Authority and Consent of the Governed – Part I

Authority is a strange thing, the more one has the larger the sword of Damocles looms. Oft times those men with a ‘lean and hungry look’ as Cassius was so aptly described, consider the throne and not the concomitant blade hanging above their bare head. Granted in today’s society, most of those in authority have done everything they can to isolate themselves from the liabilities of authority, while maximizing the benefits. That aside, one of the few things anyone considers is the origin of authority. Where does it come from? How does it work? For such a foundational principle of Western society and political thought, it is never discussed. I doubt most can articulate anything past the usual tripe of ‘consent of the governed’ and ‘we the people.’

The modern leftist view of authority is that it resides within a person, expressed in Rousseau’s Origins of Inequality. Your standing as a person is determined within the confines of whichever cycle the political cancer is currently in, socialism, anarchy or communism. One would do well to pause and consider exactly what the implications are of authority manufactured by mob, colloquially known today as voters. I won’t elaborate much more on leftist political philosophy to keep this under several thousand words, but would refer readers to Max Weber and his idea of ‘charismatic authority’ for further enlightenment of how evil propagates. The right however, seems to woefully disinterested the nature of authority and from whence it comes. The orthodox view of authority on the right proclaims it originates with our Creator. The Romans had the concept of auctoritas, closely related to our idea of authorship. The Christian tradition in a similar way sees authority as originating from God through his ex nihilo creation of man and the universe. The concept of ownership and property stem from this understanding. Once one gets past the statement of ultimate authority residing with the Creator, the right branches into two different variations, that of liberalism and monarchy. Granted within those two umbrellas there are a plethora of flavors, but in terms of real differences on the grounds of first principles, it is an accurate description of the schism.

The liberal view, in the classical sense we are familiar with, is the political outgrowth of the Protestant interpretation of the Biblical proscription for corporate worship. It borrows heavily from the theological concept of universal priesthood, and neatly lays that framework onto the political landscape. One of the flaws in this anything-but-monarchy approach was the eager acceptance of the Protestant political philosopher turned heretical Socianist, John Locke. While he did a workmanlike job making the legal and moral case for equality under the law, his justification for universal equality within the polity fall short. His justification in The Reasonableness of Christianity hinges entirely on the principle of transference between the creation of man and the structure of a polity. His tabula rasa theory, widely adopted over time, is a flat refusal of the orthodox Christian view of original sin, and frankly, Christianity as a whole. Not that the entirety of classical liberalism is summed up by John Locke, but he certainly represents one of the giants within the era from which we derived our republic*. Certainly he is the most well-known and most cited of the pre-Revolution thinkers by conservatives alive today. This radical shift by Locke in not only theology, but political thought has far reaching implications. In my own opinion, the consequences of that shift were either not understood or lost in the political machinations of the day. While I have neither the time nor the inclination to write an entire critique of classical liberalism, the focus of this will be on exactly how authority is vested in a Lockean, dare I say American, polity.

American conservatives, liberals but to distinguish shades of the left I’ll use the word, live and die by the holy writ that voting is a sacred right. It is essential to freedom for one to be able to pick one’s ruler, and there is a direct correlation between suffrage and freedom. Let us ponder that for a moment. In a world where everyone is king, the nuclear family is a non-sequitur. Authority within a home exists wherein the parents are quite literally, the patriarch and matriarch of the little society they constitute. How then, is a parent to…parent? If one has no claim of authority except by consent of the governed, would it not be fundamentally unjust and night a crime against humanity to illegally detain and rule over those who do not consent? What is a father to do when his three kids elect the eldest as patriarch of the family? One may protest that a child of five does not have the capacity to vote, yet if the derivation of authority arises from sheer personhood, then one is left to either declare no one ‘truly human’ until a certain age or accept the legitimacy that children may indeed rule over their parents. Madness.

All manner of absurd results can be obtained by this ‘do as thou wilt’ approach, or as the semi-literate of today say ‘only God can judge me!’ An entire construct called the ‘social contract’ had to be invented to manufacture legitimacy of democratic governments through consent. We are expected to believe the US is ruled through ‘consent of the governed,’ yet the last time even a fraction of the population gave consent was in 1789. Certainly the emperor lost what few clothed he did have on when nearly half the country risked their lives to most definitely assure President Lincoln they revoked their consent to be governed. Individually the law takes a very dim view of citizens making the argument that a) consent does not require the party involved to even give it, and b) said consent can last at least two and a half centuries, up to and including heirs, assignees, and successors. Yet on a grand scale of peoples and countries I am expected to believe consent morphs into this ethereal idea with no tether to the legal definition. More madness.

