The Corruption of Power And Its Antidotes

Messy Republicanism Any Day

As we watch nations around the world descend into unimaginable horrors it gives reason to pause.  What a blessing and privilege it is to live in a country protected by the rule of law, on the one hand, and governance by limited state authorities, on the other.

A recent Weekly Guardian carried a front page story on the Congo.  The headlines read, "Congo Fears A New Civil War" and "Violence and political turmoil as people living in DRC are caught between rebel militias and lawless soldiers."  It profiles the case of a dying 22 year old rebel fighter:

Kapitu was wounded in a clash between his rebel group and a rival faction in December.  Even in the remote valleys and hills of the far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the battle took place, few paid much attention.  Such scrappy, bloody confrontations have become an almost daily occurrence. . . . "I was just a foot soldier so I don't really know why we were fighting," he said.  "There are lots of reasons I think. . . . I don't think the wars here will ever stop.  They will probably only get worse."

This kind of lawlessness is widespread.  Couple that with tyrannical regimes which exercise cruel oppression over their own citizens--South Africa stripping farmers of their land, for example--and one is forced to concede that the world generally is a wicked place.  Law and order, exercised by a self-disciplined and constitutionally limited state, is a "luxury" not to be taken for granted.

Letter From America (About Leviathan)

Trump Wants to Deconstruct the Regulatory State? 

Good. Here’s How You Start

David French
National Review Online


On Thursday at CPAC, Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon outlined what he called the “three verticals” of the Trump administration, providing in essence a broad sketch of Trumpism. The first he called “national security and sovereignty.” The second was “economic nationalism.” The third was “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”  

While conservatives need to wait and see what the administration means when it talks about national security and sovereignty and should oppose Bernie Sanders–like efforts to restrict the free market, we should fully embrace the administration’s expressed goal of dismantling the administrative state. Done correctly, it could be Trump’s most lasting (and valuable) legacy.

At present, the vast and bloated executive branch — existing through its alphabet soup of agencies such as the EPA, IRS, DOE, ATF, and the like — intrudes into virtually every aspect of American life. It regulates your workplace, your home, your car, and your kids’ school. It’s staffed by legions of bureaucrats who enjoy job security that private-sector employees can only dream of, and it’s granted legal authority by the Supreme Court to interpret its own governing statutes and expand the scope of its own authority. In its own spheres of influence, it often acts as legislator, prosecutor, and judge.

When Less is a Whole Lot More

Why the Spanish May be Better Off Without a Government

The state’s most important economic role is to get out of the way

James Bartholomew
The Spectator

On 26 October last year, the Spanish government shut up shop in preparation for a general election. This duly took place in December but then a strange thing happened: after all the build-up, the arguments, the posters and the television coverage, the result was… nothing. The various parties were so balanced, so mutually distrustful and ill-assorted that no government could be formed. Since last October, therefore, there has been no government in Spain.

One can imagine that the average political correspondent would think this a terrible problem, maybe even a crisis. The Financial Times has referred to Spain ‘enduring’ months of ‘political uncertainty’. This is assumed to be a matter requiring furrowed brows and grave tones. But the economy seems to be taking a different view of the matter. It is bowling along more breezily than in a long time. The growth rate during the final quarter of last year was an annualised 2.9 per cent, which, in these days of dismal Euro-growth, is a star performance — easily beating the pants off Italy, France and even Germany.

The improvement has continued this year. Unemployment has fallen month after month and is now down to 20.4 per cent which, though awful, is an improvement on a year ago when it was 23.2 per cent. That is a much better showing than in most EU countries.

Sphere Sovereignty

The Bulwarks of Liberty

In order for civil freedom to flourish there has to be a widespread social consensus amongst the governed that the authority of governors is necessarily limited.  Democracy provides no such limitation.  In its brute form, democracy introduced the tyranny of the 51 percent.  The earliest democracies in Ancient Greece--in Athens--practised just such a democratic tyranny.  If more than 50 percent so voted, the victim could be exiled or executed at whim.  Justice had nothing to do with it.

The doctrine of political and government power being necessarily limited can only arise in human society when it is known and believed that God is the Judge of all men and human societies.  But this in itself, whilst necessary, is not sufficient.  It must also be known and believed that God has appointed a wide range of authorities within  the kingdoms of this world to serve Him and represent Him.  State power is always, thereby limited, because it "shares" power with a plurality of powers; the State is one such power, but only one.  There are many other divinely appointed powers.

