Historical Approaches to Ideal Government

One might say that King Urukagina was a benevolent dictator, for his sympathies were with his people and their welfare. Be it noted, however, that he regarded ·them as his people, and so did most everybody else. Every government at this period and for the next 35 centuries regarded the people as subjects and itself as sovereign. The rights and privileges Urukagina could bestow were rights and privileges he could, by the same token, deny. The power to give is also the power to withhold. This relationship of Sovereign State and subject people, so far as I can discover, main tained itself as a political concept at all times and in all places on earth until modern times. It made no difference whether the Head of State was called King, Caesar, Duce, Fuhrer, Czar, Mikado, or whatever. For centuries power has been centered in the State; the life, liberty, and property of men have been ex tended or diminished according to the caprice of those who were r 43 at the State's helm; the rights of men have been held in the palm of political masters - masters degraded beyond their ordinary selves by the corruption which power over others inflicts; masters abased by the delusion that sovereignty rests in their little, fallible persons.

The idea of sovereignty resting in the person or persons of a political elite has been a preponderant view in all countries for centuries. While Webster's dictionary defines sovereignty as "supremacy in rule or power," it goes on to confirm the dominant opinion by locating this supremacy in "the dominion, or rule of a lord, king, emperor, or the like" or also in "the body of enfran chised citizens." I shall try to demonstrate that this popular notion is at the root of our societal difficulties. The Concept of the Sovereign State In all political theory there is no more important evaluation we are called upon to make than correctly to gauge the signifi cance of the concept that the State is sovereign. Such an evalua tion in any degree of accuracy must be difficult, for so few, even today in the United States, seem able to make it. These lectures will be more or less meaningless to any person who fails to grasp what it means to regard the State as sovereign. Therefore, forgive me if I appear to labor this important point.

Suppose I hold an invisible rope that can be extended to any length, one end of which is tied around your neck. With it I can restrain you as much as I choose. Or, if I am benevolent in my manners, I can let you roam and act, seemingly at will. But, always, I hold the rope. As long as the rope can be controlled by me, as long as your actions are at my discretion, can you regard yourself as a free agent? I think not. You cannot avoid being my slave regardless of the freedom I allow you. If I grant you free dom you can, under these circumstances, be described as "a slave at liberty," that is, in the sense of a prisoner on parole. To make the analogy a bit more accurate, suppose I have you in a hypnotic state. You are subject to my will until I choose to 44 ] break the hypnosis. I can exercise my power causing you to do anything I wish or, should I prefer, I can let you go your own way. But remember, I can cause you to respond in ways dictated by my caprice at any time. Can you, in any of these instances, be considered a free agent? Never - not while it is admitted that I am sovereign; not while it is conceded that I am the disposer of your creative energies, your rights. You will remain my slave re gardless of how much or how little I exercise my power as your master.

Down through the ages men have held the State to be sover eign. Now and then the State has relaxed its restraints or been forced by its subjects to relax them. Man's status down through the ages has therefore wavered between two categories: the rank of slaves and the rank of "slaves at liberty." It is utterly impossible for men to have any other status so long as they hold man-made organizations to be sovereign. For, what is a slave? Let us hear Herbert Spencer: That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another's desires .... What ... leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evi dently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit. 1 Down through the ages men have believed that sovereign authority rested in the State. Their troubles, therefore, were thought to originate with the kind or form of man-made authority that ruled them. So, century after century, time and time again, men killed their rulers and slaughtered one another in untold millions, in an effort to find an authority that would improve their condi tions. These rebellions on occasion brought temporary benefits.

They interrupted or relaxed the mechanism of compulsory con trol and permitted creative human energy to work a little - for awhile. Until recently, however, these revolutions were not ideal revolutions. They were revolutions only in the sense of a wheel 1This is extracted from the chapter, "The Coming Slavery," in Spencer's The Man Versus the State (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1946). [ 45 rotating around a motionless center. Under the concept of the State as sovereign, the standard pattern has always been to over throw one form of man-authority merely to replace it with another form of man-authority - from priest to king, from king to oligarchy, from oligarchy to despot, from despot to majority, from majority to bureaucracy, from bureaucracy to dictator, from dic tator to king, from king ... and so on, and so on. According to our histories this sort of thing has been going on for several thousand years, and for several thousand years people have gone hungry and killed each other. The simple reason is that creative human energy cannot be effectively released when the State is sovereign.