To be more than fair to the idea, let us examine not just how it has been applied but in a perfect vacuum. The Ideal Form of classical liberalism, perfect in every way. For we all know, real conservatism hasn’t been tried yet, just like real socialism, anarchy and communism haven’t been. If man is not the Supreme Authority, then how does he have the right to consent? How then, does a nation founded on ‘Judeo-Christian principles’ and ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights’ set man in that position? We are not the author of our own existence. No one reading this created their body ex nihilo. The knife through the heart of Locke and many others’ theories about government is the simple fact that man does not have the jurisdiction to manufacture Biblical authority through agreement, no matter the number. A million men consenting that George W. Bush is my wife’s husband does not give him authority over her as a husband. The covenant I made with him did, because I agreed to act as his fiduciary in that capacity while here on earth. Similarly, I find the argument that an institution of God derives its authority from people to be unpersuasive. Locke was correct in his premise that all authority stems from the Author, but seemed to forget that when it came to politics beyond platitudes. Authority is personal. Authority is given, not self-originating.

Think about what was written. It’s not easy to absorb and certainly not the bumper sticker philosophy that passes for political thought in many circles. I don’t care if you agree or disagree. However, I do hope you take the time to ponder why so many people pay lip service to ‘Judeo-Christian values’ on the political scene, and why some of the core principles seem to contradict with what they believe. Why is it that there is so little difference in the foundational principles between modern leftism and the classical liberalism upon which we were founded? Fair warning, start reading and you may not like the answers. This stuff matters because we are here, and here is accelerating at just about x² on the graph of insanity. Stay tuned for part II, guaranteed to be even more controversial.

 

* Democracy

Spread the love
                

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

About the Author: admin

18 Comments

  1. jbryan314 October 14, 2018 at 14:03

    Thoroughly enjoyed the writing and will watch for the next volume, though I found your section on the children voting for patriarch to include a false dilemma. Or maybe the message in that paragraph escaped me. Regardless, I’ll check back for part II. Thanks.

    • Jesse James October 14, 2018 at 16:23

      I don’t know that I intended it to be an argument for patriarchy per se, but more a reductio ad absurdum illustration of the universal suffrage position. The main point is that if the wellspring of authority is the individual then the traditional family cannot exist. The traditional family is sacred to the entrenched conservative mind, so out of any illustration I thought I might find some purchase there. A father is not so by consent of the governed, he is so because a greater being than him vested it in him. We see this in western jurisprudence when it comes to courts of chancery or Circuit Courts. The judge is so because the organ of the state vests legal authority in that person, it does not spring ex nihilo from their very existence. Hope that helps, and thanks for the comment.

  2. T.L. Davis October 14, 2018 at 15:12

    I should probably wait for part II, but very interesting reading, challenging some of my preconceptions and my recollection of the works I have read, but being somewhat displaced for several years, my books in storage, I am a at a disadvantage to see where I might have taken a detour.

  3. WalkingHorse October 14, 2018 at 15:54

    I am chagrined about the prospect of monarchy. The best argument I’ve yet heard in favor of monarchy is that offered by Ann Barnhardt, namely, that in the case of monarchy, getting rid of a bad government entails the killing of one person, plus immediate supporters. For my part, the last time monarchs possessed qualities worthy of respect, much less obedience, was in those times when the king rode out to battle in front of his troops as an unapologetic Christian. Unquestionably, mob rule and its close cousin, Democracy, are ghastly, inferior to monarchy, and both destined to lead to violence and dictatorship, following the historical progression that is carefully not taught these days. The progressive-communist model, tyranny of experts, is clearly worse on average than hereditary nobility, yet the spectacle of inbred inferiors ruling Europe toward the end of the age of monarchs inspires zero confidence in the system, at least to me. Find a way to prevent both putative rulers and the populace at large from insulating themselves from risk and some semblance of a rigorous life, and there might be a way to identify some honorable way for leadership worthy of the name being established. I do know two things for certain: all government is evil and the centralization of government per the globalists only distills the evil to a more deadly concentration. There is a doctrine, known in Catholicism as Subsidiarity, which is as good a basis to work from as any.

    • Jesse James October 14, 2018 at 21:57

      Despite them being our cousins (for some unfortunate Americans), I generally look at most of English history as a giant European warning sign rather than an example of conduct. It’s all a dance with the devil, but the pragmatist in me sees the possibility of finding a single or a couple dozen good men in the country infinitely better than several thousand men elected by millions. We also have been inundated with the evils of monarchy since grade school go a long way to developing the ‘evil king’ meme. Rarely do we actually read the accounts of life back then. Carlysle has a fairly readable (more so than Droysen) history of the Prussian monarchy, in particular Frederick II. While a German idealist, I think he certainly emphasizes the force of nature a single man can be if given the tools and chance to lead. Give it a read, you may come away with a different opinion than my own but it’ll give you a fresh perspective either way. Thanks for the comment.

