Introduction
The Left accuses us of being anti-government. We reply that we aren't anti-government we just believe in less government, smaller government.
It's as if we'd all bought in to the idea that government is synonymous with statism and top-down control.
The Left steals everything, they've even stolen the word government.
I have a very different idea of things. I believe in big government and lots of it!
But that doesn't mean anything at all what you may think it means.
The Left needs to be put in their place.
And we need to man-up.
KCR March 2020
***
Socialism isn't Government
The idea of government is not simply misunderstood in our time, the idea of government has been stood on it's head.
We live in very statist times. We are products of these statist times in our thinking no less our understanding of what government is and is not.
Government is misunderstood to be the State.
The idea of government as the monolithic institution of the State for the control and regulation of society has been overwhelmingly accepted by the majority of people around the world.
Even people who understand and believe in classical liberalism view government as a institution and speak of a ‘limited government' as if government itself is the State. ‘Limited government' is seen as being synonymous with ‘limited state.'
Every day we read and hear about what government is doing or should be doing or has done to us. Every day there is news about the people and personalities in government and how their ideas and plans are, will, could, or would do things to us, affecting us for good or ill.
The idea of government as an institution manned by people who do things to society is the pervasive norm.
This is because we are living in very statist times and we are the product of these statist times to such an extent that even those of us who intellectually are not statists overwhelmingly still do see many issues as products of our time.
Statism is the water we live in.
In these statist times that which is actually the government of human affairs is seen by statists as lawless anarchy and that which is actually the statists rejection of government in human affairs is seen as being legitimate government.
Big government, small government, limited government: no matter how you slice it government is viewed as an institution manned by people who control and regulate society.
If you look up the word Statism in the dictionary you will find this is the definition of Statism.
Interestingly, if you look up the word government you will find what looks at first glance to be pretty much the same thing, i.e. [from the Oxford dictionary] ‘Government - the governing body of a nation, state, or community; the system by which a nation, state, or community is governed; the action or manner of controlling or regulating a nation, organization, or people; the group of people in office at a particular time, administration.'
This definition of government can be taken to be that of the institution of a top-down State. I've no doubt that is what's intended and any other way of understanding government is foreign to the people at the OED.
But institutions are created to serve principles.
The governing body of a nation, state, or community is not necessarily a body of people.
The system by which a nation, state, or community is governed must be in accord with our nature as human beings, our nature that gives rise to our need for government in the first place; that gives rise to the very concept “government;” that defines the principle of government. If the system does not then it is not a system of government, it is system of something else.
The actions or manners of controlling or regulating a nation, organization, or people cannot violate the principle that the institution “government” serves, for if they do these actions or manners are not a part of governance but are destructive of government.
There are institutions of governance. This is without a doubt. The point is that government is not an institution. It is not the State. The institutions that serve the principle are necessary but are only a small part of government. Anything done by the State is not in and of itself an act of government. The state is necessary to a full realization of our governance, but it is not the thing itself. My contention is there is a principle of government to which the institutions of our governance must serve in order to be a legitimate part of Government.
If not serving the principle of government the actions and manners of the institutions are not government. The institutions are serving something else.
Violate the principle and it isn't government. No matter that the action or manner of the control or regulation is done by the institution commonly referred to as the “government.”
The principle of government is fundamental. Like any principle it is irreducible by virtue of being fundamental to the nature of things. The principle of government is fundamental to our nature as human beings and our relationship with reality. In the course of this essay I will do my best to present you with a very comprehensive understanding of our nature that gives rise to our need of government and governing institutions.
Government is a very human need, but not in any sense that Statists understand.
The principle of government is the occam's razor of whether any institution can be viewed as a part of our governance or not.
But what is it about our nature as human beings that gives rise to the need of government? Animals don't need government. Not in the sense of a human governance. Why do we?
The explanation of our fundamental nature that gives rise to our need of government is not the can of worms you might think.
Government, the control and regulation of any entity, as a concept is a higher level abstraction.
In our lives each of us know of this concept “government” quite intimately as our personal need to control and regulate ourselves and our lives.
Animals have very little such need. Animals are alive but they don't possess their lives in the same manner as we do. They don't know, they don't “see,” they don't conceive of their lives with the same far-reaching understanding of time as we. We do because we are human beings in possession of a very high level sense of abstract awareness.
Existentially speaking, that which gives us possession of our lives as “lives” isn't simply our being alive. You can be alive, but without the “seeing” that you are a being in time you have no means of possessing yourself in time. You would have no means of actually possessing your Life with a capital L. You would simply be alive.
That which gives us possession of ourselves as lives is the simple fact that we know of ourselves as beings in time. We have the sense of sight because we have eyes, we have the sense of taste because we have tongues, we have the sense of smell because we have noses, the sense of touch because we have nerves. We have the sense of ourselves in time because we have a very high level sense of abstract awareness.
This great gift of our abstract awareness is where the wheels of our human soul hit the pavement of the world.
That bears repeating with different emphasis:
The great gift of our abstract awareness is where our human soul has been given the wheels to hit the pavement of the world.
As human beings we are all equal in this, are we not? We each know of and have possession of our lives in this manner.
This simple fact has very profound meaning. We would not be human without it, we would be animals.
This sense of sight we have of ourselves as beings in time with lives is only possible because we have been given the gift of a higher level abstract awareness. This gift of abstract awareness is a very interesting thing. It is a sense in which we see and feel ourselves that is independent of thought. We have thought because of it. The sense comes before thought and is what makes thought possible. It is not to be confused with the intellectual tools we make because we have it. Philosophies that begin with the idea human nature is fundamentally materialistic always ascribe to us as beings made by our tools. Marxism is quite explicit in this. But there are philosophies in the defense of freedom in the classical sense that make the mistake of defining our fundamental nature and right to our lives in freedom because we can only realize our lives - as lives - by using the tools we use to realize our lives - such as reason and property - and we cannot create and apply the tools to realize our lives - as lives - if we don't have the freedom to apply them.
Our tools are necessary to help us in our governance but they are not why we have the right to our lives in freedom.
You do not reason your way to seeing you are a being in time. You know it as a sense. No one has to be taught that we are beings made in and of time, only what it means and how it works. It is a fundamental sense in our human repertoire of senses. That which gives us the possession of sight is the sense made of the physical agency of our visual organs. You don't say ‘we have sight because sight is given to us by our maker' without reference to the agency by which we have been given the sense. That which gives you possession of your life as a life is the “sense” higher level abstract awareness.
We know of ourselves as beings with lifetimes. We know of ourselves as beings made in and of time.
You cannot turn it on and off.
You can decide to reason things out or not reason things out, you can decide to act on what you know to be true or not - but you can't turn on or turn off your awareness of yourself as a being in time and all the emotional baggage that goes along with how you do govern your life or how you reject the governance of your life.
Just like any of our senses you can't turn it on or off - it is fundamental to the human condition.
We are all acutely aware of ourselves as beings in time. The whole of our emotional lives revolves around it and all of it's ramifications. To be “in control of your life” is to be healthy and gives one a great feeling of satisfaction. To be “out of control of your life” is a terrible thing whether real or imagined. We begin as children not very sophisticated in our comprehension of all the ramifications implied by our nature but we see that we are “lives;” and no one had to teach us to know of ourselves as “lives” in and of time - only the ramifications.
This is fundamental to our nature as human beings because of the great gift that makes us human rather than animal, this high level sense of abstract awareness.
You have possession of your life in fact existentially because you “see” you are a lifetime.
This is where the concept “government” begins.
It is right that you control and regulate yourself by proper actions and manners with the knowledge that you aren't simply alive today but are a whole lifetime.
It would be a grave wrong to yourself to reject the need to control and regulate yourself as a being that is a whole lifetime, a being made in and of time.
No matter where in the world you may go everyone everywhere knows this is fundamental to the human condition.
Virtue and vice everywhere are defined and measured by this standard.
Knowing right from wrong can be a difficult thing for anyone. In our personal lives we know that our actions or manners are a governance of ourselves or are destructive of the very concept of governance: control and regulation. Some actions or manners build and make easier, better, and more enjoyable our governance of ourselves helping us realize life on a human plane of existence. Some actions or manners are a denial of the very concept government and our need for it, and if undertaken would actually deny us the ability to govern our lives as lives in the human sense of being a whole life.
As with personal government so too with social government.
Just as we as individuals cannot deny our nature by pursuing vice as our form of actions and manners for the control and regulation of ourselves without destroying our actual control and regulation of ourselves, so too in our social governance we cannot deny our nature in our form of control and regulation without destroying actual government.
We can't because government is a principle. The principle of government is this:
The government, the control and regulation of anything, must be in accord with it's nature.
If not then what you're doing isn't control and regulation. What you're doing isn't “government.” It is something other. This is so because to violate the nature of anything is going to break it and destroy it, not control and regulate it.
This destructiveness can be on a personal scale and it can be on a social scale.
In our personal lives it is certainly possible to do things that violate our nature as “lives” by doing very short-sighted things. We're all very keenly aware of this. For the great majority of people the maturing process of age gives us the wisdom to rise above all of this. But there are those who enter adulthood with very little to no desire to pursue government in their lives.
We see more and more of this personal rejection of government all around us. Those places where the pursuit of government in the social realm has been most rejected and the imposition of statism reigns most supreme have by design become magnets for people who've rejected government in their personal lives. The two go hand in hand.
It can be difficult to honestly own up to the admission that even in seemingly small ways you reject to govern your life. Rationalizations are the norm in such circumstances. To admit to others and yourself that you purposely reject governing yourself in any way, shape, or form and that the circumstances in which you live are your fault is too much to bear for most people who've rejected personal government for the pursuit of more transitory purposes than the purpose of possessing themselves as a whole life made in and of time. There are rationalizations built on rationalizations built on rationalizations built to exonerate the guilty for violating the principle of government. Rationalizations are of the essence because we all know that central to the human condition is the personal government of our lives.
There is and aways will be stigma attached to the willful rejection of personal government because everyone everywhere knows of the human condition internally and what it demands of us.
We are the governing animal.
The rejection of government, the rejection of controlling and regulating in accord with the nature of things, the rejection of this discipline in one's life, is to embrace the opposite of government. It is a form of anarchy. The opposite of governance of a thing is the rule over a thing. Rule is control and regulation without regard to the nature of things. Rule is to control and regulate solely for the purposes of the controller and regulator with no regard to the nature of that which is controlled and regulated.
In a person's personal life this reign of rule has little or no regard for our nature as beings made in and of time. Rule, as opposed to government, treats everything - even ones own life - as a thing to be commanded in the pursuit of particular purposes irrespective of the nature of that which is ruled.
You can rule over your today or you can govern your life.
Rule doesn't care about the nature of things, it disregards the nature of things in pursuit of the royal prerogative, the royal pleasure.
This is why rule is rule and is not government. Rule is to the purpose of the royal pleasure irrespective of the nature of things. Whatever that royal pleasure may be.
As social governing, Rule acts by overriding our self-governance. If it didn't override our self-governance it wouldn't be Rule. As personal governing in one's own life Rule is your acts and behavior that overrides your need for self-governance.
In social governance the laws of society then are fashioned by what is right and wrong in the mind of the ruler to the ruler's purposes. Those rights and wrongs become an institution of morality unto itself, irrespective of our fundamental nature. The institutionalized morality then becomes the basis of law. The Ruler then by adjudicating from on high what is and what isn't harm done to society becomes the de facto judicial branch and the courts then become am arm of Rule, not an instrument of the principle of government.
To rule over yourself rather than to govern yourself is to pursue your royal pleasure without regard to the whole of yourself as a life. To the immature mind rule is the means of self-governance and to the primitive mind rule is the means of social governance.