The truly significant revolution was yet to come - the nearest approach to the ideal that has ever been known. 2 The Concept of God as Sovereign Before explaining this ideal revolution, let us refer to a concept of unknown genesis and authorship. Perhaps it came originally as a flash of insight, as a momentary, intuitive thought, to· the mind of an ancient forebear who had few words to convey what had been but dimly revealed to him, namely, that God is Sover eign. The earliest and most familiar account of this concept is found in the Holy Bible and has continued to thread its way nar rowly through thought and literature since the birth of the Christian Era. Regardless of the distinguished moral leadership for this con cept over the centuries, it remains as new today as ever before. Being a concept, it has meaningful existence only for those in dividuals whose perceptiveness is sensitively attuned to it. To read or hear it over and over, even to memorize its explanatory words, is· not to possess it. Possession originates only in a state of personal understanding, an inward awareness that man is not of his own design, a highly humble realization that man - indeed, Nature in all her manifestations - is but the work of a Supreme 2This and the previous paragraph are paraphrasings from The Mainspring of Human Progress by Henry Grady Weaver (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1947).

46 ] Creator. In other words, God is our ultimate Sovereign! Man's creativity has its origin in his Creator . Man's rights are endowed by God, the sole Sovereign. Individuals possess this concept to the extent they stand in awe of Creation: the ever-expanding Universe; infinite life, thought, consciousness; the miracle of love, spirit, radiant energy, a blade of grass, even. The Supreme Fact is eternally present; it is our ears that do not hear, our eyes that do not see, our intuition that does not intuit. Down through the ages hundreds of millions of people have given lip service to this concept of a Supreme Creator. Yet, that the concept has not been generally understood nor deeply be lieved in is manifested by the fact that, down through the ages, no political institution has ever been founded logically upon it, or consistently derived from it. Western man continued to tolerate the State as his sovereign, and still does.

Oh yes, the sovereign State has on occasion, as I have said, relaxed its control of creative actions. Wherever and whenever production and exchange flourished, relaxation of state sovereignty has always preceded the happy prosperity. Certainly, the State for a long period of time exercised very little restraint on the Saracens, or the Venetians during the period highlighted by Marco Polo, or the Dutch during the commercial heyday of Amsterdam. Countless instances of where the State "got off.the backs" of the people are available to the historical researcher. But, in all these instances, the relaxations that were granted could be withdrawn by the self-same sovereign State - and eventually, in all instances, they were. As a consequence, there resulted only mass dissatisfactions and uprisings, repeated attempts to repeal tyrannies without understanding the cause of tyranny - as in evitable consequence of the idea of the State as sovereign. The re bellious nationals of different countries succeeded only in achieving ambiguous ends: the overthrowing of one man-made authority to make room for another man-made authority. There was no ideal revolution. There was no logical application of the God cosmology to societal organization.

[ 47 A few people of the Old World, let it be said in their favor, came to realize one important political fact: the more inclusive the scope of government, the more tyrannical that government. No doubt an early American saying, "That government is best which governs least," had its origin in this realization. 3 In any event, some of the more venturesome risked the hazards of the New World rather than submit to the persistent authoritarianism that had become their lot. The Plymouth Colony Among the first to arrive in North America from Europe was a group who are referred to as the Pilgrim Fathers. They crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower in the year 1620. Like most Euro peans of their time they regarded themselves as highly religious, God-fearing, Christian people. Before setting up their little colony, indeed ere they left the ship, all adults signed what became known as the Mayflower Compact. Take note of some of the language: In the presence of God and one another .... for the preservation and furtherance of the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian religion.

On the face of it, here was a people of the God cosmology. But, pious as they were in all outward appearances, devoted to prayer and religious observance, they did not accept God as Sovereign in their community life any more than had their Euro pean relatives. For, at the very outset, they established an au thoritarian or communistic community. It made no difference how much or how little any member of the colony produced; that pro duction went into a· common warehouse under order of the com munal authority, and the proceeds of the warehouse were doled out in accordance with the authority's idea of the need. In short, 3My use of the word cCAmerican"to designate the people of the United States is in accord with our own custom. While we are no more Americans than Canadians or Mexicans or Argentineans, we have - perhaps wrongly - appropriated this term to ourselves. It derives from our full name, The United States of America. We chose cCAmerican" in preference to c'United Stateian." Actually, there is no English equiva lent for your expressive cCEstadounidense."

