Breadless Circuses

Is there a kind of archetype of rulership? And, for that matter, what is an archetype? In practice it seems to mean what most people understand by some concept, thus a widespread meaning, understood at once and essentially in the same way—without further elaborations, nuance, and learned exceptions. Rulership? Well, whoever can say, “Off with his head!” would appear to manifest it—provided, of course, that it really happens. It means ability to accomplish at the highest collective level what the person actually intends.

The American way of government as embalmed in the constitution ignores the archetypes that float about. By contrast the American way of electing its ruler makes maximum use of the archetype—thus in effect ignoring that a presidential election is not, repeat not, the election of a ruler at all. It is the election of electors who in turn elect an executive charged with executing the laws passed by Congress. Quite a contrast. Genuine rulers—the off with his head kind—tend to elect themselves. If that’s not the way they get there, they get there on a vast swell of popular hysteria so great that riding rough-shod over flimsy pieces of paper is quite easy—and easily enforced by thugs in shirts of the same color.

Ours is a kind of corporate model, in effect. At the archetypal level. At the corporate level the board composed of ownership selects the executive who runs the company; the board can also remove the chief executive if he doesn’t deliver. The cowardice of most boards is just a fact; but it happens. The difference in our governing structure is that the power is entirely in the hands of Congress—but not the at-will removal of the executive.

But people want to keep things simple—and as I’ve remarked elsewhere before, If you keep it simple, you are stupid. Therefore, at this season, we have political circuses. The Romans insisted on more. Bread and Circuses. We only get the circuses. The bread is supposed to come from G — no! Make that the Market.

Articulating Principles

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.

Liberty and justice stand in tension one with the other—and this tension by itself provides the rationale for government. Justice for all implies limitations on liberty—lest liberty turn into license. John Locke, in Of the State of Nature, gave formal arguments for this in the seventeenth century. Limited government, similarly, arises from the same tension. Liberty must be curbed for the sake of justice—but not more than justice demands.

And what applies to government applies with equal force to the exercise of any power—be that of a parent over a child, the head of a household over a family, a corporation, agency, etc. But if power must be curbed, the national government ultimately is the point of last recourse; but of course it is itself a power—and must be curbed in turn. And thus arises the notion articulated in the Declaration of Independence that government derives its power from the consent of the governed.

Is it really necessary to rehash all these old ideas once again? We know all this, don’t we? Well, we live in an age when the meaning of words like “is” is debated in grand jury hearings by sitting presidents; thus it may be a good idea to ponder fundamentals. Not least words like “all,” as in “justice for all.” And “justice” for that matter.

You might say that every time a tension appears, parties will form to either side. This seems to be the situation in our politics today. We have a party of liberty trying to maximize the limitation of government—and a party of justice, trying to maximize the justice for all. The tendencies are illustrated in the only passages, within the 2008 platforms for the two parties, one passage in each, that mention core principles at all:

From the Democrats:

Today, we pledge a return to core moral principles like stewardship, service to others, personal responsibility, shared sacrifice and a fair shot for all–values that emanate from the integrity and optimism of our Founders and generations of Americans since.

From the Republicans:

Republicans will uphold and defend our party’s core principles: Constrain the federal government to its legitimate constitutional functions. Let it empower people, while limiting its reach into their lives. Spend only what is necessary, and tax only to raise revenue for essential government functions. Unleash the power of enterprise, innovation, civic energy, and the American spirit—and never pretend that government is a substitute for family or community.

These two most recent formal platforms are here (Republicans, Democrats).

Now the difficulties here are to determine how to measure justice for all. In effect it is impossible, but there are certain indicators that might be meaningful. A clear one, from my perspective, is income inequality. It strikes me as a meaningful pointer indicating the slippage of justice in the United States that the Gini Coefficient, which measures income inequality, stood at 0.397 in 1975 and at 0.469 in 2010. The higher the Gini, the greater the inequality. This means that in the last 35 years income inequality has increased by 18 percent. Now a certain inequality is natural, of course. But what level is too high? Consider what the military pay differentials are. A four-star general earns 11.5 times more than a private does. In our economy, the top quintile of the population earns 15.4 more than the lowest quintile. Now while the number of four-star generals is a tiny fraction of all soldiers, the top quintile of the population is a full fifth of it. Therefore that 15.4 multiplier means more.