Those who know not, or actually reject, government of their personal lives and so rule over themselves rather than govern don't know what government is socially and to them rule is government; both personal and social.
Those who don't know government internally don't know government externally. Those who don't know self-government don't know social-government.
They know rule. They only think of “government” as rule. They don't see government as a principle. They see the institutions of actual governance and only see institutions of rule. They explain this with mythologies and ideologies of “power” ruling over them on a personal inner psychological level and socially as dominant power structures ruling over society. The terrible clash of forces of rule inside themselves and outside themselves is their only way of seeing issues of any sort.
It is a primitive, pre-civilized way of seeing the world and the human condition.
Civilization and the social government it requires are based on the recognition of our Rights. Pre-civilization, the ancients had very little to no comprehension of Rights because they saw the human condition in a very primitive way. To them the human being was at the mercy of forces completely outside ourselves. To the primitive mind proper governance of ourselves and society is the actions and manners of appealing to the outside forces that rule over everything - even including our inner lives. The Gods of the ancients ruled us at their pleasure and whim.
To the ancients we were like animals living in a world where the rulers of various forces of nature acted on the world. To them the governing of our lives in all respects was for the most part not in our control.
This is very much analogous to the way modern-day statists present the world and the human condition to us. Economic forces, class forces, racial forces, forces of power, forces that destroy the planet, that change the climate, forces of greed, and forces so insidious that they're invisible unseen systemic forces ruling over us - all these forces ruling over us destroy our ability to govern and possess our lives by their strange whim and pleasure.
To the postmodern as to the primitive mind our lives are out of our control. We cannot govern ourselves. We are ruled by forces of power. Society is like a wild forest and we are like forest animals ruled by social forces of terrible awesome power and your life is out of your control.
The feeling of loss of control of our lives whether real or imagined is a terrible thing that can drive people nuts...
...because we are the governing animal.
Whether real or imagined, to feel we cannot govern our lives is to know deep dark despair.
So just like primitive society the modern statist society governs by addressing those all powerful social forces that in every conceivable way rule our lives. The outside forces that rule over us are controlled and regulated by actions and manners decided by our agent the State so that we can attain a realization of the possession of our lives.
The modern statist idea of government is the same as the primitive idea of government.
That is the way of the primitive mind because in primitive societies they don't know the nature-of-nature, nor how to discover it.
The handmaiden of statism is the rationalizations, the mythologies, the god-like entities, those powerful forces outside ourselves that deprive us of control over and possession of our lives; the forces that deprive us of the most necessary thing our nature as human beings requires - our need to govern our lives so as to possess our lives.
The effect of government (i.e. our control and regulation based on the nature of that which is controlled and regulated) is to liberate us from being controlled and regulated by forces outside ourselves. In this way we rise above living as animals. In this way, by employing the principle of government in our lives, we are able not only to know intellectually that we have lives-as-lives but are able to achieve a more perfect possession of our lives. We enter the human realm of civilization.
It took a Copernican revolution in understanding the nature of Man and the human condition to discover the concept of government.
This is why the concept of human freedom and liberty and it's political meaning is so new on the scene of human history.
It takes a lot of time to connect the dots, to digest ideas, to put things together and achieve a clarity of understanding. We have to have respect for the learning process within ourselves, within others, and as a part of the history of human civilization.
It takes a lot of time to understand the meaning of and all the ramifications of our higher abstract human awareness.
It took a lot of time to understand the ramifications of the Copernican revolution in understanding our place in nature, that we are the one's with agency of governance and outside forces of nature have no personal agency, and what this means to social governance in general.
It took a long to throw off the ancient world of superstition.
By our fundamental nature of seeing that we are lives made in and of time, by our fundamental nature of seeing that we are not simply alive now but in seeing we are whole lifetimes, we know that it is right that we do so and a great wrong to ourselves not to do so and with that in mind to base the actions and manners of ourselves accordingly so that we can achieve a more perfect possession of our lives.
It is right that you do so.
That it is right that you do so is the foundation on which our social governance is built.
It is right that you acknowledge this fundamental nature in others too.
It is right that you acknowledge this fundamental nature in others as well as yourself because it is right that you acknowledge the nature of anything, yourself and everything else, and a grave wrong to yourself not to do so -- because not to act on the nature of things is to pursue destruction.
Socially we acknowledge that “it is right that you do so” in the concept Rights. Our human rights, our social rights, in this manner derive from our fundamental nature as human beings.
Fundamentally, it is right that you take possession of your life as your property, you take ownership of your life. It is a great wrong for you not to. You will harm yourself if you don't. Socially we acknowledge this is right for you to own your life as your property by instituting your property in yourself as legal property Right. The most fundamental property right.
All other social Rights are derivative of and based on this fundamental acknowledgment.
To get our social Rights correct is to create a society in which everyone thrives. To get our social Rights wrong is to deny us our government and to ultimately reduce us to living in the state of animals, our lives controlled and regulated by forces outside ourselves.
This essay isn't a treatise on Rights. Germain to this essay is only that our social Rights are acknowledgments of our inviolate property Rights. They are the only means we have of protecting the governance of our lives from other people who would rob us of the governance of our lives. This robbing us of the governance of our lives can be a whole and complete robbery of our property in ourselves to the robbery of property we have as a life. Inviolate property rights are social acknowledgement of our Right to our own life.
Laws are not codified to enforce the morality of it as if morality were an institution in and of itself in need of defense apart from the principle to which it serves. Institutions serve principles. Laws are not made to enforce an institution called “morality.” Therein lies tyranny. Socialism is enforced by such a confusion. Laws are codified to protect actual property from other people who would take or harm property - and so deprive people of their property in their lives. Property rights are the means to socially acknowledge that it is right for you to govern your life in order for you to have a more perfect possession of your life.
It's an interesting thing, property. Some is tangible and some is very intangible. In the course of our lives our physical body is what we think of as ourselves. But as human beings we are also a much more spiritual thing than just our physical body. Because we are lives, the more we govern our lives and achieve a more perfect possession of our lives, the more we grow a body of our life. The body of your life is all the property, which is both tangible and intangible, that is YOU, the life.
We are bodies of life.
As human beings we are not like animals - simply our physical bodies. We are bodies of life. We are lives and our lives have bodies. The bodies of our lives can be healthy, sick, strong, diseased, fat, thin, exercised, even murdered. This is so because we are spiritual beings made in and of time.
This fact has very profound meaning to the human condition. It is wonderfully pregnant in meaning to our human condition.
With freedom to govern our lives guaranteed socially by property rights we create societies, fraternal organizations, industries and enterprises that are physically speaking, institutions - institutions created to serve the principle of government - so as to realize a more perfect governance of our lives.
These institutions are not separate things from us. Property in industries and enterprises and the physical institutions made to serve our industry and enterprise in ourselves are parts of the bodies of peoples lives. Our personal industries and enterprises are some of the organs of the bodies of our lives.
Civilization, this great wonderful garden made of our creations that we enjoy in the pursuit of a more perfect possession of our lives, is the expression of our human spirituality made physical as the bodies of our lives.
In this way human freedom, codified as our inviolate property rights in our lives as bodies-of-life, liberates us from being a species atomized in the social sense and in the parlance of leftwing demagogues “lone wolfs,” to a society of people mutually reinforcing each others lives in the consensual societies of industry and enterprise. By this intertwining of the bodies of our lives in the industries and enterprises that we each undertake to further a more perfect possession of our lives, a beautiful garden that makes the task of governing our lives even easier, even safer, and even much more enjoyable is fashioned out of what had been the wild: the bountiful garden of civilization.
Actual government is a beautiful thing to contemplate.
There wouldn't be such things as our industries and enterprises without the freedom to express our spiritual human right and need to govern our own lives and the social acknowledgement of this spiritual right and need.
This is why the industrial revolution was so new on the scene of human history.
It took a lot of learning and growing to get to the beginnings of society in full bloom: civilization.
The extent to which we live in civilization is the extent to which we have legal property of ourselves, not simply as a physical animal body, but as a whole spiritual body of life.
There would be no hospitals and healthcare, there would be no buildings in th modern sense, there would be no aerospace, or transportation that we know of as transportation, no energy to power anything... and nothing to power anyway.
Everything we hold dear, none of it would have been created and none of it can be, except as that which it actually is: the physical manifestation, the architectures, of the sum of the bodies of our lives.
These are parts of the bodies of people's lives. And we only have bodies of life, you are only able to achieve a body of life and be not be simply the body of an animal, because of the freedom to live on a human plane of existence.
To the extent we have freedom to be human is the extent to which we enjoy civilization.
Take away government as an individual need in the spiritual sense of being a requirement to possess our lives-as-lives, and the bodies of our lives whither and die.
Those physical institutions commonly referred to by socialists as “the means of production, distribution, and exchange” whither and die.
They are not simply physical institutions.
The socialists refusal to acknowledge basic economic principles is not an exact proper explanation of the process at work in the destruction of civil society wrought by the Left.
Economics is a rather materialistic way of expressing some of the workings of Government as a whole.
Socialism, statism in general, doesn't simply disregard economic principles. Socialism disregards Government principles. Socialism isn't government.
It is inexact to say socialism kills economic activity. Socialism denies us our governance. In so doing socialism destroys all aspects of the bodies of our lives.
The bodies of our lives have both personal and social dimension... and physical dimension. The economic realm of enterprise and commerce are parts, organs, of the bodies of people's lives.
The sociability, control, regulation and politics of us as bodies of lives makes a whole governing body.
To those that don't understand the meaning of our human condition the physical architectures of the bodies of our lives look like they are separate things from us.
Because they don't see us as the spiritual beings we are they don't see us as the physical beings we are.
They don't comprehend the society and politics of the bodies of our lives. The physical architectures of the bodies of our lives are as mortal as we as bodies of life are.
Socialism denies us our lives as bodies of life. In this way it actually murders the bodies of our lives that we had made, that comprise our arts, sciences, industries and commerce. Then it wonders why the corpses of the bodies of our lives - civilization - decomposes away.
And what there is left after socialism has done it's work is people reduced to just their warm bodies, people reduced to governing their lives on a day to day basis, reduced to an animal plane of existence.
The garden of civilization that had been created by actual social governance returns to the elements, back to the wild.
The Rosetta Stone of human action is Government.
Actual Government is the applied principle that control and regulation must be in accord with the nature of the governed. If not it isn't a governance - it isn't control and regulation in accord with the nature of the thing - it is a manipulation of things solely as physical things to a purpose other than the nature of that which is controlled and regulated. To violate the nature of the thing so manipulated will cause it harm and will to the extent it's nature has been violated destroy it.
We have a specific nature. You cannot violate it by denying people our nature as human beings and still have civilization. Not by any action or manner for any purpose whatsoever, no matter the rationale. Or you will destroy us as human beings.
There is a governance of human beings on the one hand and there is a governance of things on the other. We govern things to suit our purposes in the governance of our lives.
To apply the governance of things to control and regulate human beings immediately violates the principle of government.
To govern people without regard to the fact that we live as humans rather than as animals (by virtue of being able to build a body of life, by virtue of owning the bodies of our lives by Right as codified as property rights) is to Rule us, not govern.
Rule is a governance of things. Rule can be irrespective of the harm it does by violating the nature of the thing being controlled and regulated. That all depends on the purpose we have in the use of the thing to further the governance of our lives. To Rule us, the bodies of our lives are seen first and foremost as things independent of us, apart from us. Not ours.
Statism begins with the primitive idea of the human condition that we are animals with little to no agency of ourselves whose lives are ruled by forces outside ourselves. There is no means, no agency, to create a body of life.
The idea simply isn't on their radar.