48 ] they began the practice of a principle which, two centuries later, Karl Marx was to formalize as the ideal of the communistic society: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.» In any event, the religion of these people and their forebears was not profound enough for the God cosmology to manifest itself in their political institutions. Perhaps too many of the people were going through the formalities of religion without being really religious - something like, in my country, high school children pledging allegiance to the Hag or service club members singing the national anthem, the experience being only physical or vocal, not intellectual or spiritual. How It Was Saved As could have been foretold by anyone having a fair under standing of political economy, the communistic colony of our Pilgrim Fathers was a failure. Many members starved and died. With men organized in a communistic manner the communal warehouse was constantly running out of provender. During the second winter Governor Bradford met with the remaining mem bers of the colony. In effect, he said to them, "This springtime we shall adopt a new practice. We will discard the principle, 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.> We will try the principle, 'To each according to his merit.' Come the spring and each of you shall have what you yourself produce.'> I am not aware that these people reached this conclusion as a result of reasoning logically from their own premise of a Supreme Creator. So far as I know, these folks were only seeking for a formula whereby they could live and, if possible, prosper. Any way, whether inadvertently or not, they began the practice of a principle that is absolutely consistent with a God cosmology, if this be reasoned to its logical conclusion. When they agreed that each person has a right to the fruits of his own labor -- the private property principle - they were declaring that no man or set of men or any man-made authority was their sovereign. They were [ 49 saying that they should be free to act creatively and productively as their conscience instructed them. Unanimously they concluded that there be freedom of choice as to how each employed himself and as to what each would do with the fruits thereof. If they did not acclaim God as the sole source of man's rights, they at least acknowledged no other gods before him.

Came the springtime. Not only were the fathers toiling in the fields but the mothers and the children were there, also. And why not? No man-made authorities were absorbing their sub stance. Instead, there was incentive to exercise their creative energies to the full! Here was a people stumbling on fringes of the ideal revolution without fully grasping, so far as I can discover, the implications of what they were doing. The people multiplied and prospered. They progressed in the face of unprecedented hardships. For decades they argued politics. How was it possible to form a national government without returning to their Old·World status? Was it possible to have a national government that would pre serve the freedom they had won with such difficulty? An Ideal Revolution One hundred and fifty-six years after the Mayflower Compact came the American Revolution, an ideal revolution, at least in concept. Contrary to what most of us have been taught in school, the American Revolution was not essentially an armed conflict with England. The American Revolution was a revolutionary idea, a revolt from the Old World form of the State as sovereign to the concept of God as Sovereign. This, I believe, is the only ideal revolution. The American experiment was the nearest approach to the ideal that humanity has as yet experienced.

No doubt most Americans in 1776 were as barren of ideas about political theory and moral and social philosophy as were the Pilgrim Fathers or the bulk of their European ancestry. Every major as well as minor movement in history, be the movement good or bad, has been managed by a few men of ideas. To use 50 ] Richard Weaver's phrase, "ideas have consequences."4 Through out all history there has been an idea, a slender thread of thought, weaving its way through the minds of a few in each generation. This is the idea that the Creator and not the State is sovereign. An early sample of this idea is to be found in Isaiah 33:22 - "The Lord is our judge; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king." The position of the Creator and not the State being Sovereign is confirmed by the fact that "in the entire Biblical legal literature not a single law emanating from kings or other secular authorities was recorded or preserved as pennanently valid."5 The laws of Israel were believed to stem from God.

Now and then there came upon the Western scene philoso phers and writers of political theory such as John Locke (1632 1704) who held a somewhat similar view. These seed-thoughts found fertile soil in the minds of some inquisitive Americans who were desperately seeking a formula for a national government that would not have the power to exercise control over creative or productive activities, a power that has been 'wielded by all governments throughout all history. Something new and radically different in political theory had to be discovered and put into effect, something consistent with the freedom of choice they were experiencing. The theory which they wrote into our Declaration of Independence is the distilled essence of what we in' the Unit~d States call "Americanism," the only ideal revolution in· political history: We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain un alienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 6 That to secure these rights, governments are insti tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed .... (Italics supplied) 4Weaver, Richard. Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948.

