As yesterday's post almost screams for this obvious objection, I was surprised no one rose to the occasion. Allow me:
"Sage, your and the Framers' scepticism about founding a government on trust is ultimately a counsel for cynicism. No government, no society even (as that distinction seems particularly important to you), can long last if it is described by a creeping cynicism. Moreover, as cynicism feeds on itself, its creeping presence will soon become a thoroughgoing one and the society will not only corrode, in short order it will collapse."
How's that? Close enough?
The answer to this challenge is quite easy actually: The corrective to a foolish trust of government is not cynicism, but instead realism. I'm a Scots-Irish Calvinist. (Which all the Founders were as well, even if they weren't.) As such I hold to the truth that all men are sinners, and are so fundamentally. That is, their sinfulness is not an aberration, but rather a very significant part of who they are. Some are worse than others, to be sure, but the label holds nonetheless. Not a Christian, you protest. Not even religious. No matter. Your source for this truth needn't be ecclesiastical authority nor sacred scripture. Consult only your own mind and soul, and consider, honestly, the inclinations and behaviors that sometimes flow from them. Ask yourself , again honestly, whether or not you invariably abide by even the principles of your own creation and embrace.
We all know the answer to this, and so did the Framers. They were, and we should be as well, hard-nosed realists about what makes people tick. As a result, they constructed a system of government that accounted for it. They had faith in that system, if faith is what you mean by trust, because it wasn't naively built on trust.
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Sage, you couldnt be more correct. I would go even further to say that on top of the fact that all men are sinners and inclined, if inclined is a strong enough word, towards epic failures in decision making and the like, that even if the best of us were to be leaders in government, they would still lean towards the worst of decision making and governance. To take it a step further, normal, well adjusted people do not by their very nature seek to be a part of the governmental system we have in place. As I have often said before, its not that Washington turns people into dirtbags, its that dirtbags want to go to Washington.
ReplyDeleteSo to add insult to injury, we dont even have our best, which is to say our most benevolent, in office. Once again to reiterate....why on earth would you want a government of ANY kind making decisions for you?
Thanks David. Are you an anarchist? A charming, thoughtful, clean-shaven (those guys all had wild eyes and crazy beards) anarchist, to be sure, but still an anarchist?
ReplyDeleteI am most definitely not an anarchist. I know that men must be governed but I do not labor under the delusion that because something must "be", that it therefore must be good.
ReplyDeleteIm merely a realist.
Well said Number One Son. Wax on, wax off,...
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