They haven't discovered the human condition yet. They live in civilization but they don't see the civilization. They just see the physical things of civilization as an animal sees the forest.
They don't comprehend the soil from which civilization springs. They are primitives.
There is us as the warm bodies of animals on the one hand and there is everything outside of us as the warm bodies of animals on the other.
They see the the bodies of our lives that we have developed, the physical institutions of arts, sciences, industries and commerce that are in existence only because they are physical expression of our spiritual need to pursue a more perfect governance of our lives in order to live on a human plane of existence - and as primitive mentalities only see a forest of things in which we as animals live.
The politics of this primitive understanding of the human condition are the politics of primitives.
In order to secure their lives the primitive mentality sees the things of the forest as things to hunt and gather.
People of primitive mentality within civilization are no different.
Their politics is based on securing our lives by a social ownership of the forest of the physical things of civilization. From a very primitive perspective what could be more fair? What could be more moral than that?
This is the premise of socialism and modern statism in general. The State is the institution securing a fair hunting and gathering of the forest of physical things out there that we as animals need to secure our lives.
The state then is created with the idea that it is to control and regulate as things what are in actuality the bodies of our very lives.
All forms of politics revolve around a central idea of the nature of Man and the human condition. Socialism begins with the primitive idea that our nature is as animals without agency of our own, living in a forest of plenty. The human condition then is such that all we have to do to live in peace and harmony is fairly divide the plenty of the forest. The only thing holding us back from doing this fairly and living in peace and harmony is the greed of some people to want more than the share of the forest of things with which they need to live on an animal's plane of existence.
The State, derived from this primitive conception of the nature of Man, is instituted to secure our lives in that kind of world.
The politics of this creates a Ruler, a Leviathan. It knows no law other than itself. Animals live by no law but the law of survival, to be alive in the strictly animal sense of simply being alive.
Power over the perceived plentitude of the forest held by the institution of the State becomes the focal point of political life in such a society. This politics is by necessity a binding of loyalties and fealty to those individuals in power, or to those who would like to have that power for themselves. These loyalties to specific people become the politics of such a society.
The state's purposes become the purposes of the Rulers.
The limiting principle of the power they weld over society is the same limiting principle of the power of an individual to rule their days rather than govern their life. The limiting principle is what they can get away with without other people stopping them from further harm to society.
Their purposes are then forced upon us. Their primitive politics of power becomes forces outside of us controlling and regulating us, without any regard for our nature as human beings. It is the same as if we were animals without agency, our lives at the mercy of outside forces of nature. They make themselves the law of the land as if their rule were a force of nature. They deny us our government and put us back in the pre-civilized state of primitive society where humans first became self-aware but had not yet discovered Government and so could not possess their lives as lives.
We have the need to govern our lives in order to possess our lives so to rise above living as just animals. We need to actually grow as bodies of life. Or we suffer. Because we are the governing animal. That has meaning to our very mental health as well as physical.
These primitive mentalities make it impossible. They deny us our government and so deny us that which makes us human and not animal. They deny us the very bodies of our lives.
In socialist terms “the means of production, distribution, and exchange,” are things apart from us to be controlled and regulated as things to purposes of the powers that be, by top-down means.
They take the bodies of our lives and they part us out.
But the primitive mentality that finds itself within our civilization can't explicitly appeal to the way it sees the nature of Man. In ancient times, before humanity had learned and grown in wisdom by the slow process of integrating what it means to be human (rather than animal) and how that applies to law and general social governance, the primitive way of seeing the human condition could be explicitly stated because it seemed we were just animals without agency, ruled by forces outside ourselves, dependent upon the natural world which did hold agency, to provide us the means to be alive - alive in an animal sense.
Our civilization is created by a completely different understanding of the human condition. The primitive mentalities within our civilization explain their politics in a way that rationalizes their fundamental idea of the nature of Man.
They have to rationalize because they have rejected what we already know. We do have agency and nature does not.
The primitive mentalities within our civilization don't want what is the basis of civilization to be true. They want to live like animals. They don't want our nature as human beings and what that means to be true.
The rejection of government in one's life begins by the not wanting the reason for the governance of our lives to be true. This rejection of our nature because one doesn't want it to be true, because one wants to live on an animal's plane of existence, forms the basis of the rationalizations needed to explain itself in politics.
Rule requires rationalizations.
Just as someone rationalizes their rejection of the need for government within themselves so they must rationalize to society why society must forgo politics based on Government for the politics based on Rule.
The essence of the politics of the Left is the politics of Rule - the governance of things. They have a thousand and one policies and plans - for the governance of things. And all of those policies and plans put forward by statist politicians as their political positions cover for their unstated actual political position.
The unstated and actual political position of statist politicians has nothing to do with the policies and plans of the moment. Those can and will be changed as the whims of politics dictate.
Their political position is that they should be the sole decider and regulator of what is right and what is wrong for society. They should be able to have the power to enforce what they think is right and wrong on everyone in society. Those that disobey them will face the consequences they deem proper to their purposes.
Lawless rule of man over man is their actual political position. That political position is written on every page of the policies and plans they present and is easy to see by anyone who sees political issues as issues of the principle of government in our social governance.
Statists don't have any other actual policy or plan than that. All of the policies and plans presented by statist politicians to get elected or justify their rule are not their political positions. To be the sole arbiter of right and wrong in society is the political position. Rule is their political position. The policies and plans they put forward are very much a reflection of this attitude, but they only appear to be ideas of actual governance because the idea of statism as legitimate government holds sway in our time.
Lawless rule as politics is built on a base of lawless rule within the lives of the people of society.
To rule over society as a thing is the idea. All their policies and plans are based on that political idea that society is to be Ruled.
The entire purpose of government is to hold our lives in our own hands and to not be simply things pushed and pulled by forces outside ourselves like animals. It is to rise above the state of living like animals so that we can have possession of our lives-as-lives. The statists turn the entire purpose and meaning of government on it's head.
They deny us our government because to one extent or another they deny the need for government in themselves. Politically, they build their base on this fundamental rejection of the human condition.
They build their institution of Rule on a base made from two kinds of people; those people who to one extent or another deny the need for government within themselves, and those people who accept on good faith the mythologies and rationalizations about the outside forces that prevent people from governing their lives, and so want to act on those mythologies and rationalizations.
Whichever of those two groups, those of bad faith or the naive useful tools, they all suffer from feeling out of control of their lives as a result of the way they see the human condition. To the extent they willfully deny themselves as agents in the governance of their lives and rationalize it, is the extent to which they suffer real neurosis. I think that many a psychiatrist couch has been warmed by people trying to come to grips with clinical depression caused by denying to themselves their fundamental need of governing their lives-as-lives and the denial to themselves of many of the things they knew they needed for the more perfect possession of their lives. By fully buying into the leftwing cosmology wherein powerful social forces are controlling society and our lives for sinister purposes of domination they feel they must deny some or even all of the aspects of their human need to pursue a more perfect possession of their lives because such pursuits would benefit, as they see it, the outside forces manipulating society. They deny themselves the pursuit of themselves as a healthy body of life. But they mentally suffer for their denial of the basic need for government in their lives to pursue in a rational way a more perfect possession of their lives.
There is no substitute for making of yourself a real body of life. We are the governing animal. That is what we have to do, just as much as we have to eat and sleep. If you don't take care of your body you'll get sick, if you don't take care of the body of your life you will get sick.
Quite understandably with nothing but this primitive understanding of the natural world, to the extent people do buy into the mythologies and rationalizations, they feel out of control of their lives and suffer a very understandable mental breakdown.
We are the governing animal. If we feel we can't govern our lives, if we feel our lives are out of our control, then we feel we are not in possession of our lives. This does grave mental harm. Because we must be governing animals.
The mythical rationalizations for socialism are a whole cosmology based on the most primitive of human explanations for the workings of nature. In ancient time the workings of nature were given anthropomorphic attributes in the form of gods with agency that had command of nature. People needed to somehow influence the gods with actions and manners to the gods liking in order to influence them so people could have some kind of possession of their lives.
Socialists, statists, the Left, have built elaborate mythical rationalizations from the same basic primitive misunderstanding of the human condition.
It wasn't until we came to a more sophisticated understanding of the nature-of-nature that we were able to actually take possession of our lives.
It took a Copernican revolution in understanding the human condition that led to the formation of the concept “government” as opposed to the concept of rule.
Before that Copernican revolution the human condition was seen as that of animals whose lives were ruled by forces outside of ourselves and our nature was such that we had little to no agency over the making of our lives. This ancient view of our human condition is one step above an animal's awareness of itself in that it does articulate a higher abstract awareness of itself. But it is pre-civilized in that the meaning of our higher level sense of abstract awareness hadn't been mentally digested yet and connections hadn't been integrated with other knowledge. There's really no other way that a primitive mind could see the human condition.
But we rose above all that.
The Copernican revolution in understanding the human condition totally reversed our place in the scheme of things. Our lives don't revolve out of our control around powerful forces of nature that have agency of will. We are the agency with the means to control and regulate our lives and the world of nature.
We went from seeing the human condition as animals whose lives are governed by forces outside of us, to seeing us as having agency to govern our lives and nature as being that which can be governed by us.
It was this revolution in understanding the human condition that was the germination of the garden of all civilization.
I think this is how Christianity changed the world. It was the understanding of our human nature as the agents of making our lives, taking ownership of our actions and manners in the shaping of the bodies of our lives, that planted the seeds of even further insights. It was this Copernican revolution of seeing the human condition - but it took a lot of time to really digest the meaning of it, make the connections in the legal realm, and finally understand the full political significance and the full spiritual significance of the human condition.
But that said, it is possible to be of a primitive mentality and be living in the civilized world.
We aren't born civilized. We each begin life primitive. The eureka moment of discovering “government” of one's life is for each one of us a personal affair. Some people simply don't wanna.
People deride the outlandish policies and plans of socialists for being economically unrealistic. Socialists don't care and never have. They claim the moral high ground. They have a million-and-one arguments.
Economic arguments against socialism are neither here nor there and do not convince socialists. That is because the issue goes very deep. The issue of classical liberty vs. socialism goes to very core of what it means to be a human being. The issue goes to the very core of the human condition itself.
A hungry man is not free if he is denied his birthright to govern his own life in order to eat. He may be alive but he is only alive. We are not animals, we are human beings.
To what end the food you eat if you cannot govern and build the life it fuels? To what end the health care you may receive if you cannot govern and build the life it protects? To what end the literacy you have been taught if you cannot apply it to the governance of building and possessing yourself as a whole body of life?
It might as well be just a rope swing in a cage for all it matters to a human being in the pursuit of living on a human plane of existence.
To be controlled and regulated by another for the ends of their purposes is the opposite of freedom. It is to be reduced to the level of an animal's life and yet to still possess the awareness that you have been denied the governance of your life. That is a very cruel and inhuman thing to do to people.
If I were to simply write that socialism isn't government because the issue is between our having actual government or being ruled over would have no power of persuasion. To simply state the issue in that manner would make it sound as if we would still live in a state of civilization - though without everything civilization requires to exist.
Civilization is what happens when we are free to possess our lives-as-lives.
Socialists have many variations on the ‘A hungry man is not free' argument. Just about all their arguments are variations on this theme because it is a reflection of their primitive understanding of the human condition.
We have biological needs. If our biological needs are satisfied do we not then have our lives? Are we not alive? Is this not freedom?
To view people as simply their physical bodies with only the needs of their physical bodies is to see us as just physical warm bodies.
Without regard to human beings as their whole body of life but as simply the physical animal with physical needs, what kind of governance is required?