  4. Swrichmond October 14, 2018 at 18:35

    I don’t know if you’re going to like this but I think you’re making it harder than it needs to be.

    I firmly believe that power over others is seen as something to be sought, and that it is seen that way by sociopaths. Since there are always some small percentage of sociopaths among us, there are always those seeking power. They will never in a million years admit they are seeking power for power’s sake but rather swear that they seek to do some good with it and need us to assent in it.

    I also firmly believe that going too far down the rabbit hole of philosophy and theology leads to confusion and inability to make decisions and act. This is illustrated by your somewhat absurd discussion of parental power and voting by children. Don’t take philosophy too seriously.

    Even if the Libertarians could create their ideal voluntary society the sociopaths would seek and gain power elsewhere and the libertarian voluntaristic state would be crushed by outsiders. So, for no other reason than reality, there will be political power, and it will be wielded, almost certainly by a sociopath. Is Trump a sociopath? Of course he is.

    The purpose of religions is to quiesce the masses into assenting to their tax donkey status. Another purpose of religion is to alleviate the burden and prevent the masses from overindulging in philosophical thought. The hard questions all are answered, and the answers are accepted by the faithful as matters of faith, enforced by community, shaming, etc.

    Those on whom power is wielded indicate their assent by not killing their ruling sociopaths. Thus, threats and propaganda, panem et circenses. Its a sham, and always has been. It’s not any more complicated than that. Don’t over think it.

  5. Bryce Sharper October 14, 2018 at 19:37

    The liberal view, in the classical sense we are familiar with, is the political outgrowth of the Protestant interpretation of the Biblical proscription for corporate worship. It borrows heavily from the theological concept of universal priesthood, and neatly lays that framework onto the political landscape. One of the flaws in this anything-but-monarchy approach

    This was a confusing section. Protestanism does not proscribe corporate worship. Quite the opposite. Protestantism is not at all opposed to monarchy. See Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, Chapter 20, section 8. . I can’t post the whole section, but Calvin thought an aristocracy or a system “compounded of aristocracy and democracy” was better than a monarchy because “it is very rare for kings to control themselves.” Calvin and all the Reformers definitely agree with Peter and Paul that state authority comes from God but that state authority is not absolute authority. The only absolute authority is God. They were opposed to Prelates who wrote that monarchs WERE an absolute authority.

    The knife through the heart of Locke and many others’ theories about government is the simple fact that man does not have the jurisdiction to manufacture Biblical authority through agreement, no matter the number.

    As Ponet explains, monarchies are ratified through a process, involving the people and clergy in the Old Testament. God does not come down and actually set the crown on anyone’s head through supernatural means. He anointed David, for example, but the people came and made him king and consented to his rule for better or worse. A secular example is the early Anglo-SAxon monarchies: a king’s rule was ratified at yearly moots requiring the consent of earls and thanes.

    It is a shame that people are reading Locke and not Calvin or other pre-“Enlightenment” Reformers. It’s difficult to know how much Locke affected the thinking of the average American in the era leading up to the Revolution. I think he had very little effect. His effect on the Founding Fathers appears to have been large. We can all agree that reading Locke should be discouraged completely and his mode of thinking should be erased from our culture.

    • Jesse James October 14, 2018 at 21:31

      My statement about corporate worship was more directed at the fact it’s decentralized in nature. I still consider the worship corporate as opposed to personal given most Protestant churches, including my own, have a pastor, elders and deacons. The structure of the Church is wildly different from Catholic and Orthodoxy but that is the sense I meant corporate in if that helps.

      You definitely were trying to steal my thunder in Part II with regards to Calvin. I agree he wasn’t opposed in entirety to monarchy, but a lot of the guys who read him were, specifically John Knox. The English offshoot of Calvinism/Protestantism and later the Puritans that came to the US were very much in that vein rather than the Genevois peers of Calvin. It’s a difficult distinction many don’t get but the influence of people like Edwards, Jonathan Mayhew, John Witherspoon ect. on the religious cassus belli that was started in the 1750’s under the guise of Protestantism/Puritanism tends to erase the works of Calvin and some of the earlier writers because no one reads them anymore. I don’t know that Locke probably affected your average farmer but I would be willing to bet most of them heard the religious case against monarchy at church every week. Certainly the Founders were very much enamored with the man, to their detriment. I’m one of the few Protestants that don’t see an issue with a monarchy and very much believe the politics of Protestantism to take a turn for the worse after the Scots and British morphed it into a political resistance against the Crown. I think Calvin’s take is much more consistent, particularly given his acceptance of divine right with the exception of a regent rebelling against Who his authority is derived from. This certainly wasn’t intended as a shot across the bow toward Calvinism. One wonders why such great lengths have gone into sanitizing the Revolutionary war and what caused it. ?

