On the Role of Government

 

Xerxes, my friend to my far left, has opined that he does not know clearly what the proper role of government is. He says he wants it to be “scientist, always searching for a fuller understanding. Teacher, conveying wisdom. Priest, upholding a vision of what we can be. Mother, nurturing and caring for those less able to look after themselves.” In other words, all things to all people. One thinks of Mussolini’s formulation: “Everything within the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state.” 

That is where current leftist thought is; current “mainstream” leftist thought.

He begins with a tale of a group of friends, who regularly meet to debate about Donald Trump.

Isn’t it odd, unnatural, that the main topic of discussion among a group of Canadian friends would be a guy who is not in our country, not some important writer or philosopher, and not in power anywhere? This speaks of obsession.

And it is clear who is obsessed, isn’t it?

“Three of us think Trump is a poo-pile of all the worst traits of humanity.”

That is literally to say that Trump is at least as bad as Hitler, as Mao or Stalin, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, or the Marquis de Sade—"the worst traits of all humanity” must be at least this bad.

This is not a rational position. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome.

I am confident, on the other hand, that Xerxes’s characterization of the one Trump supporter in the group is a straw man: “Trump is the Messiah, come back to straighten out a broken and misguided world.” 

Nobody, even his strongest supporters, thinks of Trump in that way. This is necessarily so, because people on the right do not look to government to solve their or the world’s problems. They see its role as clearly defined. There is no room in contemporary “right-wing” politics for a messianic figure or a man on a white horse.

The right has a clear understanding of the role of government. It is limited, and so their expectations of their leaders are limited. 

It is the left that follows politics as a religion or as a substitute for religion, able to create heaven on earth. Recall the ink spent on Barack Obama being a “light worker.” “Hope and Change.” Remember Kennedy “charisma.” I recall posters of Jimmy Carter in 1976 adorned with a halo and the slogan “JC will Save America.” 

Justin Trudeau arrived in Liberal Ottawa as such a man on a white horse.

Ask any actual Trump supporter, and they will inevitably say something like, “I was sceptical, or didn’t like Trump at first; but I like that he did X or says Y. That won me over. But I also wish he wouldn’t/hadn’t/wasn’t Z.” Fill in the blanks, and it works as well for Pierre Poilievre, or Maxime Bernier, or Nigel Farage, or any leader on the right of the spectrum. There are always reservations on the right.

The proper role of government is summarized in the US Declaration of Independence: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

This is the charter of liberal democracy per se. It is actually as old as Athens and the Greek city states. One might disagree with it, but one is at least obliged to address it, and say why. In the older formulation that appears in the BNA Act, as old at least as the Roman Empire, governments exist to keep the peace. We can ask governments to do more, with the general consent of the governed. Such as a “social safety net.”

No room for a Messiah here. Expecting a political Messiah or government to save you is also of course anti-Christian, and by definition following the antichrist.

Not to mention, it is fascism. It is the Fuhrer principle.

Government should NOT be better informed than the people it governs, not be scientist, or expert, because it must be with the consent of the governed. They must have all available information in order to consent. This is why we must have freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of information. Government must not know anything the people do not know.

Government must be ethical, but is not there to enforce ethics on others. 

Xerxes thinks the problem is that nobody can agree on what is right and wrong. That is false. Ethics are not complicated: they are the same everywhere, utterly unmysterious, and can be summed up in a sentence, or a choice of sentences: do unto others as you would have them do to you. Or, as Kant expressed it, all others must be treated as ends, not means. Or, act as you could wish all others to act. Each formulation amounts to the same thing, and the principle is in most cases easy to apply. 

That said, governments do not exist to enforce morality. That would be a limit on human freedom. Freedom is required for morality itself. If one acts only under compulsion, by government or by another person, one loses all ability to act morally, because one has lost freedom of choice. That is why Adam and Eve were left free to eat the apple.

Governments are there only to protect your rights from infringement by your neighbour—or from those invading from further afield. “Your right to swing your fist ends where your neighbour’s nose begins.” 

A moral government honours, and stays within, this mandate.

“I do not believe anyone has a divine right to rule over others,” Xerxes adds, waving his flag on the dungheap of liberty. 

Here he is surely pulverizing the sun-bleached skeleton of a very deceased horse. Yes, some European monarchs briefly tried to push the idea, around the time of the Reformation, but always in opposition to the religious authorities, at least in the Catholic Church; I cannot vouch for Martin Luther. It is a pagan doctrine, that of the God-King, as in Japan or ancient Egypt.

The Devil always tries to complicate; the devil loves words like “nuance.” Make the ways straight.

This Nativity Story

 

Friend Xerxes, for his Christmas column, sought to parse the nativity narrative as a short story. As a pedant, I feel he did not get it right; but the exercise, I think, is interesting.

He had the Christ child as protagonist. But this does not work. The protagonist must be the main character in the story. He must be someone who has a problem, or an unfulfilled desire. The plot is then the working out of that problem or desire.

Jesus does not qualify, as he appears in the story only towards the end. And, even if he is conceptually the main focus, as Logos, he cannot be said to have a problem. Nor, as an infant, can he be aware of many.

Who has a problem? Mary and Joseph have problems; but these are several, and apart from the main theme of the piece.

The protagonist in the story is mankind. Or rather, that portion of mankind who hunger and thirst for righteousness. “Those with whom the Most High is well pleased”; represented in the story by the shepherds and the wise men. Their hope is for a messiah, who, when he comes, will establish universal justice.