If we are simply warm bodies, animals with appetites, and we individually have no means of applying the principle of government to our lives - then human freedom is actually dangerous to society. Human freedom would mean we have no check on those forces influencing us from nature without and also from nature within us. Our unchecked appetites would make us mean and nasty, brutish and poor, as per Thomas Hobbes.
The society of Man would be one of people preying on each other with no check on their appetites.
This is exactly how Thomas Hobbes saw the nature of Man and the human condition. He began with the primitive pre-Copernican revolution view of our nature that we are animals ruled by forces beyond our control. Within, our appetites ruled us, and without, social forces ruled us.
He was the granddaddy of all modern statism.
His solution was his social contract:
“I transfer my right of governing myself to X if you do too.”
By “government” Hobbes didn't mean “control and regulation based on our nature.” Hobbes didn't think we are capable of acting by principle. That was the whole point for his idea that we need an all-powerful Leviathan state to rule over us. To Hobbes government meant Rule. “I transfer my right of ruling myself to X if you do too.”
By this manner the Leviathan would rule us with no regard for any other purpose than to keep us safe from being controlled and regulated by nothing but the appetites of personal and social forces that make life dangerous to our being alive. To simply be alive in an animal sense.
His social contract and primitive way of seeing the world form the basis of politics in the modern statist and socialist world.
The statist idea of consent of the governed is based on this idea. For the modern statist, electoral politics is to cast your vote for this Hobbesian purpose.
This kind of governance has a completely different kind of politics than politics in a free society. Consistent with the ancient pre-civilized understanding of our human condition, the politics of socialism is a politics of loyalty and fealty to those people who control and regulate society: the Leviathan. That kind of politics is the only kind of politics such a primitive view of our nature can have because we can't escape the fundamental need generated by our awareness of our lives-as-lives. Given the circumstances we do what we can to have a more perfect possession of our lives. In this case, by the lights of primitive people, we attach ourselves in the most advantageous way we can to the Ruler or Rulers of society. Our very lives revolve around our loyalties and service to the Ruler.
Socialism isn't just a throwback to pre-industrial times, it is a throwback to ancient times.
It is the repudiation of government itself and of our need for government. It is a system of Rule.
It's easy to see how abstract awareness is the means by which we know we are lives-as-lives. It's easy to see how it is right to base our actions and manners on this in order to come to a more perfect possession of our lives. It is easy to see how our social Rights are based on the fundamental property right we each have in our own lives and how this forms the basis for codified law and the creation of the institution of a State. It is easy to understand that this State is just a small part of actual legitimate government. It is easy to see that this institution is created to be a vessel that holds the contents of a society to the purpose that we have our government - not to be our government.
However all that being said, it is not so easy to understand that without all of that institution serving the principle of government there would be none of the arts, sciences, industries and enterprises which we enjoy and that help make the governance of our lives a wonderful endeavor beautiful, sublime and sweet.
All those “modern trappings” of civilization like electricity and medical care and everything else we have. Everything we have.
To the extent we have our governance there are, in the parlance of socialism, “means of production, distribution, and exchange.”
All of it is only here and only possible at all by virtue of actual real Government.
Actual real government does require a consent of the governed, but not in the Hobbesian social contract sense.
The consent of the governed is inherent in all consensual voluntary undertakings in which we deal with everyone else in society. All of our mutual industries and enterprises and relations of every sort are based on the consent to be governed by other's right to their lives as their property and to their decisions as to regard of it, and them to yours.
This consent of the governed is the whole basis of civil society. Legitimate government is formed by the consent of the governed. We have our government going on all around us in all the arrangements of consents of the governed going on in society. The state as an institution is instituted to be a vessel made of law and defense for the purpose of protecting our property in our lives so that we can have our government, not to be our government.
The American Declaration of Independence spelled this idea out in this manner:
“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, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The Declaration's idea of government is not the idea of any old top-down government people vote for. It is not the modern idea that legitimate government is legitimized by vote. What is meant by “Consent of the Governed” is something quite different. What do you have a right to consent to? Therein lies the borders of legitimate government. The consent of the governed isn't a vote it is a limiting principle derived from our fundamental nature.
Statism is such a conventional idea. We are so steeped in statism that my dictionary even uses the idea that legitimate government is the people we vote for in the very definition of the word legitimize. The OED definition of legitimize: “make legitimate, voters legitimize the government through the election of public officials.”
That is not how we legitimize Government.
No socialism is legitimate government because it was voted for. That is not the nature of government.
Voting is not what makes for legitimate government, voting is what elects individuals to certain elected positions of office established to secure our Rights so that we can have our governance.
The office is created to serve the principle of government. Violating the principle of government is to Rule. It is using that office to force yourself on the rest of society. That destroys government.
There is a big world of difference there.
We establish this general government to protect our governance not to assume our governance.
The State is but a container inside of which is the important thing: the self-governing.
To otherwise establish a State is to govern humanity with no thought as to our fundamental nature. To otherwise establish a State is to go against the principle of government. To otherwise establish a State is to rule over humanity as a thing - it is to govern us as things - which then denies us our nature - and violates the principle of government and so cannot be termed a legitimate government of Man nor a governance of Men.
Where the State as rule is established the government underground takes on form. Our sociability and politics as bodies of life goes underground. We are the governing animal and in our quest to pursue a more perfect governance of our lives our nature will find expression. The government underground then grows like a mycelium hidden from view under it all but ever growing in the wilds of the anarchy of rule.
We establish the general government to be as a container that holds our society of self-governing people so that we can be self-governing people.
That is what was termed (before the Left took over our national conversation) the American experiment in self-government.
Self-government doesn't mean we vote for an absolute state. It doesn't mean we are ruled over by a regime by a consent of vote.
The government is going on inside the container.
The container is not to be confused with the actual government it is established to protect. The governance is going on within society.
Without actual real government all the “modern trappings” of civilization never can be. That is because enterprise, industry, and commerce are parts of the bodies of life of people. And to take over our property is to take over our property in ourselves and actually destroy our bodies as lives. This destroys our ability to be human rather than animal.
And then everything physical of the bodies of our lives all falls down. It all collapses. Dead. Not to be revived.
And all that is left is us as animals; everything that made us human denied, taken.
The seemingly astute observation that Government doesn't create anything is based on the idea of Government as Statism. It's a reflection of just how steeped in Statism we are.
In actuality Government creates everything.
Rule creates nothing. Rule is a denial of our need to live as human beings and make of our lives - lives; bodies of life.
To the extent we enjoy our governance we have lives and a thriving civilization.
To the extent we are denied our governance is the extent to which our lives are stunted and civilization itself is misshapen, bent and bowed, destroyed.
The Left; Statism; Socialism, has over the course of several generations caused harms incalculable. We are living in but the shadow of the world that would have been if not for the Left.
The world we live in is but the shadow of the world that would have been but for the Left.
It is impossible to know what industries yet to be even conceived of have never been because of the Left. And what never will be. They deny us so much. The world as it might have been without the past many generations of the Left to interfere with our governance would be a much different place than the statist world of our time.
Our world is only a shadow of that which could have been and what can be.
You are enjoying but a shadow of what the body of your life would have been, what your life could have been, had not the Left wrought so much harm for so long in it's efforts to impose it's primitive understanding of the human condition and it's Rule on humanity.
We only have one means of defense against others who would rule over us. Our one defense is the codification of our Right to our own life as a body-of-life as property right in the institution of law.
The justice system isn't in place simply to try criminals and settle legal disputes. Alleged harms have to go through the justice system and due process of law so as to guarantee our Right to life and property. Alleged harms cannot be addressed directly through the legislature. The ajudication of harm cannot be a matter of legislative or executive decision. The justice system is to be a force-in-being to check against this tyrannical abuse. To use the legislature as a super-judicial system where alleged harms get no day in court but are judged by political whim and power plays in the legislature or at the ballot box destroys our ability to have government. When justice is meted out by the power of legislation justice is destroyed. In so doing our property in ourselves is destroyed. Every socialist claim of harm to society has to be stopped cold by this fundamental first check on tyranny that the separation of judicial power from legislative and executive power is supposed to afford. This separation of judicial power from the other branches is the first thing socialists destroy in order to destroy government and impose Rule.
This is and always will be the first check in government on corruption and tyranny.
Our time is so steeped in statism people aren't even aware of this break in the seperation of powers. But this break is what was needed to create the administrative arm of statism.
It was this first separation of power, the courts from the absolute ruler, that severed Monarchy from absolute Rule.
Montesquieu addressed the need for separation of powers. The need for the judicial branch is as a force-in-being to prevent the others from being super-judiciaries. Tyranny has inherent in it's very nature as tyranny the need of bypassing the very purpose for which due process of the law was formulated, in order to achieve political aims. The judicial branch isn't simply to try criminals or settle honest legal disputes. It is to be a check on tyranny in and of itself as seperate from the other branches. To address harms the alleged harms must go through the judicial system. The judicial system has numerous checks even within itself in order to preserve the principle of government in justice.
But when the laws are not made to preserve government as a principle but are made by the legislature to enforce an idea of what is right and wrong decided by the Ruler, made to enforce an institutionalization of morality for the homogination of society to the Ruler's purposes, the law and the courts are severed from government as a principle. The courts then decide cases not on harms to people but on harms done to a morality concocted as an institution unto itself apart from any human connection to the need for government in the realization of our lives.
The Rule of Law is a principled social acknowledgement that it is right for you to govern your life so as to possess your life in property as a body of life and it is right that we each acknowledge this as right in each other.
The “Law” in the Rule of Law is the fact of our fundamental nature.
The purpose of the judicial branch as seperate from the others is to ensure that the Rule of Law, the Law derived from our fundamental nature as human beings, is the law of the land and that laws are not the whims of Rule.
Otherwise we cannot govern our lives and possess ourselves as lives, but are reduced to circimstances of the primitive state of affairs in which we are without agency, ruled by forces outside us as forces of nature rule animals.
Socialism destroys the principle of government in justice and law not in a final stage of it's realization but as a first step in it's implementation.
The early Progressives were very explicit in this. The Progressive idea that society has evolved beyond the need of government being constitutionally constrained by the seperation of powers was and is still explicity an attack on the idea that we need to have the judicial branch as a force-in-being against tyranny. The Progressives rationalized that humanity had evolved to a point where we are all, as they put it, on the same page in agreement that society is so complex it needs top-down solutions to address social problems caused by this new social complexity. Since we are all on the same page in agreement of this social order there can be no such thing as tyranny that bypasses the due process of law that guarantees we have property of ourselves as whole bodies of life. So, the institutionalization of a whole body of rights and wrongs and the adjudication of these rights and wrongs can be acomplished within legislation and executive agency with no regard to the actual purpose for which legitimate governments are instituted. This is the very heart and soul of the Progressive project, socialism, statism. It is the very definition of tyranny.
The primitive idea of the human condition on which the rationalizations of socialism are based does not know justice. Justice is beyond it's ken.
The vessel of law, the vessel of state, holds society in it's hands of law grounded on the principle of government so that we can have our governance. It is our protection from those with other purposes for our lives - petty criminal purposes to grandiose full-blown politically sociopathic.
That proper institution of State stops them before they can start. They can acquire no political foothold. Not as long as the rule of law can be traced back to the natural right on which our social right is based. Not as long as we can articulately defend ourselves in both word and law.
Socialism is the denial of us to our nature. It is the denial of us to live as human beings. It is the denial of that which gives rise to the very concept “government”.
Governance is the applied principle of government, which has been derived from that fundamental nature of ours that makes us human and which gives rise to the very concept “government.”
Socialism is not government.
Reprinted by permission. Socialism isn't Government Copyright 2020 by K.C. Ralston. All rights reserved. No part of this essay may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission of the author.