  6. Bryce Sharper October 14, 2018 at 22:31

    Before you say anything bad about Knox, read his most-important work haha.

    It appears we are stealing each-other’s thunder as I was going to eventually write about how Colonial church polity probably resulted in our form of government. See also Gardiner. They are very much in agreement with Breen. Presbyterians were used to voting and have a larger legislative body (the presbytery and general assembly). Most of the Westminster Divines were Presbyterian. Only 5 were Congregationalist. It’s unclear how many Colonial rebels were Presbyterian versus Congregationalist versus Anglican. The American Revolution, I will attempt to argue, was also a continuation of the English Civil War.

    I don’t know that Locke probably affected your average farmer but I would be willing to bet most of them heard the religious case against monarchy at church every week

    I can believe this. In fact, one Presbyterian minister in Louisiana was one of the minority who was against rebellion. People turned on him and he died penniless. Ministers are far from immune from being influenced by popular anger and piety. See, for example, how many modern Evangelical leaders have embraced SJWism.

    • Jesse James October 14, 2018 at 22:57

      Haha, yeah that’s probably his only work of his I would recommend. Reasonable minds can differ but I think his case against a female-let monarchy bled into the general idea. Baby and bathwater kind of deal. I would agree it was ECW 2.0, to a certain extent. It didn’t affect the island all that much, but the nobility here certainly exploited the history of Protestant/Catholic wars to their advantage. All sorts of interesting, applicable lessons to be learned with that vein of thinking.

  7. Anonymous October 14, 2018 at 23:22

    5

  8. jbryan314 October 15, 2018 at 00:26

    What of the possibility of different kinds of authority? In the case of the father over his children, especially while they are unable to provide for, care for or defend themselves, is it not a case of biological authority, necessitated by God and nature? As far as legal authority, we’ve seen many examples of “legal authority” throughout history, as demonstrated by folks such as Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin.

  9. Anonymous October 15, 2018 at 12:52

    4.5

  10. Bruno Pezzey October 15, 2018 at 13:30

    This excellent point: “Authority is given, not self-originating” is problematic for Protestants, generally, as they don’t have a great story about how authority is given from Christ to Peter to … Martin Luther who walked out and nailed up a list of things going wrong? While this topic is not my strongest suit, I don’t see how the problem with “self-originating” claims of man-based authority and consent are any different than Protestant claims of ‘new’ and/or ‘good idea’-based authority-claiming.

    Meanwhile, I hope the data on this article and others like it show that people are reading and ‘liking’ these topics as well as the other topics that show up here at A.P. Thanks for the effort and for sharing your expertise and insight.

  11. Bryce Sharper October 16, 2018 at 11:47

    This excellent point: “Authority is given, not self-originating” is problematic for Protestants, generally, as they don’t have a great story about how authority is given from Christ to Peter to … Martin Luther who walked out and nailed up a list of things going wrong

    Bruno,
    Protestants have great answers to these and other issues. I’ve already linked a great resource in this thread, but here it is again. I recommend also the works of Martin Luther. Feel free to email me with any questions. Happy hunting!

  12. Wally October 18, 2018 at 15:13

    You used “anarchy” a couple times. Could you define your usage for me?

    • Jesse James October 18, 2018 at 22:34

      I generally accept the Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s summation of anarchy that “Anarchy is… a form of government or constitution in which public and private consciousness, formed through the development of science and law, is alone sufficient to maintain order and guarantee all liberties.” A foundational part of that is his statement ‘property is theft,’ and ‘property is a man’s right to dispose at will of social property. Then if we are associated for the sake of liberty, equality, and security, we are not associated for the sake of property; then if property is a NATURAL right, this natural right is not SOCIAL, but ANTI-SOCIAL.’ Mikhail Bakunin also fleshed it out more when he stated ‘hierarchic order and advancement do not exist.’ You can see his influence in the libertarian movement with his statement that ‘My freedom is the freedom of all since I am not truly free in thought and in fact, except when my freedom and my rights are confirmed and approved in the freedom and rights of all men who are my equals.’ He probably made the best summation I’ve read of anarchism in that he rejected authority, it being the ’eminently theological, metaphysical and political idea that the masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must submit at all times to the benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice, which in one way or another, is imposed from above.’ It’s why you often see me refer to anarchism by the term ‘do as thou wilt,’ a reference to Aleister Crowley and the adherence to an amoral political and social framework.

      Quoted text can be found in ‘Bakunin on Anarchism’ and ‘The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century’ by Proudhon.

  13. Anonymous January 20, 2019 at 15:42

    4

Comments are closed.

GUNS N GEAR

Categories

Archives

Spread the love