Posted on 01/22/2003 4:49:56 PM PST by Sir Gawain
|
In pursuit of freedom humans have developed social control, and in pursuit of social control they have attained a measure of security and freedom. That's one perspective. In pursuit of freedom humans have enacted laws, and in pursuit of laws they have eroded freedom. That's another way of seeing it. In pursuit of social control, monarchs and governments have sought empowerment, and in pursuit of empowerment they have brought misery and oppression on their people, causing their own demise in the process. That's an extended version related to the second perspective. One could go on, of course, especially with versions extended to various stages in history. Indeed, measuring freedom against social control is so complex it's hard to figure out where to start and how. That's what I graphically attempted to do last summer and this was the result.
|
|
The Self-Empowering StateBefore coming back to the chart, let me first place it in its own given perspective. One can say that modernist perspectives range from the anarchist extreme to the totalitarian. Perspective is what determines perception, and the only Absolute here is that there exists no Absolute. Every reality is fluid within a socially constructed world. With this in mind, the chart is based on a characterization of today's Western political-criminal justice framework that has largely developed during the post-WWII era, but which nevertheless originates and extends from the preceding eras. This characterization takes the following form: In pursuit of freedom humans have subjected themselves to democratic State control under the Rule of Law. But the State has itself evolved into a complex socio-organic entity with a life of its own. This entity can only thrive as long as it exerts sufficient control over society. And since society adapts and evolves in reaction to those same measures of control, the State has had to increasingly empower itself with further legal(ized) repressive mechanisms so as to retain its control over society. Every time the State self-empowers, it does so in the name of freedom and security. That is the self- empowering justification. Symbiotically, the Rule of Law is the self-empowering instrument that is continuously re-employed and re-designed in order to legitimize the State's continued control over time. Western civilization has created a new god out of the Rule of Law, yet beneath this apparently democratic institution lies a whole network of agencies whose accumulative efforts serve only the State that empowers them. It is these agents of the State that push derivative legislation through, mostly concerned with more effective detection of crime, which means greater investigative and surveillance powers. These offices have been recognized as having the expertise to tackle such executive affairs of the State. Yet, their expertise lies only in legally empowering their offices and thereby further empowering the State. Thus the State self- empowers as politicians legislate much of what the experts prompt them to. The masses, ever so fearful of deamons, witches and limb, applaud in the name of freedom and security, and life goes on accumulatively. There is no conspiracy here. It's just the way Western civilization has evolved socially and organically. It is the reason why, notwithstanding the semblance of democratic conrol, the Rule of Law has become a Web of Laws thanks to which the State is alive and kicking. At which point, therefore, does State control deny rather than enhance freedom? And at which point does less State control result in a reduction of freedom? Again, there is no Absolute. And we cannot even judge different control models by today's standards, since these are themselves reactively conditioned by today's model of social control. That is to say, if one claims that much of today's criminality is caused by extensive criminalization, we can only find out whether this is true after decriminalization is allowed to obliterate the criminalizing effects of criminalization. This can only happen after the lapse of a sufficient period of time. This is evidenced by what happened after the decriminalization of 'free enterprise' and 'free speech' in what used to be called the Soviet Union. It would also be evidenced by the decriminalization of drugs and money laundering, if this were to happen, where legislation has been found to increase and indeed create criminality, rather than suppress it.
The Freedom ChartBack to the freedom chart. Notwithstanding the fluidity of the relationship between freedom and social control, the whole inter-relationship requires to be charted out. That's the purpose of the above graph-based model that charts a qualitative measurement of this relationship. Freedom is here measured against a scale of social control, marking the curves of the two perspectives lying at the extreme ends of modern Western political thought: the libertarian view and the authoritarian view. While the degree of freedom on the y-axis is left to the beholding mind, the x-axis has been divided into a scale of seven models of social control, ranging from the minimal "Absolute" model of "No Controls" to the maximal "Absolute State Control" model. In the middle of this scale we find the "Moderate State Control" model, which involves a reactive form of State control inclined towards conventional criminal laws on the person and property, away from tangential prohibitions and their derivative laws and regulations that stifle trade and distort financial markets. The salient characteristics of each classified model are described in point form. Most are totally hypothetical, reflecting academic trends, while even the "Moderate" model has never actually existed in this form. In fact, the only model that comes closest to existent conditions is the "Heightened State Control" model. (I have avoided to detail the extent of taxation and the stage at which taxation verges on theft by government, but this would take the same lines as all other laws and regulations outlined along the control scale, be they criminally punished, as in the US, or administratively tackled, as in Europe.) One notes that with the Authoritarian curve, freedom increases with the degree of security that is attained through State control. This view upholds the notion that many humans are intrinsically bad and that only enforced laws and effective punishment can tame criminality. And yet humans are rational beings, so they should be responsible for their actions and punished accordingly. Rationality, therefore, is here thought to be in some way proportionate to deterrence. So this view believes that increased State Control provides more deterrence and therefore less criminality and more freedom and security. Yet at some point towards the "Orwellian" model of control the current Authoritarian view would have to admit that further State control would actually erode social freedom rather than enhance it. So at some stage of the curve