The Left accuses us of being anti-government. We reply that we aren't anti-government we just believe in less government, smaller government.
It's as if we'd all bought in to the idea that government is synonymous with statism and top-down control.
The Left steals everything, they've even stolen the word government.
I have a very different idea of things. I believe in big government and lots of it!
But that doesn't mean anything at all what you may think it means.
The Left needs to be put in their place.
And we need to man-up.
KCR March 2020
***
Socialism isn't Government
The idea of government is not simply misunderstood in our time, the idea of government has been stood on it's head.
We live in very statist times. We are products of these statist times in our thinking no less our understanding of what government is and is not.
Government is misunderstood to be the State.
The idea of government as the monolithic institution of the State for the control and regulation of society has been overwhelmingly accepted by the majority of people around the world.
Even people who understand and believe in classical liberalism view government as a institution and speak of a ‘limited government' as if government itself is the State. ‘Limited government' is seen as being synonymous with ‘limited state.'
Every day we read and hear about what government is doing or should be doing or has done to us. Every day there is news about the people and personalities in government and how their ideas and plans are, will, could, or would do things to us, affecting us for good or ill.
The idea of government as an institution manned by people who do things to society is the pervasive norm.
This is because we are living in very statist times and we are the product of these statist times to such an extent that even those of us who intellectually are not statists overwhelmingly still do see many issues as products of our time.
Statism is the water we live in.
In these statist times that which is actually the government of human affairs is seen by statists as lawless anarchy and that which is actually the statists rejection of government in human affairs is seen as being legitimate government.
Big government, small government, limited government: no matter how you slice it government is viewed as an institution manned by people who control and regulate society.
If you look up the word Statism in the dictionary you will find this is the definition of Statism.
Interestingly, if you look up the word government you will find what looks at first glance to be pretty much the same thing, i.e. [from the Oxford dictionary] ‘Government - the governing body of a nation, state, or community; the system by which a nation, state, or community is governed; the action or manner of controlling or regulating a nation, organization, or people; the group of people in office at a particular time, administration.'
This definition of government can be taken to be that of the institution of a top-down State. I've no doubt that is what's intended and any other way of understanding government is foreign to the people at the OED.
But institutions are created to serve principles.
The governing body of a nation, state, or community is not necessarily a body of people.
The system by which a nation, state, or community is governed must be in accord with our nature as human beings, our nature that gives rise to our need for government in the first place; that gives rise to the very concept “government;” that defines the principle of government. If the system does not then it is not a system of government, it is system of something else.
1
The actions or manners of controlling or regulating a nation, organization, or people cannot violate the principle that the institution “government” serves, for if they do these actions or manners are not a part of governance but are destructive of government.
There are institutions of governance. This is without a doubt. The point is that government is not an institution. It is not the State. The institutions that serve the principle are necessary but are only a small part of government. Anything done by the State is not in and of itself an act of government. The state is necessary to a full realization of our governance, but it is not the thing itself. My contention is there is a principle of government to which the institutions of our governance must serve in order to be a legitimate part of Government.
If not serving the principle of government the actions and manners of the institutions are not government. The institutions are serving something else.
Violate the principle and it isn't government. No matter that the action or manner of the control or regulation is done by the institution commonly referred to as the “government.”
The principle of government is fundamental. Like any principle it is irreducible by virtue of being fundamental to the nature of things. The principle of government is fundamental to our nature as human beings and our relationship with reality. In the course of this essay I will do my best to present you with a very comprehensive understanding of our nature that gives rise to our need of government and governing institutions.
Government is a very human need, but not in any sense that Statists understand.
The principle of government is the occam's razor of whether any institution can be viewed as a part of our governance or not.
But what is it about our nature as human beings that gives rise to the need of government? Animals don't need government. Not in the sense of a human governance. Why do we?
The explanation of our fundamental nature that gives rise to our need of government is not the can of worms you might think.
Government, the control and regulation of any entity, as a concept is a higher level abstraction.
In our lives each of us know of this concept “government” quite intimately as our personal need to control and regulate ourselves and our lives.
Animals have very little such need. Animals are alive but they don't possess their lives in the same manner as we do. They don't know, they don't “see,” they don't conceive of their lives with the same far-reaching understanding of time as we. We do because we are human beings in possession of a very high level sense of abstract awareness.
Existentially speaking, that which gives us possession of our lives as “lives” isn't simply our being alive. You can be alive, but without the “seeing” that you are a being in time you have no means of possessing yourself in time. You would have no means of actually possessing your Life with a capital L. You would simply be alive.
2
That which gives us possession of ourselves as lives is the simple fact that we know of ourselves as beings in time. We have the sense of sight because we have eyes, we have the sense of taste because we have tongues, we have the sense of smell because we have noses, the sense of touch because we have nerves. We have the sense of ourselves in time because we have a very high level sense of abstract awareness.
This great gift of our abstract awareness is where the wheels of our human soul hit the pavement of the world.
That bears repeating with different emphasis:
The great gift of our abstract awareness is where our human soul has been given the wheels to hit the pavement of the world.
As human beings we are all equal in this, are we not? We each know of and have possession of our lives in this manner.
This simple fact has very profound meaning. We would not be human without it, we would be animals.
This sense of sight we have of ourselves as beings in time with lives is only possible because we have been given the gift of a higher level abstract awareness. This gift of abstract awareness is a very interesting thing. It is a sense in which we see and feel ourselves that is independent of thought. We have thought because of it. The sense comes before thought and is what makes thought possible. It is not to be confused with the intellectual tools we make because we have it. Philosophies that begin with the idea human nature is fundamentally materialistic always ascribe to us as beings made by our tools. Marxism is quite explicit in this. But there are philosophies in the defense of freedom in the classical sense that make the mistake of defining our fundamental nature and right to our lives in freedom because we can only realize our lives - as lives - by using the tools we use to realize our lives - such as reason and property - and we cannot create and apply the tools to realize our lives - as lives - if we don't have the freedom to apply them.
Our tools are necessary to help us in our governance but they are not why we have the right to our lives in freedom.
You do not reason your way to seeing you are a being in time. You know it as a sense. No one has to be taught that we are beings made in and of time, only what it means and how it works. It is a fundamental sense in our human repertoire of senses. That which gives us the possession of sight is the sense made of the physical agency of our visual organs. You don't say ‘we have sight because sight is given to us by our maker' without reference to the agency by which we have been given the sense. That which gives you possession of your life as a life is the “sense” higher level abstract awareness.
We know of ourselves as beings with lifetimes. We know of ourselves as beings made in and of time.
You cannot turn it on and off.
You can decide to reason things out or not reason things out, you can decide to act on what you know to be true or not - but you can't turn on or turn off your awareness of yourself as a being in time and all the emotional baggage that goes along with how you do govern your life or how you reject the governance of your life.
Just like any of our senses you can't turn it on or off - it is fundamental to the human condition.
3
We are all acutely aware of ourselves as beings in time. The whole of our emotional lives revolves around it and all of it's ramifications. To be “in control of your life” is to be healthy and gives one a great feeling of satisfaction. To be “out of control of your life” is a terrible thing whether real or imagined. We begin as children not very sophisticated in our comprehension of all the ramifications implied by our nature but we see that we are “lives;” and no one had to teach us to know of ourselves as “lives” in and of time - only the ramifications.
This is fundamental to our nature as human beings because of the great gift that makes us human rather than animal, this high level sense of abstract awareness.
You have possession of your life in fact existentially because you “see” you are a lifetime.
This is where the concept “government” begins.
It is right that you control and regulate yourself by proper actions and manners with the knowledge that you aren't simply alive today but are a whole lifetime.
It would be a grave wrong to yourself to reject the need to control and regulate yourself as a being that is a whole lifetime, a being made in and of time.
No matter where in the world you may go everyone everywhere knows this is fundamental to the human condition.
Virtue and vice everywhere are defined and measured by this standard.
Knowing right from wrong can be a difficult thing for anyone. In our personal lives we know that our actions or manners are a governance of ourselves or are destructive of the very concept of governance: control and regulation. Some actions or manners build and make easier, better, and more enjoyable our governance of ourselves helping us realize life on a human plane of existence. Some actions or manners are a denial of the very concept government and our need for it, and if undertaken would actually deny us the ability to govern our lives as lives in the human sense of being a whole life.
As with personal government so too with social government.
Just as we as individuals cannot deny our nature by pursuing vice as our form of actions and manners for the control and regulation of ourselves without destroying our actual control and regulation of ourselves, so too in our social governance we cannot deny our nature in our form of control and regulation without destroying actual government.
We can't because government is a principle. The principle of government is this:
The government, the control and regulation of anything, must be in accord with it's nature.
If not then what you're doing isn't control and regulation. What you're doing isn't “government.” It is something other. This is so because to violate the nature of anything is going to break it and destroy it, not control and regulate it.
This destructiveness can be on a personal scale and it can be on a social scale.
In our personal lives it is certainly possible to do things that violate our nature as “lives” by doing very short-sighted things. We're all very keenly aware of this. For the great majority of people the maturing process of age gives us the wisdom to rise above all of this. But there are those who enter adulthood with very little to no desire to pursue government in their lives.
4
We see more and more of this personal rejection of government all around us. Those places where the pursuit of government in the social realm has been most rejected and the imposition of statism reigns most supreme have by design become magnets for people who've rejected government in their personal lives. The two go hand in hand.
It can be difficult to honestly own up to the admission that even in seemingly small ways you reject to govern your life. Rationalizations are the norm in such circumstances. To admit to others and yourself that you purposely reject governing yourself in any way, shape, or form and that the circumstances in which you live are your fault is too much to bear for most people who've rejected personal government for the pursuit of more transitory purposes than the purpose of possessing themselves as a whole life made in and of time. There are rationalizations built on rationalizations built on rationalizations built to exonerate the guilty for violating the principle of government. Rationalizations are of the essence because we all know that central to the human condition is the personal government of our lives.
There is and aways will be stigma attached to the willful rejection of personal government because everyone everywhere knows of the human condition internally and what it demands of us.
We are the governing animal.
The rejection of government, the rejection of controlling and regulating in accord with the nature of things, the rejection of this discipline in one's life, is to embrace the opposite of government. It is a form of anarchy. The opposite of governance of a thing is the rule over a thing. Rule is control and regulation without regard to the nature of things. Rule is to control and regulate solely for the purposes of the controller and regulator with no regard to the nature of that which is controlled and regulated.
In a person's personal life this reign of rule has little or no regard for our nature as beings made in and of time. Rule, as opposed to government, treats everything - even ones own life - as a thing to be commanded in the pursuit of particular purposes irrespective of the nature of that which is ruled.
You can rule over your today or you can govern your life.
Rule doesn't care about the nature of things, it disregards the nature of things in pursuit of the royal prerogative, the royal pleasure.
This is why rule is rule and is not government. Rule is to the purpose of the royal pleasure irrespective of the nature of things. Whatever that royal pleasure may be.
As social governing, Rule acts by overriding our self-governance. If it didn't override our self-governance it wouldn't be Rule. As personal governing in one's own life Rule is your acts and behavior that overrides your need for self-governance.
In social governance the laws of society then are fashioned by what is right and wrong in the mind of the ruler to the ruler's purposes. Those rights and wrongs become an institution of morality unto itself, irrespective of our fundamental nature. The institutionalized morality then becomes the basis of law. The Ruler then by adjudicating from on high what is and what isn't harm done to society becomes the de facto judicial branch and the courts then become am arm of Rule, not an instrument of the principle of government.
5
To rule over yourself rather than to govern yourself is to pursue your royal pleasure without regard to the whole of yourself as a life. To the immature mind rule is the means of self-governance and to the primitive mind rule is the means of social governance.