Liberty, to be sure, will minimally produce economic inequality—so that some, but not all, will have much greater wealth. The perception, at minimum, of “justice for all” erodes when this happens; and as it does, disorder mounts. Now, of course, this is a free country. Those who wish to work to maximize justice (thus constraints on the economy) and those who wish to maximize liberty (hence inequality in wealth), are free to do so. But it would certainly help if the underlying principles were spelled out and more openly discussed in debates and punditry than they are. Some people, indeed the masses, don’t seem to understand what is is.

A Certain Weakness…

A certain weakness in democracy is that, functionally, the only real qualification of an elected official is the ability to persuade a majority of ordinary people to vote for him or her. Popularity, one might say, is thus a constant (as in a mathematical context); it was thus in the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and still is in the twenty-first century. But effective rule then becomes the function of at least two variables that can and do change over time. One of these is the size of the electorate that votes for any one representative. The other is the quality of the electors measured in education, wisdom, and sense of responsibility.

When the number of electors is relatively small, the candidates are better known; as that number increases, the electors’ knowledge of the individual thins out and therefore becomes more and more abstract. The costs of learning about the candidate mount—for the individual voter; knowledge certainly requires, minimally, expenditure of much more time. More and more mechanical means of communications (beyond personal contact and word-of-mouth reputation) must be used; money becomes ever more necessary to use the new means. Natural candidates—who emerge quite, ah, naturally in day-to-day contacts (and this still happens at the village level)—may not even come close to running. Huge competitions precede even the first stage, that of achieving the status of candidacy!

The quality of the electorate changes as the franchise is granted to people of ever less “natural” (that word again) qualification. The minimum is that of a householder, male or female, to be sure. To this one might add—of a certain age. In our history the age qualification was moved downward; it should have been moved up. Property qualifications have been removed—whereas they should have been retained but modernized: must pay a mortgage or pay rent. The combination of extending the franchise to anyone—and removing the candidate from direct contact with the public by increasing size, produces a new kind of representative who, quite evidently, is no longer capable of effective rule.

This came to mind today when Brigitte read me an editorial in New York Times titled “Dangerous Imports,” reporting on Congressional efforts to cut the FDA’s budget—despite the fact that two-thirds of fruits and vegetables, 80 percent of seafood, half of the medical devices, and 80 percent of active ingredients in medications are imported. We have, alas, far too many legislators who believe that regulation (not least of food safety) is some kind of arbitrary malevolence directed by the Left against the corporate sector—rather than a by now traditional process of protecting public health.

“Spring Time” Notes on Power

The negative view of power seems to be: people who seek it wish selfishly to benefit themselves. The positive view: people who seek wish unselfishly to benefit others. Generalizations of this sort arise in sophisticated times when power has been institutionalized. But since such simplifications are misleading, sometimes we need to get back to basics. When people suddenly erupt, it’s not some sort of democratic impulse that moves them. Something much more basic is involved.

If we look for the genesis of power, we’ll find it in disorder. This may be “natural disorder” arising from natural events or disorder arising from “conflict.” I’m struck by the fact that the earliest Biblical rulers are Judges, that in what we call primitive societies those exercising power are the Elders. The situation of one ruling over many arises when such rule is efficient and necessary—efficient in responding as one to general chaos. The other arises when parties are in conflict and, to resolve it without bloodshed, it is necessary to look to some third party—not because that party seeks to rule but because it has the character of authority: it is older, wiser, more experienced, more skilled—and this by general consensus of the many.

It is rarely labeled that, but use of excessive power by one person or a group is itself a kind of disorder. Such generally is the case in the situations that have produced the so-called Arab Spring. The very notion that underlies our own constitution is the recognition that the exercise of power is supposed to be occasional—when disorders or conflicts arise. Therefore, in principle, power should be limited and hedged around.