5University of Notre Dame Natural Law Institute Proceedings. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1953. p. 16. 6There is some good evidence that "pursuit of happiness" was originally ~~prop erty"; that the change was a compromise for the purpose of gaining the signatures of some who did not understand the meaning of property. [ 51 Here we have what is at once a spiritual, a political, and an economic concept. It is spiritual in that it proclaims that the Creator is the Source of man's rights; political in that it implicitly denies that the State is the source of rights; and economic in this sense: If a man has a right to his life, it follows that he has a right to sustain his life, the sustenance of life being nothing more nor less than the fruits of his own labor. Here was a concept absolutely consistent with what Governor Bradford had said to the Pilgrim Fathers, "From now on each of you shall have what you yourself produce." It was consistent with the private property principle.

It is one thing to make such a declaration. It is quite another matter to implement it, to put it into practice. To meet this prac tical need the American Constitution and, later, its Bill of Rights were written and adopted. These political instruments consisted primarily of a set of prohibitions, not against the citizens but against the one thing that they feared - the State. The American Constitution and Bill of Rights limited govern ment more severely than any government had ever before been limited. In principle, at least, government was confined to inhibit ing and penalizing destructive actions. The people - except, un fortunately, the Negro slaves - were free to act creatively and productively as they pleased. Government, for some decades, was not sovereign. Observe the results that Howed from this severe limitation of government. Not a person turned to the State for succor, and for the same reason that no one ever turns to a beggar for succor. The government had nothing on hand to dispense because it did not then have the power to take from some and give to others. What happens to a people when they cannot tum to the State for help?

The answer is obvious: They assume self-responsibility. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the development of a greater self-reliance among a people than in any previous period. With government limited to inhibiting and penalizing destruc tive actions, and people free to act creatively and productively as they pleased, large quantities of creative energy were released. 52 ] Only personal ineptitudes stood in the way. The societal agency, the State, was off the people>sback, so to speak. The combination of a self-reliant people plus the freeing of their creative energies accounted for the American miracle, all of which was made possible by holding the Creator, not the State, as Sovereign. Little wonder that it was observed: The whole atmosphere of the United States seemed charged with a kind of electricity that sparked the human spirit in a manner that was beyond all earthly precedent. 7 Here, for the first time, was an agency of society organized in a near harmony with the Supreme Reality. A sad and quite a different story has to do with the fact that the American people have for some time been running away from their own revolution.

Because too few grasp the truth of the Creator as Sovereign and as the Source of Rights, they are now headed back toward the Old World arrangement from which they originally escaped. This story, however, should not be explained under the title, CCHistorical Approaches to Ideal Government» but rather, under the title of the next lecture, cCCurrent·Deviations from Ideal Government.» The fact remains that here was the best formalized model humanity had yet produced of the spiritual, the intellectual, the political, and the economic revolution that must be repeated and duplicated if man-made authority over the creative lives of human beings is to be abolished. 7Manion, Clarence. The Key to Peace. Chicago: The Heritage Foundation, Inc., 1951. [ 53 Current Sl;;;)eviatiOnJ Irom ~deal ~overnment. ~ Within the framework or context of these lectures the ideal society can be envisioned as one in which every person is free to act creatively or productively as he pleases. This is to say that each person, ideally, should be free to choose his labor and decide what disposition should be made of the fruits thereof. Let him be a piccolo player or actor, an artist or teacher, an engineer or architect, a clerk or cleric, a farmer or factory worker, or whatever, according to his private inclination. Let him, if he likes, be gen erous or charitable with his wealth, giving others anything he possesses or can obtain in willing exchange for his efforts; let him invest his income in his own or someone else's enterprise; let him loan it for whatever return the free market allows; let him be a foolish miser; let him exchange with whomever and for what ever - and wherever - he wishes. In the ideal society no person would be restrained - except as his actions inhibit the creative actions of others. The ideal is simply stated: men producing, creating, emerging in thought and consciousness, evolving intel lectually and spiritually - moving in a God-ward direction at the rate their ambitions and capabilities permit. No other man or set of men or any agency they may contrive would then impede their progress in this direction.