Those who know not, or actually reject, government of their personal lives and so rule over themselves rather than govern don't know what government is socially and to them rule is government; both personal and social.
Those who don't know government internally don't know government externally. Those who don't know self-government don't know social-government.
They know rule. They only think of “government” as rule. They don't see government as a principle. They see the institutions of actual governance and only see institutions of rule. They explain this with mythologies and ideologies of “power” ruling over them on a personal inner psychological level and socially as dominant power structures ruling over society. The terrible clash of forces of rule inside themselves and outside themselves is their only way of seeing issues of any sort.
It is a primitive, pre-civilized way of seeing the world and the human condition.
Civilization and the social government it requires are based on the recognition of our Rights. Pre-civilization, the ancients had very little to no comprehension of Rights because they saw the human condition in a very primitive way. To them the human being was at the mercy of forces completely outside ourselves. To the primitive mind proper governance of ourselves and society is the actions and manners of appealing to the outside forces that rule over everything - even including our inner lives. The Gods of the ancients ruled us at their pleasure and whim.
To the ancients we were like animals living in a world where the rulers of various forces of nature acted on the world. To them the governing of our lives in all respects was for the most part not in our control.
This is very much analogous to the way modern-day statists present the world and the human condition to us. Economic forces, class forces, racial forces, forces of power, forces that destroy the planet, that change the climate, forces of greed, and forces so insidious that they're invisible unseen systemic forces ruling over us - all these forces ruling over us destroy our ability to govern and possess our lives by their strange whim and pleasure.
To the postmodern as to the primitive mind our lives are out of our control. We cannot govern ourselves. We are ruled by forces of power. Society is like a wild forest and we are like forest animals ruled by social forces of terrible awesome power and your life is out of your control.
The feeling of loss of control of our lives whether real or imagined is a terrible thing that can drive people nuts...
...because we are the governing animal.
Whether real or imagined, to feel we cannot govern our lives is to know deep dark despair.
6
So just like primitive society the modern statist society governs by addressing those all powerful social forces that in every conceivable way rule our lives. The outside forces that rule over us are controlled and regulated by actions and manners decided by our agent the State so that we can attain a realization of the possession of our lives.
The modern statist idea of government is the same as the primitive idea of government.
That is the way of the primitive mind because in primitive societies they don't know the nature-of-nature, nor how to discover it.
The handmaiden of statism is the rationalizations, the mythologies, the god-like entities, those powerful forces outside ourselves that deprive us of control over and possession of our lives; the forces that deprive us of the most necessary thing our nature as human beings requires - our need to govern our lives so as to possess our lives.
The effect of government (i.e. our control and regulation based on the nature of that which is controlled and regulated) is to liberate us from being controlled and regulated by forces outside ourselves. In this way we rise above living as animals. In this way, by employing the principle of government in our lives, we are able not only to know intellectually that we have lives-as-lives but are able to achieve a more perfect possession of our lives. We enter the human realm of civilization.
It took a Copernican revolution in understanding the nature of Man and the human condition to discover the concept of government.
This is why the concept of human freedom and liberty and it's political meaning is so new on the scene of human history.
It takes a lot of time to connect the dots, to digest ideas, to put things together and achieve a clarity of understanding. We have to have respect for the learning process within ourselves, within others, and as a part of the history of human civilization.
It takes a lot of time to understand the meaning of and all the ramifications of our higher abstract human awareness.
It took a lot of time to understand the ramifications of the Copernican revolution in understanding our place in nature, that we are the one's with agency of governance and outside forces of nature have no personal agency, and what this means to social governance in general.
It took a long to throw off the ancient world of superstition.
By our fundamental nature of seeing that we are lives made in and of time, by our fundamental nature of seeing that we are not simply alive now but in seeing we are whole lifetimes, we know that it is right that we do so and a great wrong to ourselves not to do so and with that in mind to base the actions and manners of ourselves accordingly so that we can achieve a more perfect possession of our lives.
It is right that you do so.
That it is right that you do so is the foundation on which our social governance is built.
It is right that you acknowledge this fundamental nature in others too.
It is right that you acknowledge this fundamental nature in others as well as yourself because it is right that you acknowledge the nature of anything, yourself and everything else, and a grave wrong to yourself not to do so -- because not to act on the nature of things is to pursue destruction.
7
Socially we acknowledge that “it is right that you do so” in the concept Rights. Our human rights, our social rights, in this manner derive from our fundamental nature as human beings.
Fundamentally, it is right that you take possession of your life as your property, you take ownership of your life. It is a great wrong for you not to. You will harm yourself if you don't. Socially we acknowledge this is right for you to own your life as your property by instituting your property in yourself as legal property Right. The most fundamental property right.
All other social Rights are derivative of and based on this fundamental acknowledgment.
To get our social Rights correct is to create a society in which everyone thrives. To get our social Rights wrong is to deny us our government and to ultimately reduce us to living in the state of animals, our lives controlled and regulated by forces outside ourselves.
This essay isn't a treatise on Rights. Germain to this essay is only that our social Rights are acknowledgments of our inviolate property Rights. They are the only means we have of protecting the governance of our lives from other people who would rob us of the governance of our lives. This robbing us of the governance of our lives can be a whole and complete robbery of our property in ourselves to the robbery of property we have as a life. Inviolate property rights are social acknowledgement of our Right to our own life.
Laws are not codified to enforce the morality of it as if morality were an institution in and of itself in need of defense apart from the principle to which it serves. Institutions serve principles. Laws are not made to enforce an institution called “morality.” Therein lies tyranny. Socialism is enforced by such a confusion. Laws are codified to protect actual property from other people who would take or harm property - and so deprive people of their property in their lives. Property rights are the means to socially acknowledge that it is right for you to govern your life in order for you to have a more perfect possession of your life.
It's an interesting thing, property. Some is tangible and some is very intangible. In the course of our lives our physical body is what we think of as ourselves. But as human beings we are also a much more spiritual thing than just our physical body. Because we are lives, the more we govern our lives and achieve a more perfect possession of our lives, the more we grow a body of our life. The body of your life is all the property, which is both tangible and intangible, that is YOU, the life.
We are bodies of life.
As human beings we are not like animals - simply our physical bodies. We are bodies of life. We are lives and our lives have bodies. The bodies of our lives can be healthy, sick, strong, diseased, fat, thin, exercised, even murdered. This is so because we are spiritual beings made in and of time.
This fact has very profound meaning to the human condition. It is wonderfully pregnant in meaning to our human condition.
With freedom to govern our lives guaranteed socially by property rights we create societies, fraternal organizations, industries and enterprises that are physically speaking, institutions - institutions created to serve the principle of government - so as to realize a more perfect governance of our lives.
8
These institutions are not separate things from us. Property in industries and enterprises and the physical institutions made to serve our industry and enterprise in ourselves are parts of the bodies of peoples lives. Our personal industries and enterprises are some of the organs of the bodies of our lives.
Civilization, this great wonderful garden made of our creations that we enjoy in the pursuit of a more perfect possession of our lives, is the expression of our human spirituality made physical as the bodies of our lives.
In this way human freedom, codified as our inviolate property rights in our lives as bodies-of-life, liberates us from being a species atomized in the social sense and in the parlance of leftwing demagogues “lone wolfs,” to a society of people mutually reinforcing each others lives in the consensual societies of industry and enterprise. By this intertwining of the bodies of our lives in the industries and enterprises that we each undertake to further a more perfect possession of our lives, a beautiful garden that makes the task of governing our lives even easier, even safer, and even much more enjoyable is fashioned out of what had been the wild: the bountiful garden of civilization.
Actual government is a beautiful thing to contemplate.
There wouldn't be such things as our industries and enterprises without the freedom to express our spiritual human right and need to govern our own lives and the social acknowledgement of this spiritual right and need.
This is why the industrial revolution was so new on the scene of human history.
It took a lot of learning and growing to get to the beginnings of society in full bloom: civilization.
The extent to which we live in civilization is the extent to which we have legal property of ourselves, not simply as a physical animal body, but as a whole spiritual body of life.
There would be no hospitals and healthcare, there would be no buildings in th modern sense, there would be no aerospace, or transportation that we know of as transportation, no energy to power anything... and nothing to power anyway.
Everything we hold dear, none of it would have been created and none of it can be, except as that which it actually is: the physical manifestation, the architectures, of the sum of the bodies of our lives.
These are parts of the bodies of people's lives. And we only have bodies of life, you are only able to achieve a body of life and be not be simply the body of an animal, because of the freedom to live on a human plane of existence.
To the extent we have freedom to be human is the extent to which we enjoy civilization.
Take away government as an individual need in the spiritual sense of being a requirement to possess our lives-as-lives, and the bodies of our lives whither and die.
Those physical institutions commonly referred to by socialists as “the means of production, distribution, and exchange” whither and die.
9
They are not simply physical institutions.
The socialists refusal to acknowledge basic economic principles is not an exact proper explanation of the process at work in the destruction of civil society wrought by the Left.
Economics is a rather materialistic way of expressing some of the workings of Government as a whole.
Socialism, statism in general, doesn't simply disregard economic principles. Socialism disregards Government principles. Socialism isn't government.
It is inexact to say socialism kills economic activity. Socialism denies us our governance. In so doing socialism destroys all aspects of the bodies of our lives.
The bodies of our lives have both personal and social dimension... and physical dimension. The economic realm of enterprise and commerce are parts, organs, of the bodies of people's lives.
The sociability, control, regulation and politics of us as bodies of lives makes a whole governing body.
To those that don't understand the meaning of our human condition the physical architectures of the bodies of our lives look like they are separate things from us.
Because they don't see us as the spiritual beings we are they don't see us as the physical beings we are.
They don't comprehend the society and politics of the bodies of our lives. The physical architectures of the bodies of our lives are as mortal as we as bodies of life are.
Socialism denies us our lives as bodies of life. In this way it actually murders the bodies of our lives that we had made, that comprise our arts, sciences, industries and commerce. Then it wonders why the corpses of the bodies of our lives - civilization - decomposes away.
And what there is left after socialism has done it's work is people reduced to just their warm bodies, people reduced to governing their lives on a day to day basis, reduced to an animal plane of existence.
The garden of civilization that had been created by actual social governance returns to the elements, back to the wild.
The Rosetta Stone of human action is Government.
Actual Government is the applied principle that control and regulation must be in accord with the nature of the governed. If not it isn't a governance - it isn't control and regulation in accord with the nature of the thing - it is a manipulation of things solely as physical things to a purpose other than the nature of that which is controlled and regulated. To violate the nature of the thing so manipulated will cause it harm and will to the extent it's nature has been violated destroy it.
We have a specific nature. You cannot violate it by denying people our nature as human beings and still have civilization. Not by any action or manner for any purpose whatsoever, no matter the rationale. Or you will destroy us as human beings.
There is a governance of human beings on the one hand and there is a governance of things on the other. We govern things to suit our purposes in the governance of our lives.
10
To apply the governance of things to control and regulate human beings immediately violates the principle of government.
To govern people without regard to the fact that we live as humans rather than as animals (by virtue of being able to build a body of life, by virtue of owning the bodies of our lives by Right as codified as property rights) is to Rule us, not govern.
Rule is a governance of things. Rule can be irrespective of the harm it does by violating the nature of the thing being controlled and regulated. That all depends on the purpose we have in the use of the thing to further the governance of our lives. To Rule us, the bodies of our lives are seen first and foremost as things independent of us, apart from us. Not ours.
Statism begins with the primitive idea of the human condition that we are animals with little to no agency of ourselves whose lives are ruled by forces outside ourselves. There is no means, no agency, to create a body of life.
The idea simply isn't on their radar.
