Douglas Wilson's Letter from Moscow

Withershins

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

October 2, 2014

C.S. Lewis observes somewhere that there are two different motivations for spreading the political power as thinly as possible. The first is the motive of the sunny democrat, one who believes that man is the repository of wisdom, and that before we do anything of a civic nature, we ought to check in with as many of those wisdom nodes out there as we can.

The second motivation is driven by a Christian view of man, in which the radical nature of sin is acknowledged, and we confess ourselves unwilling to deposit too much power in any one individual or institution. And why? Because Lord Acton knew his onions, and aptly said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This adage does not apply to God, obviously, who is untempted and uncorrupted by His omnipotence. It does apply,  however, to all those little creatures who are still affected by the aboriginal temptation, which is “to be as God.”

The former view is trying share the power with all those out there who are worthy of it, and the latter view is trying to keep the power from accumulating in any one place. The former view is pagan, and the latter is Christian. In this latter view, given the nature of the case, we are not trying to spread as much power as possible across the entire population, but rather trying to take essential precautions by limiting the exercise of any essential power by spreading as far as we reasonably can, separating the powers and checking the balances.


Now it could well be objected — and it is quite a reasonable objection — that if man is not to be trusted, then why should we trust him with liberty? Can a sinful man not abuse his liberty? He certainly can, which is why we want to limit the damage to what he can do to himself and those foolish enough to associate with him. Precisely because he is corruptible, we don’t want to put him in charge of the life, liberty, and property of everybody else.

Incidentally, these two approaches to spreading the power represent two takes on what is glibly called “individualism.” The sunny democrat really is in the grip of individualism because he wants to extract the wisdom of the ages from the hearts of men, which is like trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. The Christian is not being an individualist at all because what he is after is a great number of firewalls between individuals and other individuals — the kind of firewalls that love can travel through, but pillage cannot.

As I have been writing about liberty, and the responsibility of the state to stop stealing our stuff, it is important to keep a distinction in mind between two kinds of biblical cases against the pirate state. The first is found in a straightforward prohibition — it is thou shalt not steal. It is not thou shalt not steal except by majority vote. It is not thou shalt not steal unless Ahab really wants the vineyard. It is not thou shalt not steal unless you took a class on the social contract in grad school. It is not thou shalt not steal unless the victim is in the one percent. God tells men not to steal, not just the peons.

The state is granted the power of lawful taxation and the state is capable of pillage, mostly the latter. It is therefore the state’s responsibility to learn how those two very different activities may be distinguished, and that is done when the magistrate submits to the authority of the Lord Jesus. It always comes back to that.
The second kind of case against statists with eye patches and hooks for hands is theological, the case I have outlined above. The Bible gives us a vision of the condition of unregenerate man, and what they want to do, and the blandishments they offer their favorites as they make their case for it. It is all for the children, I hear. But the end of the process is for them to take all your cash, and to accuse you of greed if you resist or question it in any way.

Now this analysis is all based on the Christian view of man, and I do confess that it is not flattering. The humanist approach just oozes unctuous flattery (“I have full confidence in the American people,” all the politicians routinely say), and is way more optimistic. If you take the eyewash they offer at face value then it certainly feels better at the time. But the end result is always a choice between acquiescing in the theft of your goods, or joining in the thievery yourself.

As I have said before, the reason Scripture prohibits Congress employing chaplains is that we may not make a den of thieves into a house of prayer. It goes something like that, I think.

Take the direction that the statists and their apologists want to go, and with an open Bible determine what direction you should go. They might call us unlucky contrarians, but we all need to learn the meaning of that admirable word withershins.