In developing this truth, it was the Calvinistic Dutch theologians of the early twentieth century who introduced the concept of "sphere sovereignty".  God had established spheres of sovereignty in human society, each answerable to Him.  The Church, the civil state, the family, the individual soul, the market place, the school, the charitable/voluntary sector--each represented a God-ordained and protected sovereign sphere of social authority.  The state and the church may not intrude upon family life and family sovereignty--and so on.

Where God commands the family to live and act in a certain way, the State cannot prevent or outlaw the family thus acting.  To the extent that it does, the State is rebelling against God Himself.

In an organic society, the spheres of social action are always brushing up against each other, and interacting.  There is always tension between the respective rights of each sovereign sphere.  Each free society will work out its own particular dynamic tension between the spheres.  One free nation will differ from another at the margins.   But a free society cannot remain free without constitutionally enshrining the sovereignty of each respective sphere.  There is a separation of church and state; of state and family; of church and family--and so forth, while together they all make up the organic whole of society.

Without such truths and doctrines, power tends to aggregate towards the State.  Absolutism is the eventual consequence.

Lawful Christian Resistance, Part VI

We Are Not Playing Tiddlywinks

Lawful Christian resistance to tyranny lies not in the hands of private individuals.  This duty lies in the hands of those who represent the people.  God made this plain throughout the history of Israel, particularly in times of the monarchy--and most pointedly at the time when Saul, the first king of Israel was inaugurated into office.

The people had asked for a king.  Samuel (representing God) told the assembled nation "the rights and duties of the kingship; he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the Lord."  (I Samuel 10:25).  Some time after Saul was chosen, Samuel again summoned Israel to "renew" the kingdom.  Then follows a remarkable passage in which God lays out the duties of the people with respect to the king.  These duties are not defined in terms of obeying and serving the king. They are defined in terms of the people obeying and serving God and following His law and His commandments.

Lawful Christian Resistance, Part V

The Consent of the Governed A Biblical Pattern

All students of political philosophy know there is a connection between limited government and the doctrines of checks and balances.  No king, or president, or governor has absolute power; the power of all is limited.  The power of all ruling institutions is checked and balanced by other institutions and authorities.  Herein lies the essence of liberty, on the one hand, and the deconstruction of absolutism, on the other.

These fundamental precepts upon which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness depend, arise out of ancient traditions.  In particular, we are confident that they arise out of Christian and proto-Christian civilisation.  The more a nation or civilisation turns away from acknowledging Christ as the King of kings, the more rapidly it will destroy liberty and descend into anarchy or an absolutist tyranny.

The essentials of the doctrine of limited, multiple authorities are found in the constitution of ancient Israel itself.  David was God's anointed king-to-be. God had chosen him, anointed him, and called him to be His king over all Israel.  David, therefore, had a divine right to rule.  But, actually, he did not, as the inspired record makes clear.  He had a divine calling, but not a divine right.

More Islamic By the Day

Jihadi Cameron Means Bad Business

Britain is now embarking down a retrograde road.  David Cameron and his coterie are fixated on combating "extremism" by which they mean Islamic propaganda, teaching, advocacy, and conspiracies to commit murder and break the law.  But political correctness demands that they must not identify one group, but they must be seen to be even-handed across all religions or ideological groups.  A ten-tonne hammer to crush a peanut.

Moreover, political correctness demands that all religions and ideological groups must be seen to be tolerant of all--that is, mutually respectful and accepting.  The only organisation in all of this which escapes the" mutually respectful and accepting" requirement is the government, which authorises itself to be aggressively intolerant and definitely not respectful.

In a move reminiscent of totalitarian societies, Cameron's government will require all religious officials to be entered into a register.  Andrew Gilligan, writing in The Telegraph, summarises the move this way:

Licensing Lusts

The Unbelieving Commonwealth

Christians believe in universal government.  The Christian commonwealth or Christendom is a society in which government is ubiquitous.  But--and this is the telling point--Christians also believe in very limited civil government.  The magistrate, the State, and the judicial powers play a vital role in a Christian commonwealth but it is very limited and focused upon the punishment of evil doers and the administration of just judgment in civil disputes.

But government functions ubiquitously throughout society in a Christian commonwealth.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Three Senators and a Leper

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

One of our great cultural problems today is that Christians do not understand civics. And by civics, I do not mean the “how a bill becomes a law” kind of civics, but rather I refer to our very common misunderstanding of the true nature of our appointed government. We have a particular form of government de jure, laid out for us in the Constitution, and we have another, very different, form of government, de facto, sitting atop Lady Liberty, strangling her to death.