They haven't discovered the human condition yet. They live in civilization but they don't see the civilization. They just see the physical things of civilization as an animal sees the forest.
They don't comprehend the soil from which civilization springs. They are primitives.
There is us as the warm bodies of animals on the one hand and there is everything outside of us as the warm bodies of animals on the other.
They see the the bodies of our lives that we have developed, the physical institutions of arts, sciences, industries and commerce that are in existence only because they are physical expression of our spiritual need to pursue a more perfect governance of our lives in order to live on a human plane of existence - and as primitive mentalities only see a forest of things in which we as animals live.
The politics of this primitive understanding of the human condition are the politics of primitives.
In order to secure their lives the primitive mentality sees the things of the forest as things to hunt and gather.
People of primitive mentality within civilization are no different.
Their politics is based on securing our lives by a social ownership of the forest of the physical things of civilization. From a very primitive perspective what could be more fair? What could be more moral than that?
This is the premise of socialism and modern statism in general. The State is the institution securing a fair hunting and gathering of the forest of physical things out there that we as animals need to secure our lives.
The state then is created with the idea that it is to control and regulate as things what are in actuality the bodies of our very lives.
All forms of politics revolve around a central idea of the nature of Man and the human condition. Socialism begins with the primitive idea that our nature is as animals without agency of our own, living in a forest of plenty. The human condition then is such that all we have to do to live in peace and harmony is fairly divide the plenty of the forest. The only thing holding us back from doing this fairly and living in peace and harmony is the greed of some people to want more than the share of the forest of things with which they need to live on an animal's plane of existence.
11
The State, derived from this primitive conception of the nature of Man, is instituted to secure our lives in that kind of world.
The politics of this creates a Ruler, a Leviathan. It knows no law other than itself. Animals live by no law but the law of survival, to be alive in the strictly animal sense of simply being alive.
Power over the perceived plentitude of the forest held by the institution of the State becomes the focal point of political life in such a society. This politics is by necessity a binding of loyalties and fealty to those individuals in power, or to those who would like to have that power for themselves. These loyalties to specific people become the politics of such a society.
The state's purposes become the purposes of the Rulers.
The limiting principle of the power they weld over society is the same limiting principle of the power of an individual to rule their days rather than govern their life. The limiting principle is what they can get away with without other people stopping them from further harm to society.
Their purposes are then forced upon us. Their primitive politics of power becomes forces outside of us controlling and regulating us, without any regard for our nature as human beings. It is the same as if we were animals without agency, our lives at the mercy of outside forces of nature. They make themselves the law of the land as if their rule were a force of nature. They deny us our government and put us back in the pre-civilized state of primitive society where humans first became self-aware but had not yet discovered Government and so could not possess their lives as lives.
We have the need to govern our lives in order to possess our lives so to rise above living as just animals. We need to actually grow as bodies of life. Or we suffer. Because we are the governing animal. That has meaning to our very mental health as well as physical.
These primitive mentalities make it impossible. They deny us our government and so deny us that which makes us human and not animal. They deny us the very bodies of our lives.
In socialist terms “the means of production, distribution, and exchange,” are things apart from us to be controlled and regulated as things to purposes of the powers that be, by top-down means.
They take the bodies of our lives and they part us out.
But the primitive mentality that finds itself within our civilization can't explicitly appeal to the way it sees the nature of Man. In ancient times, before humanity had learned and grown in wisdom by the slow process of integrating what it means to be human (rather than animal) and how that applies to law and general social governance, the primitive way of seeing the human condition could be explicitly stated because it seemed we were just animals without agency, ruled by forces outside ourselves, dependent upon the natural world which did hold agency, to provide us the means to be alive - alive in an animal sense.
12
Our civilization is created by a completely different understanding of the human condition. The primitive mentalities within our civilization explain their politics in a way that rationalizes their fundamental idea of the nature of Man.
They have to rationalize because they have rejected what we already know. We do have agency and nature does not.
The primitive mentalities within our civilization don't want what is the basis of civilization to be true. They want to live like animals. They don't want our nature as human beings and what that means to be true.
The rejection of government in one's life begins by the not wanting the reason for the governance of our lives to be true. This rejection of our nature because one doesn't want it to be true, because one wants to live on an animal's plane of existence, forms the basis of the rationalizations needed to explain itself in politics.
Rule requires rationalizations.
Just as someone rationalizes their rejection of the need for government within themselves so they must rationalize to society why society must forgo politics based on Government for the politics based on Rule.
The essence of the politics of the Left is the politics of Rule - the governance of things. They have a thousand and one policies and plans - for the governance of things. And all of those policies and plans put forward by statist politicians as their political positions cover for their unstated actual political position.
The unstated and actual political position of statist politicians has nothing to do with the policies and plans of the moment. Those can and will be changed as the whims of politics dictate.
Their political position is that they should be the sole decider and regulator of what is right and what is wrong for society. They should be able to have the power to enforce what they think is right and wrong on everyone in society. Those that disobey them will face the consequences they deem proper to their purposes.
Lawless rule of man over man is their actual political position. That political position is written on every page of the policies and plans they present and is easy to see by anyone who sees political issues as issues of the principle of government in our social governance.
Statists don't have any other actual policy or plan than that. All of the policies and plans presented by statist politicians to get elected or justify their rule are not their political positions. To be the sole arbiter of right and wrong in society is the political position. Rule is their political position. The policies and plans they put forward are very much a reflection of this attitude, but they only appear to be ideas of actual governance because the idea of statism as legitimate government holds sway in our time.
Lawless rule as politics is built on a base of lawless rule within the lives of the people of society.
To rule over society as a thing is the idea. All their policies and plans are based on that political idea that society is to be Ruled.
The entire purpose of government is to hold our lives in our own hands and to not be simply things pushed and pulled by forces outside ourselves like animals. It is to rise above the state of living like animals so that we can have possession of our lives-as-lives. The statists turn the entire purpose and meaning of government on it's head.
13
They deny us our government because to one extent or another they deny the need for government in themselves. Politically, they build their base on this fundamental rejection of the human condition.
They build their institution of Rule on a base made from two kinds of people; those people who to one extent or another deny the need for government within themselves, and those people who accept on good faith the mythologies and rationalizations about the outside forces that prevent people from governing their lives, and so want to act on those mythologies and rationalizations.
Whichever of those two groups, those of bad faith or the naive useful tools, they all suffer from feeling out of control of their lives as a result of the way they see the human condition. To the extent they willfully deny themselves as agents in the governance of their lives and rationalize it, is the extent to which they suffer real neurosis. I think that many a psychiatrist couch has been warmed by people trying to come to grips with clinical depression caused by denying to themselves their fundamental need of governing their lives-as-lives and the denial to themselves of many of the things they knew they needed for the more perfect possession of their lives. By fully buying into the leftwing cosmology wherein powerful social forces are controlling society and our lives for sinister purposes of domination they feel they must deny some or even all of the aspects of their human need to pursue a more perfect possession of their lives because such pursuits would benefit, as they see it, the outside forces manipulating society. They deny themselves the pursuit of themselves as a healthy body of life. But they mentally suffer for their denial of the basic need for government in their lives to pursue in a rational way a more perfect possession of their lives.
There is no substitute for making of yourself a real body of life. We are the governing animal. That is what we have to do, just as much as we have to eat and sleep. If you don't take care of your body you'll get sick, if you don't take care of the body of your life you will get sick.
Quite understandably with nothing but this primitive understanding of the natural world, to the extent people do buy into the mythologies and rationalizations, they feel out of control of their lives and suffer a very understandable mental breakdown.
We are the governing animal. If we feel we can't govern our lives, if we feel our lives are out of our control, then we feel we are not in possession of our lives. This does grave mental harm. Because we must be governing animals.
The mythical rationalizations for socialism are a whole cosmology based on the most primitive of human explanations for the workings of nature. In ancient time the workings of nature were given anthropomorphic attributes in the form of gods with agency that had command of nature. People needed to somehow influence the gods with actions and manners to the gods liking in order to influence them so people could have some kind of possession of their lives.
Socialists, statists, the Left, have built elaborate mythical rationalizations from the same basic primitive misunderstanding of the human condition.
14
It wasn't until we came to a more sophisticated understanding of the nature-of-nature that we were able to actually take possession of our lives.
It took a Copernican revolution in understanding the human condition that led to the formation of the concept “government” as opposed to the concept of rule.
Before that Copernican revolution the human condition was seen as that of animals whose lives were ruled by forces outside of ourselves and our nature was such that we had little to no agency over the making of our lives. This ancient view of our human condition is one step above an animal's awareness of itself in that it does articulate a higher abstract awareness of itself. But it is pre-civilized in that the meaning of our higher level sense of abstract awareness hadn't been mentally digested yet and connections hadn't been integrated with other knowledge. There's really no other way that a primitive mind could see the human condition.
But we rose above all that.
The Copernican revolution in understanding the human condition totally reversed our place in the scheme of things. Our lives don't revolve out of our control around powerful forces of nature that have agency of will. We are the agency with the means to control and regulate our lives and the world of nature.
We went from seeing the human condition as animals whose lives are governed by forces outside of us, to seeing us as having agency to govern our lives and nature as being that which can be governed by us.
It was this revolution in understanding the human condition that was the germination of the garden of all civilization.
I think this is how Christianity changed the world. It was the understanding of our human nature as the agents of making our lives, taking ownership of our actions and manners in the shaping of the bodies of our lives, that planted the seeds of even further insights. It was this Copernican revolution of seeing the human condition - but it took a lot of time to really digest the meaning of it, make the connections in the legal realm, and finally understand the full political significance and the full spiritual significance of the human condition.
But that said, it is possible to be of a primitive mentality and be living in the civilized world.
We aren't born civilized. We each begin life primitive. The eureka moment of discovering “government” of one's life is for each one of us a personal affair. Some people simply don't wanna.
People deride the outlandish policies and plans of socialists for being economically unrealistic. Socialists don't care and never have. They claim the moral high ground. They have a million-and-one arguments.
Economic arguments against socialism are neither here nor there and do not convince socialists. That is because the issue goes very deep. The issue of classical liberty vs. socialism goes to very core of what it means to be a human being. The issue goes to the very core of the human condition itself.
A hungry man is not free if he is denied his birthright to govern his own life in order to eat. He may be alive but he is only alive. We are not animals, we are human beings.
15
To what end the food you eat if you cannot govern and build the life it fuels? To what end the health care you may receive if you cannot govern and build the life it protects? To what end the literacy you have been taught if you cannot apply it to the governance of building and possessing yourself as a whole body of life?
It might as well be just a rope swing in a cage for all it matters to a human being in the pursuit of living on a human plane of existence.
To be controlled and regulated by another for the ends of their purposes is the opposite of freedom. It is to be reduced to the level of an animal's life and yet to still possess the awareness that you have been denied the governance of your life. That is a very cruel and inhuman thing to do to people.
If I were to simply write that socialism isn't government because the issue is between our having actual government or being ruled over would have no power of persuasion. To simply state the issue in that manner would make it sound as if we would still live in a state of civilization - though without everything civilization requires to exist.
Civilization is what happens when we are free to possess our lives-as-lives.
Socialists have many variations on the ‘A hungry man is not free' argument. Just about all their arguments are variations on this theme because it is a reflection of their primitive understanding of the human condition.
We have biological needs. If our biological needs are satisfied do we not then have our lives? Are we not alive? Is this not freedom?
To view people as simply their physical bodies with only the needs of their physical bodies is to see us as just physical warm bodies.
Without regard to human beings as their whole body of life but as simply the physical animal with physical needs, what kind of governance is required?