the bell shape becomes inevitable, since with increased State control society would be denied the very freedom the State claims to be safeguarding. Flowing towards a diametrically opposite direction is the libertarian curve. Within this perspective, freedom starts sprouting under a "Moderate" control mechanism, and increases as the State relaxes its punitive intrusion on life, paving the way towards informally-based social controls (family, community, corporations). With reduced influences by a less interventionist State, informal social controls could evolve more "naturally" – organically, rather – within the community. So the libertarian view. Like the authoritarian, it upholds the image of humans as rational beings, not whose actions should be punished, however, but whose actions are continuously derailed by punitive and intrusive State Control mechanisms. With less laws to break and less actions criminalized a positive chain reaction unfolds as the criminalizing effects of fallacious and spurious laws are obliterated… until, again, at some point the curve flows into a bell- shape and freedom would be expected to decrease with the removal of State control. The total absence of State Control would here presuppose the establishment of new private fiefdoms that offer protection to their "subjects" and punishment to those that harass them. For it is not the State alone that is capable of eroding freedom: informal control, after all, is the seminal foundation and creator of State control. The removal of the State would be expected to lead to the creation of similar collectivizing entities, but whose political structures cannot be envisaged with any certainty in the conditions currently prevailing. The libertarian and authoritarian views comprise a bipolarity. In between both poles, there lies a residual mainstream view, which is here depicted by a bell-shaped green curve, the "Median of the Mean". This is the mean Freedom Curve of both polarized curves, and it hypothetically falls in the area largely covered by the "Moderate State Control" model. But as pointed out earlier, if one were to locate on this scale the actual mainstream curve that exists today in the West, it would lie around the scale indicated by the "Heightened State Control" model. This pushes the Mean curve towards the authoritarian curve, which is the red dotted line described here as the "Actual Mainstream View".
Escaping the Instrument of TyrantsSo according to this scale, this is where we stand today. Will this mainstream curve, wherever it actually lies, flow further towards the Authoritarian direction as it has done for at least the past 30 years? Or will State control recede in the near future? Could it recede organically, politically and democratically, or will it entail a cataclysmic change in the Western political order? These are basic questions. And in my view, the only way that this heightened control mechanism can recede is through the cataclysm scenario. For the self-empowering nature of the organic State ensures that a self-perpetuating need for more control continues to exist. In other words, the more the State exerts control, with more laws and more intrusive enforcement, the more criminalized and "criminal" will more sections of society become. We have come to a situation, therefore, where "crime" is first being created by the enactment of new criminal laws and then forced to evolve by the enactment of further derivative laws aimed at increasing the powers of the State in order to control the elusiveness of a further criminalized society. In other words, increasing the threshold means increasing the need to further increase the threshold. This spiraling effect will somehow end as all things eventually do. How it will end, remains the question. Although I focused on the State, the punitive masses that populate the communities are as much to blame. The symbiotic relationship between the media and the masses, frolicking in a mud-pit of sensationalism, has veered towards authoritarianism, much to the delight of the self-empowering State. Add to this the "client" control attitude adopted by large corporations acting out the Big Brotherly lie in the private social domain, with their fine-print "contractual" mini-laws that enable them to fine you and slam you at the slightest trap-fall, and you realize that you can hardly ever escape control. Writing about it in the hope of minimizing its growth is as far as it goes so far. And while writing this piece I employed a mode of thought that reflects generations of dead writers who believed in freedom for freedom's sake in the light of the horrendous suffering brought about by power and control. Every Book of Laws has offered tyrants and despots the necessary means by which to exert control over the miserable. This includes the Sacred Savagery earlier perpetrated by the Inquisitive Church, backed by its own Sacred Laws that tortured the life and limb out of miserable 'heretics' and 'witches' in the name of the cross… accompanied by a dash of innate sadism, no doubt… That was less than 350 years ago. And the public torture and execution of Damien for assassinating the French King, to take one particular spectacle, occurred just under 250 years ago in 1757. We may have come a long way. Certainly modern myths and fallacies have materialized, but today the victims of the Book of Laws are emotionally tortured by caging, rather than physically tortured with elaborate, sadistic tools. Yet the Western Democratic Book of Laws grows thicker and more fallacious, as Western thought grows more despotic. The balance between freedom and control keeps tilting towards the authoritarian perspective, away from the possibilities that untried moderation offers. So today, in this as-yet-unnamed era, I simply present a chart drawn in the Mediterranean heat of last summer. As my compass, I have used the era that's just passed, without forgetting the frightening precedents of the Rule of the Book of Laws – the instrument of tyrants throughout all ages. It could be a distorted chart, loaded as it is with post-modernist libertarian bias. Yet it remains an exercise in measurement of freedom, the friendly foe of social control. Kevin Ellul Bonici is co-editor of European MONITOR in Malta. Email: euobserver@onvol.net. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
|
|
|
|
I agree. I hear many conservatives here on FR state it took 30 years of gradualism to get leftist government control where it is today, and it will take 30 more years to gradually get government back under control. Government never has and never will be able to consistently, sustainably, and gradually reduce it's own power and influence. It is entirely contrary to the nature of the beast.
So the only hope, is a peaceful cataclysm, a massive peaceful grass roots protest of some kind, a modern day tax revolt, or something. Otherwise we are headed for the second American civil war.
Where is John Galt?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.