expression over others through subsidy and sponsorship, or by actively restricting all freedom of thought and examination.
On the contrary, Hume emphasized that where there are a number of neighboring and independent states, a kind of cultural, artistic, intellectual, and even moral competition between these different countries naturally tends to arise; and this friendly competition naturally has the very healthy effect of stimulating the artists, philosophers, and poets of these countries to greater and more fruitful exertions.
But, according to Hume, more is needed for the production of high culture than just a number of neighboring and independent states. In fact, the states themselves should not be very extensive either governmentally or geographically; because big governments tend to betyrannical and therefore destructive of the free expression necessary for ingenious creation, and because, in a large country, the various interests within that state find it very difficult to unite with one another in order to keep the government and its agents in check and accountable.
Hume's view that political decentralization encourages culture, while centralization tends to destroy it, was the result of his very extensive historical studies, and of his deep insight into human nature. He observed how the greatest flowering of cultural and intellectual genius have occurred under political circumstances of decentralization and more limited government. He cites, for example, the competing and independent city-states of ancient Greece, the jealously independent principalities of Italy during the Renaissance, and the limited and constitutional governments of the British Isles during Elizabethan times and after. And we may add to Hume's own list, the highly independent German states that produced the likes of Handel, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, as well as the zealously autonomous American states, that would produce political geniuses like Adams, Jefferson, Henry and Calhoun.
From all this, we must conclude that those who advocate greater centralization and world government are mortal enemies, not only of our liberties, but of the great traditions of divinely-inspired genius through which men glorify God and give beauty, interest, and value to their own lives.
Thanks.
In particular, what vices concerned JM?
1. Failure of the States to comply with the Constitutional requisitions.
2. Encroachments by the States on the federal authority.
3. Violations of the law of nations and of treaties.
4. Trespasses of the States on the rights of each other.
5. want of concert in matters where common interest requires it.
6. want of guaranty to the States of their Constitutions & laws against internal violence.
7. want of sanction to the laws, and of coercion in the Government of the Confederacy.
-- A federal government that could coerce the States - Imagine that!
8. Want of ratification by the people of the articles of Confederation.
9. Multiplicity of laws in the several States.
10. mutability of the laws of the States.
11. Injustice of the laws of States.
12. Impotence of the laws of the States
In summary, the states under the Articles of Confederation were acting like the little potentates that the witless hack of this article is trying to extol. And JM's solution - the more perfect union of these United States!
:>)
Standardized and uniform cultures do have a destructive effect on the arts and on liberties, but it can't be assumed that decentralization will bring about a renaissance of the arts or that either development will necessarily benefit people. An artistic renaissance may be based on values or behavior we cannot morally accept. Remember Orson Welles as the villain in "The Third Man": "In Italy, the Borgias had warfare, terror, blodshed, but they produced Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance period, in Switzerland for 400 years they had brotherly love, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." Or Faulkner: "If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: The “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies."
It's possible that decentralization will have a positive effect on art and life, but regionalization as practiced in Europe now doesn't hold out much promise, since all the various regions are moving in the same direction and keeping to the same standards. Break ties entirely and go off one's own way, and the result may not be art either, or it may well be art, but bought at too high a price. The intention of modern society is to avoid the kind of suffering that stimulates art. Perhaps that, and not centralization is the main culprit.
Get rid of the NEA by all means, but don't be too quick to toss out the country with it. Lost causes stimulate art -- right up until the moment when they finally win and everything becomes business as usual.
That kind of insanity has been around for a long time.
Now run along and
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
Good point; have you read A Clockwork Orange?
BTW, do you use this website?
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I had visited the link the first time you posted it to me several days ago. Thanks.
I particularly enjoyed this cogent essay.
IMO, the root cause of the degeneration of respect was anti-Christian Unitarianism and the hold that it's false message began to have on those more concerned with wealth than truth. And that, is ably chronicled here.
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