Who then is the antagonist? Who is attempting to prevent justice from beginning its reign?

Most obviously, King Herod; who kills every male child under two years old in hopes of preventing the messiah. Less obviously, Augustus Caesar, whose census and tax, his desire for control, has forced Joseph and Mary into a perilous situation—perilous for the child in her womb.

The problem is not Herod alone, but two separate governments. In other words, the antagonist of righteous men is government in general. Government is, literally, in the nativity story, the antichrist.

Not that we can do away with governments. Governments serve a necessary purpose: in the words of the Code of Hammurabi, “to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.” In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” There is perhaps a representation of honest government, too, in the three kings. Perhaps—but they are not identified as kings in the gospel.

However, if the purpose of government is “to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak,” there is in this an immediate problem: government is stronger than anyone. What is to prevent it from oppressing the weak? Who polices the police?

Hence Locke’s and Jefferson’s concern for government overreach; it is already there at the heart of the gospel. But democracy is itself a flawed mechanism; although a check on the powerful, it also gives power to a majority to oppress a minority. You kind of need divine intervention.

We are seeing unprecedented examples of government overreach right now. We need the Messiah this Christmas more than ever. We must scan the heavens for a star, or some choir of angels

Oddly, we are suddenly hearing many reports of UFOs.

How to Make Canada Better

 

Taking the Confucian civil service exam

I find myself growing impatient that the governments of Iran, Russia, and China have not yet fallen. But this is naïve. Even if they do, in all likelihood, we are not going to get much better government soon. There is an inevitable limiting factor.

It is that the average person is average. The social world, all government, is built by and for average people. 

In a democracy, the government is not going to be any smarter, on average of the population. Nor has anyone come up with a better system. As Churchill observed, democracy is the worst possible form of government—until you consider all the others. 

It is not just that no other system has reliably produced leaders smarter than the average. We are not democracies because we believe the average person is always right. We are democracies because each individual is sovereign, and has the right and duty to decide, as much as possible, for himself. Human dignity demands that he have some input.

China for millennia did rather well on something like the Platonic system: government was in the hands of those who could pass a comprehensive examination. It was in the hands, in theory, of the intelligentsia. That ought to lead to government by the more intelligent, and for many centuries it did seem to. But that began to falter about five hundred years ago. This system could not compete with the Europeans, either in terms of organization, economic prosperity, or military power. 

We are seeing the same collapse in the modern Western academy. The system is producing dumber and dumber results. It depends, after all, on those already there setting the tests and choosing who joins the cabal. There is nothing to ensure that those already there know what they are doing.

When Europe pulled ahead of China, it was snot because of democracy. Europe was not yet democratic. It was aristocratic. The old European upper class was based on the idea that people could be educated from birth for government. That worked well for a time, driven, I would argue, by a strong and consistent Christian ideology of service, the chivalric ideal. But this system too could not successfully compete with democracy. Rulers would still be of only average intelligence, and with a failure of faith, class interest could easily come to supersede the general good.

Modern dictatorships are worst of all: those who rise to the top are those most driven by an urge for power and prepared to be most ruthless.

One solution that could be better than democracy, in producing good government, might be to appoint to office based on IQ. Unlike the old Confucian tests, IQ tests are objective and have the benefit of the scientific method of data collection. Contrary to much uninformed and envious opinion, IQ is the most reliable data point we have in all of the social sciences. It correlates well up to a fairly high level, well above average, with such other checks as academic and business success.

But could a subset of the highly intelligent be relied on to govern in the general interest, instead of for their own interests as a group? Perhaps not. And we still have the issue of human dignity, the right and duty of the individual to choose for himself.

Perhaps the best solution of all is available to a country like Canada, because of our high levels of immigration. Retain democracy, but accept immigrants based on IQ.

Currently, Canada chooses based on income and education. This means Canada is skimming off the upper classes of the Third World. But the Third World is poor because it has a corrupt upper class. The best do not rise to the top, and those who do will probably be corrupt.

IQ would be better, fairer, and would, over time, ensure that Canada is more prosperous, better governed, and a centre for world culture.

Nobody has the never to suggest this, even though it would be in everyone’s best interest.

Why? I credit envy of the more intelligent. Everyone resents anyone smarter than themself.

Killers in High Places

 

One thing that troubles me about writing poetry is that what you write is so commonly misunderstood; and the same is so for creative fiction. So if people are not going to get it, are you wasting your time writing it?

A recent discussion on a Leonard Cohen Facebook group was over someone’s puzzlement over the lines

I can't run no more

With that lawless crowd

While the killers in high places

Say their prayers out loud

But they've summoned, they've summoned up

A thundercloud

They're going to hear from me

And the interpretations they got were various. Some suggested that “killers in high places” referred to the government of George W. Bush. And the “thundercloud” was a political revolution.

The reference, of course, is to all governments. It is the plain understanding of both the New Testament and the Old that “the nations” are up to no good, that the Devil is the lord of this world: “it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.” (Luke 4:6).

All governments kill as a matter of course. Being able to kill without repercussions is pretty much definitive of government: the monopoly on force. We even tacitly acknowledge this in selecting as our leaders relatively ruthless men. A Churchill, a Lincoln, a Sherman; they did some very cruel things. This is why Constantine delayed his baptism until his deathbed—because he had to sin so long as he was going to be Emperor, and so baptism would be insincere and meaningless until then.

Government is necessary. Government cannot be much improved. Revolution does little. The thundercloud is divine judgement.