Too many Christians, not wanting trouble, just blithely assume that whatever the Feds are doing is “more or less” in accord with the Constitution. There may be encroachments here or there, they think, but in the main things are okay. They further believe that our duty outlined for us in Romans 13 requires us not to look too closely at it.

Actually, it is the reverse. Our responsibility is found in Romans 13, but it requires us to look at this far more closely than we are accustomed to do.

It is not the case that the Federal government simply outranks local officials, the way (we think) a king outranks a duke. In a government of law, the king outranks all others in his appointed duties, and a duke outranks all others in his appointed duties. This is how separation of powers works.

“But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction: for he transgressed against the Lord his God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense. And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him fourscore priests of the Lord, that were valiant men: And they withstood Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It appertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but to the priests the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary; for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine honour from the Lord God” (2 Chron. 26:16–18).

So, simple question. Does a king outrank a priest?

Towards a Christian Political Philosophy

The Moral Purposes of Law and Government

Feb 11, 2015

Justin Taylor

Several years ago First Things published an essay entitled “Law and Moral Purpose” by Robert P. George, Princeton University’s McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.  I’ve taken a section of this essay and added questions, numbering, and italics, turning it into an “interview” of sorts.

What are the obligations and purposes of law and government?

(1) To protect

• public health
• safety
• morals

(2) to advance

the general welfare—including, preeminently, protecting people’s fundamental rights and basic liberties.

Wouldn’t this require the granting of vast and sweeping powers to public authority?

No; the general welfare—the common good—requires that government be limited.

Douglas Wilson's Letter from Moscow

The Problem of Tiffany Sugartoes

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

September 25, 2014

Scripture refers to that kind of ruler who frames “mischief with a law” (Ps. 94:20). Those who do this kind of thing are men who sit on thrones of iniquity, and God refuses His fellowship with any such thrones.

There are many ways to frame mischief with a law. Everyone grants that one example would be when a despot pillages all the poor peasants in order to fund his Belshazzarian kegger tomorrow night. That would be one example. That would be the big E on the eye chart.

But are there other examples of thieving mischief? While some established thieves are debauched, others are a bit more clever. If Suleiman the Magnificent takes 20K from me in order to beef up the personnel department of his seraglio, then that is both tacky and theft. But if Obama the Magnificent takes 20K from me in order to provide loan guarantees to Goldman Sachs, and they use it to provide a holiday bonus for a rising junior executive, who uses it on a weekend blowout in the Hamptons with a girl named Tiffany Sugartoes, then this is just as tacky, and just as much theft, but we can say that they cover their tracks better these days

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

500 in the Boot

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

August 29, 2014

A story is told of a fellow who was mugged in an alley by a band of thugs, and he put up a ferocious fight. After about fifteen minutes, they got him down on the ground, and found just two dollars in his wallet. “Two dollars?” one of them said. “You put up that fight for two dollars?”

“Well, no, actually. I thought you were after the $500 in my boot.”

One of the most precious possessions a government has is its moral legitimacy. When they have it, taxes are paid, for the most part, voluntarily. Any society requires force for the outliers, but is not held together at the center by force. When the ruling elites start to opt out of this societal bond — “laws are for the little people” — there is usually a time lag, but the “little people” do catch on. When they catch on, the whole thing spirals down into chaos.

One of the central techniques that is used by despots for divesting themselves of moral legitimacy is the technique of governing through arbitrary administrative law. A free people live under laws passed by legislatures in which they have freely chosen representatives. The prerogative of passing such laws may not be transferred. So if you chafe under rules and regs that spew forth from all the alphabet agencies, then you are not free. It doesn’t matter that you are currently not being harassed. No despot can torment all his slaves simultaneously.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

On Ransacking the Penumbrae

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

Friday, July 11 2014

When confronted with the prospect of a devolution into tyranny, most Christians are clear on the nature of such tyranny, and the fact that it is bad, but are unclear on their liberty to oppose and disregard it. No, I should say more — on their duty to oppose and disregard it.

The evangelical baker and the Roman Catholic flower arranger who are hauled off into sensitivity training for refusing to strike an insufficiently celebratory pose over same sex mirage are being abused, no question. But . . . what about Romans 13, and the lions, and the coliseum? Shouldn’t we just take it?