The organizing, enabling role of the oldest—among siblings, for example, among children generally—holds within it the fundamental rules. The oldest will stop useless conflicts; the cleverest will devise the games everybody wants to play. We call the problem of excessive exercise of power in this context the bully. And if the childish society is a healthy and natural one, the bully will be brought under control. When the oldest intervenes, he or she isn’t acting narcissistically. He or she is doing what needs doing. If the scale of things is right, everything works out quite smoothly—although there may be a lot of shouting.

Now it strikes me that in this context top down rule is the natural form. Those more complete generally organize the less complete, those more skilled the less, and so on. Such individuals will be spontaneously seen to have more natural right to do this. Thus elders, judges, and military leaders (who’ve gained authority elsewhere, as it were) are natural—provided, always, that the scale is right. Those governed should be able to see their “betters,” to use a hoary phrase. If they can, they will find the outcomes natural and fitting. In contrast to this, democracy as practiced today is clearly a degeneration.

It is, first of all, based on a false generalization—equality. We may be equal before the law and in the eyes of God; we all have immortal souls. In all other regards, however, we’re observably unequal in gifts, capacities, energies, etc. If the scale were right we would, of course, quite naturally grant the rule to our natural leaders. I’ve seen this amply demonstrated at the local level, where it still works—you might say despite, not because of, the democratic forms. Those challenged by local problems and voluntarily taking them on—as a first-born spontaneously takes charge of younger children when the need arises—become visible because they’re already serving. And it is then quite natural to elect them to office. And, of course, they are our neighbors. But beyond the local level, the scale is wrong. It is too great. Therefore people seek power for murky reasons, rather than, always reluctantly, accepting invitations. And in the very process of seeking it, they disqualify themselves.

Now in the Arab Spring, which is a spontaneous reaction to disorder, excessive power selfishly wielded, the urge is not to achieve democracy, which is, at modern scales, a decadent sort of thing. The Arabs are seeking proper rule. In that context elders, in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood and other naturally-occurring groupings of leaders, represent a threat in the eyes of our western media.

But the irony here is that modern democracy, above all, gives power to the media. It is only the media that gives visibility to would-be leaders and is therefore the unelected but permanent source of all power—in the exercise of which it maintains its status and its income and reserves the right to show, under the constitutional right of free speech, whatever programming it pleases, even when it is obviously destructive of social order.

Theoretically, thinkably, we could of course, reform our methods of governance—but practically it is not likely to happen, not until Disorder and Conflict, with leading caps this time, eventually degrade our society sufficiently until a natural devolution takes place. In the meantime, the only rational action is to vote for those who are almost certain to fail—people like Ralph Nader and Ron Paul, for instance—who represent the natural way, sound like our elders, and are clearly running because they see the problem and not the glory or the gain.

* * *

Having written the above, I read it to Brigitte. She reached out and picked up a full-page ad. It said:

Last Wednesday, over

50 million

people watched the

finale of American Idol.

The season’s #1 show

on the #1 network.

FOX

Brigitte then said: “With news like this around, what are you doing writing blogs about power?”

To which I answered: “What do antibodies do while waiting to fight a disease? Why, they sit and wait—and, in the meanwhile, they write blog posts about disease.”

State of the Village

Our own John Magee, who is president of the village council of Wolverine Lake, MI, provides a summary of his State of the Village presentation to the community on his website, here. Wolverine Lake is a small community of 4,415 people (2000 Census) on the western edge of the Detroit Metro area. It is a lake community. The population described in other ways is 1,671 households and 1,253 families. The report is well-worth reading in order to get a feel for what governance means at this you might say cellular level of American life. Things are quite complex. As members of the family, we know a lot of details hidden behind the points John makes, and every time we hear about them, the same thought occurs to me: Nothing’s simple, and the world’s complexity is all there at the lowest levels. The work that goes into being the president of a village council is enormous—and compensated with the great Nada. It’s a labor of love. This month’s theme on this blog is the search for sanity, and John's report is a worthy contribution to that search!