If we are simply warm bodies, animals with appetites, and we individually have no means of applying the principle of government to our lives - then human freedom is actually dangerous to society. Human freedom would mean we have no check on those forces influencing us from nature without and also from nature within us. Our unchecked appetites would make us mean and nasty, brutish and poor, as per Thomas Hobbes.
The society of Man would be one of people preying on each other with no check on their appetites.
This is exactly how Thomas Hobbes saw the nature of Man and the human condition. He began with the primitive pre-Copernican revolution view of our nature that we are animals ruled by forces beyond our control. Within, our appetites ruled us, and without, social forces ruled us.
He was the granddaddy of all modern statism.
His solution was his social contract:
“I transfer my right of governing myself to X if you do too.”
By “government” Hobbes didn't mean “control and regulation based on our nature.” Hobbes didn't think we are capable of acting by principle. That was the whole point for his idea that we need an all-powerful Leviathan state to rule over us. To Hobbes government meant Rule. “I transfer my right of ruling myself to X if you do too.”
16
By this manner the Leviathan would rule us with no regard for any other purpose than to keep us safe from being controlled and regulated by nothing but the appetites of personal and social forces that make life dangerous to our being alive. To simply be alive in an animal sense.
His social contract and primitive way of seeing the world form the basis of politics in the modern statist and socialist world.
The statist idea of consent of the governed is based on this idea. For the modern statist, electoral politics is to cast your vote for this Hobbesian purpose.
This kind of governance has a completely different kind of politics than politics in a free society. Consistent with the ancient pre-civilized understanding of our human condition, the politics of socialism is a politics of loyalty and fealty to those people who control and regulate society: the Leviathan. That kind of politics is the only kind of politics such a primitive view of our nature can have because we can't escape the fundamental need generated by our awareness of our lives-as-lives. Given the circumstances we do what we can to have a more perfect possession of our lives. In this case, by the lights of primitive people, we attach ourselves in the most advantageous way we can to the Ruler or Rulers of society. Our very lives revolve around our loyalties and service to the Ruler.
Socialism isn't just a throwback to pre-industrial times, it is a throwback to ancient times.
It is the repudiation of government itself and of our need for government. It is a system of Rule.
It's easy to see how abstract awareness is the means by which we know we are lives-as-lives. It's easy to see how it is right to base our actions and manners on this in order to come to a more perfect possession of our lives. It is easy to see how our social Rights are based on the fundamental property right we each have in our own lives and how this forms the basis for codified law and the creation of the institution of a State. It is easy to understand that this State is just a small part of actual legitimate government. It is easy to see that this institution is created to be a vessel that holds the contents of a society to the purpose that we have our government - not to be our government.
However all that being said, it is not so easy to understand that without all of that institution serving the principle of government there would be none of the arts, sciences, industries and enterprises which we enjoy and that help make the governance of our lives a wonderful endeavor beautiful, sublime and sweet.
All those “modern trappings” of civilization like electricity and medical care and everything else we have. Everything we have.
To the extent we have our governance there are, in the parlance of socialism, “means of production, distribution, and exchange.”
All of it is only here and only possible at all by virtue of actual real Government.
Actual real government does require a consent of the governed, but not in the Hobbesian social contract sense.
The consent of the governed is inherent in all consensual voluntary undertakings in which we deal with everyone else in society. All of our mutual industries and enterprises and relations of every sort are based on the consent to be governed by other's right to their lives as their property and to their decisions as to regard of it, and them to yours.
17
This consent of the governed is the whole basis of civil society. Legitimate government is formed by the consent of the governed. We have our government going on all around us in all the arrangements of consents of the governed going on in society. The state as an institution is instituted to be a vessel made of law and defense for the purpose of protecting our property in our lives so that we can have our government, not to be our government.
The American Declaration of Independence spelled this idea out in this manner:
“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, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The Declaration's idea of government is not the idea of any old top-down government people vote for. It is not the modern idea that legitimate government is legitimized by vote. What is meant by “Consent of the Governed” is something quite different. What do you have a right to consent to? Therein lies the borders of legitimate government. The consent of the governed isn't a vote it is a limiting principle derived from our fundamental nature.
Statism is such a conventional idea. We are so steeped in statism that my dictionary even uses the idea that legitimate government is the people we vote for in the very definition of the word legitimize. The OED definition of legitimize: “make legitimate, voters legitimize the government through the election of public officials.”
That is not how we legitimize Government.
No socialism is legitimate government because it was voted for. That is not the nature of government.
Voting is not what makes for legitimate government, voting is what elects individuals to certain elected positions of office established to secure our Rights so that we can have our governance.
The office is created to serve the principle of government. Violating the principle of government is to Rule. It is using that office to force yourself on the rest of society. That destroys government.
There is a big world of difference there.
We establish this general government to protect our governance not to assume our governance.
The State is but a container inside of which is the important thing: the self-governing.
To otherwise establish a State is to govern humanity with no thought as to our fundamental nature. To otherwise establish a State is to go against the principle of government. To otherwise establish a State is to rule over humanity as a thing - it is to govern us as things - which then denies us our nature - and violates the principle of government and so cannot be termed a legitimate government of Man nor a governance of Men.
18
Where the State as rule is established the government underground takes on form. Our sociability and politics as bodies of life goes underground. We are the governing animal and in our quest to pursue a more perfect governance of our lives our nature will find expression. The government underground then grows like a mycelium hidden from view under it all but ever growing in the wilds of the anarchy of rule.
We establish the general government to be as a container that holds our society of self-governing people so that we can be self-governing people.
That is what was termed (before the Left took over our national conversation) the American experiment in self-government.
Self-government doesn't mean we vote for an absolute state. It doesn't mean we are ruled over by a regime by a consent of vote.
The government is going on inside the container.
The container is not to be confused with the actual government it is established to protect. The governance is going on within society.
Without actual real government all the “modern trappings” of civilization never can be. That is because enterprise, industry, and commerce are parts of the bodies of life of people. And to take over our property is to take over our property in ourselves and actually destroy our bodies as lives. This destroys our ability to be human rather than animal.
And then everything physical of the bodies of our lives all falls down. It all collapses. Dead. Not to be revived.
And all that is left is us as animals; everything that made us human denied, taken.
The seemingly astute observation that Government doesn't create anything is based on the idea of Government as Statism. It's a reflection of just how steeped in Statism we are.
In actuality Government creates everything.
Rule creates nothing. Rule is a denial of our need to live as human beings and make of our lives - lives; bodies of life.
To the extent we enjoy our governance we have lives and a thriving civilization.
To the extent we are denied our governance is the extent to which our lives are stunted and civilization itself is misshapen, bent and bowed, destroyed.
The Left; Statism; Socialism, has over the course of several generations caused harms incalculable. We are living in but the shadow of the world that would have been if not for the Left.
The world we live in is but the shadow of the world that would have been but for the Left.
It is impossible to know what industries yet to be even conceived of have never been because of the Left. And what never will be. They deny us so much. The world as it might have been without the past many generations of the Left to interfere with our governance would be a much different place than the statist world of our time.
19
Our world is only a shadow of that which could have been and what can be.
You are enjoying but a shadow of what the body of your life would have been, what your life could have been, had not the Left wrought so much harm for so long in it's efforts to impose it's primitive understanding of the human condition and it's Rule on humanity.
We only have one means of defense against others who would rule over us. Our one defense is the codification of our Right to our own life as a body-of-life as property right in the institution of law.
The justice system isn't in place simply to try criminals and settle legal disputes. Alleged harms have to go through the justice system and due process of law so as to guarantee our Right to life and property. Alleged harms cannot be addressed directly through the legislature. The ajudication of harm cannot be a matter of legislative or executive decision. The justice system is to be a force-in-being to check against this tyrannical abuse. To use the legislature as a super-judicial system where alleged harms get no day in court but are judged by political whim and power plays in the legislature or at the ballot box destroys our ability to have government. When justice is meted out by the power of legislation justice is destroyed. In so doing our property in ourselves is destroyed. Every socialist claim of harm to society has to be stopped cold by this fundamental first check on tyranny that the separation of judicial power from legislative and executive power is supposed to afford. This separation of judicial power from the other branches is the first thing socialists destroy in order to destroy government and impose Rule.
This is and always will be the first check in government on corruption and tyranny.
Our time is so steeped in statism people aren't even aware of this break in the seperation of powers. But this break is what was needed to create the administrative arm of statism.
It was this first separation of power, the courts from the absolute ruler, that severed Monarchy from absolute Rule.
Montesquieu addressed the need for separation of powers. The need for the judicial branch is as a force-in-being to prevent the others from being super-judiciaries. Tyranny has inherent in it's very nature as tyranny the need of bypassing the very purpose for which due process of the law was formulated, in order to achieve political aims. The judicial branch isn't simply to try criminals or settle honest legal disputes. It is to be a check on tyranny in and of itself as seperate from the other branches. To address harms the alleged harms must go through the judicial system. The judicial system has numerous checks even within itself in order to preserve the principle of government in justice.
But when the laws are not made to preserve government as a principle but are made by the legislature to enforce an idea of what is right and wrong decided by the Ruler, made to enforce an institutionalization of morality for the homogination of society to the Ruler's purposes, the law and the courts are severed from government as a principle. The courts then decide cases not on harms to people but on harms done to a morality concocted as an institution unto itself apart from any human connection to the need for government in the realization of our lives.
The Rule of Law is a principled social acknowledgement that it is right for you to govern your life so as to possess your life in property as a body of life and it is right that we each acknowledge this as right in each other.
20
The “Law” in the Rule of Law is the fact of our fundamental nature.
The purpose of the judicial branch as seperate from the others is to ensure that the Rule of Law, the Law derived from our fundamental nature as human beings, is the law of the land and that laws are not the whims of Rule.
Otherwise we cannot govern our lives and possess ourselves as lives, but are reduced to circimstances of the primitive state of affairs in which we are without agency, ruled by forces outside us as forces of nature rule animals.
Socialism destroys the principle of government in justice and law not in a final stage of it's realization but as a first step in it's implementation.
The early Progressives were very explicit in this. The Progressive idea that society has evolved beyond the need of government being constitutionally constrained by the seperation of powers was and is still explicity an attack on the idea that we need to have the judicial branch as a force-in-being against tyranny. The Progressives rationalized that humanity had evolved to a point where we are all, as they put it, on the same page in agreement that society is so complex it needs top-down solutions to address social problems caused by this new social complexity. Since we are all on the same page in agreement of this social order there can be no such thing as tyranny that bypasses the due process of law that guarantees we have property of ourselves as whole bodies of life. So, the institutionalization of a whole body of rights and wrongs and the adjudication of these rights and wrongs can be acomplished within legislation and executive agency with no regard to the actual purpose for which legitimate governments are instituted. This is the very heart and soul of the Progressive project, socialism, statism. It is the very definition of tyranny.
The primitive idea of the human condition on which the rationalizations of socialism are based does not know justice. Justice is beyond it's ken.
The vessel of law, the vessel of state, holds society in it's hands of law grounded on the principle of government so that we can have our governance. It is our protection from those with other purposes for our lives - petty criminal purposes to grandiose full-blown politically sociopathic.
That proper institution of State stops them before they can start. They can acquire no political foothold. Not as long as the rule of law can be traced back to the natural right on which our social right is based. Not as long as we can articulately defend ourselves in both word and law.
Socialism is the denial of us to our nature. It is the denial of us to live as human beings. It is the denial of that which gives rise to the very concept “government”.
Governance is the applied principle of government, which has been derived from that fundamental nature of ours that makes us human and which gives rise to the very concept “government.”
Socialism is not government.
Reprinted by permission. Socialism isn't Government Copyright 2020 by K.C. Ralston. All rights reserved. No part of this essay may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission of the author.