Well, yes and no. If we were in the position of the early Christians, building a new civilization from scratch, we should do exactly what they did. When we are not starting from scratch, we should live up to what we have attained. And one of the things we have attained — because the Spirit has been at work in the world on this particular project for two thousand years now — is the rule of law.

Our current system of administrative rules, regulations, laws, and penalty kicks, is not just a bad system of governance, although it is that. It is — all of it — profoundly unlawful. Most of it has gone well past the point of being unconstitutional, and is now overtly anti-constitutional.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

And Free Chocolate Milk for All . . .

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

July 3, 2014

The uproar on the left over the Hobby Lobby decision has an explanation. That explanation is that we have allowed our understanding of what is meant by rights and liberties to become badly degraded. In fact, to simplify, the common understanding of rights has gotten into a condition of extreme labefactation. So to speak.

The left tends to think of political rights in terms of stuff — the right to affordable housing, the right to health care, the right to contraception, and so on. Conservatives tend to think of political rights in terms of non-interference — the right to free speech, the right to assemble, the right to worship God freely, and so forth.

Now rights always imply corresponding obligations. If I have a right to life, others have an obligation not to shoot me. If I have a right to keep and bear arms, others have a responsibility not to take those arms away from me. If I have a right to peaceably assemble, then others have the obligation not to disrupt my peaceful assembly, and so on.

In a similar — yet strikingly different — way, if I have a right to free chocolate milk, then somebody has an obligation to provide it for me.

The Last President

Lassitude and Emptiness

Normally the term "lame duck" in government refers to an elected official whose term has expired or who has lost an election, and he is awaiting the time when he is required to relinquish office.  Basically, nothing is done.  Everything goes on auto-pilot.  Folk twiddle their thumbs.  

The following article appeared in National Review Online, but it draws upon a piece published in Politico.  It documents, or argues, that President Obama, with over two years of his administration to go, has become the lamest of lame ducks.  It appears that Obama has simply lost interest in the job.  He came, he saw, and it wasn't what he expected.  Now he just wants to go home.

Maybe that's not such a bad thing.  An absentee President may allow folk to experience that less government is better government, as in "the government that governs least, governs best".  We suspect, however, that historians will eventually write up Obama as a tyro attempting to do an adult's job.  If nothing else, it's downright shameful.

Egypt Back to the Future

Moving the Deck Chairs

The Muslim Brotherhood proved to all who were paying attention that it saw democracy as a tool to achieve totalitarian control of Egypt.  It had no compunction about overriding minority groups once it gained majority control.  The Muslim Brotherhood demonstrated that it is ideologically committed to just one, open election. 

Once it was handed the reins of government, the rights of opposition and minority parties were to be forever curtailed and reduced, leaving the Muslim Brotherhood in a position of command and control. The Muslim Brotherhood has the same kind of commitment as Hitler and the Nazi's to democracy in Germany in 1933--a useful way to gain power, as a stepping to dictatorial control.

Islam as a religion requires some variant of "command and control" government.

Righteous Espionage

Trust, But Thoroughly Verify

It's looking as though the NZ government will get its amendments to spying legislation through the Parliament and into law.  There is continued opposition to the bill, despite substantial changes and amendments being made.  This continued opposition has begged a question: what changes to the bill would satisfy the remaining opponents?  The answer seems to be: nix spying completely.  In this view, espionage is wrong, period. 

This totaliter aliter opposition has two forms: a semi-strong form, and a strong form.  The semi-strong form makes a divide between spying on citizens and spying on non-citizens.  Spying on citizens is always wrong--in this view.  The strong form opposition has it that all spying period, regardless of the object, is wrong.  Neither the semi-strong or strong forms of opposition make much sense. 

In reality we have domestic spying going on all the time.  All forms of police surveillance constitute a form of spying.  Some require a judicial warrant.  Some don't.

The Blessings of Messy Government

Zealots and Revolutionaries

The separation of powers is central to limited government, and limited government is axiomatic for freedom.  The separation of powers divides the key functions of government, effectively balancing one off against the other.  A free press is often regarded as an informal, separate branch of  government (the "fourth estate") in that it freely investigates and scrutinises all branches and powers of government, and informs the people of what those institutions of power, authority, and control are conspiring to do.

The separation of powers makes for messy government at times--well, actually, most of the time.  It means that things can't get done--which is to say that the wills of the separated powers of government are often thwarted.  Either one branch of government is set against another, bringing stalemate, or the end outcome can be quite different from what some governmental powers intended.  Messiness is the price of freedom. 

But to the modern mind, government ineffectualness is an indicator of weakness.