Today, I’m going to try to answer two simple-sounding, but
deep, questions. One, why do we need government? And two, what can, and should,
we do when it goes rogue?
Over the decades, I have felt a need to make myself into something
of a political philosopher. But I had to start somewhere, with ideas I could
use as a foundation. I chose to build on the work of the political thinker, whose
ideas I find more persuasive than any other. That is, my 17th-century
hero and almost-namesake, John Locke, father of the Enlightenment.
John Locke’s life and character
Born in 1632 in Somerset, Locke was educated at Westminster
School during the Civil War, then at Christ Church college, Oxford. He became a
Student (today a Fellow) of the college, where he taught Greek, rhetoric and
moral philosophy.
He was by nature a generalist, broadening his knowledge and
his activity into many fields. He learned about medicine, took a degree in the
subject, and used his medical knowledge in the service of his patron, the first
Earl of Shaftesbury. He took a great interest in experimental science, and
became a Fellow of the then new Royal Society. Later in life, and particularly
after the Glorious Revolution, he became a government bureaucrat.
He was a progressive thinker for his time; for example, he
preferred Descartes as a philosopher to Aristotle. He sought to be objective
and rational. And he had a strong sense of right and wrong.
Two Treatises of Government
His master-work of political philosophy is Two Treatises
of Government, written in the early 1680s, and published in 1690, not long
after the Revolution. A Canadian university has published these works on the
Internet: [[1]].
He also wrote major works about religious tolerance, the philosophy of
knowledge, ethics and natural law, economics and education. He even wrote a
self-help manual, “On the Conduct of the Understanding.”
The First Treatise demolishes the ideas of absolute sovereignty
and the divine right of kings, as they had been presented by Sir Robert Filmer,
a monarchist of the first half of the 17th century. But it is the
Second Treatise, which lays the foundations for a new and better system of
government, on which his fame rests.
Locke started from a view of humans living in a “state of
Nature.” This is “a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and
dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds
of the law of Nature. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and
jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another.” Further: “The
state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and
reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that
being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life,
health, liberty or possessions.” That’s a pretty good first cut at how human
beings ought to behave, no?
He recognizes that all human beings are bound together by
this law of Nature. “By which law, common to them all, he and all the rest of
mankind are one community, make up one society distinct from all other
creatures.” But among those born human, some fail to keep to this law of
Nature. “And were it not for the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men,
there would be no need of any other, no necessity that men should separate from
this great and natural community, and associate into lesser combinations.”
To counter the dangers posed by these degenerate
individuals, Locke posits that a group of people may choose to form a
“political society.” This they do “by agreeing to join and unite into a
community for their comfortable, safe and peaceable living.” This is his
version of the “social contract” idea, and his rationale for forming a
government. And the political society thus formed is: “one body, with the power
to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the
majority.” (That’s where the modern idea of “democracy” came from!)
Locke thought that the law of Nature is, in practice, not
enough on its own. “Though the law of Nature be plain and intelligible to all
rational creatures, yet men, being biased by their interest, as well as
ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding
to them in the application of it to their particular cases.” And thus, some
form of government is a regrettable necessity; just as a referee is a necessity
for a football match.
Establishing a government, he says, can solve some of the
problems which are inherent in the state of Nature. First, it can provide: “an
established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be
the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all
controversies between them.” Second, “a known and indifferent judge, with
authority to determine all differences according to the established law.” (In
Locke’s time, the word “indifferent” meant what we would now call “impartial.”)
And third, “power to back and support the sentence when right, and to give it
due execution.”
Now, to the nub of his case. “The great and chief end,
therefore, of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government,
is the preservation of their property.” And: “The end of law is not to abolish
or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.” If a government fails to respect
and preserve the property of the people, or fails to respect their natural
rights or freedoms, it loses its legitimacy. All its legitimacy.
Moreover, he says of governments: “Their power in the utmost
bounds of it is limited to the public good of the society. It is a power that
hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have a right to
destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects.” He defines the
“public good” in the First Treatise: “the good of every particular member of
that society, as far as by common rules it can be provided for.” I read that as
meaning that government must always deliver a nett benefit to every single individual
among the governed, except for those real wrongdoers that break the law of
Nature.
Further, he cautions that “a great part of the municipal
laws of countries” are no more than “the fancies and intricate contrivances of
men, following contrary and hidden interests put into words.” And such laws are
“only so far right as they are founded on the law of Nature.” So, laws made by
politicians, that go against the law of Nature for human beings, are not valid.
As Edmund Burke put it a century later, “Bad laws are the worst sort of
tyranny.”
Locke also makes it clear that any government, that departs
from its remit of upholding the good of every single individual among the
governed (real wrongdoers excepted), is no longer legitimate. “Wherever the
power that is put in any hands for the government of the people and the
preservation of their properties is applied to other ends, and made use of to
impoverish, harass or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of
those that have it, there it presently becomes tyranny.”
In one of his most famous passages, he says: “But if a long
train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make
the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under,
and see whither they are going, it is not to be wondered that they should then
rouse themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may
secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected.” That’s
exactly where we have been for most of my lifetime, in the UK and virtually
every other Western country.
He says of government power: “All power given with trust for
the attaining an end being limited by that end, whenever that end is manifestly
neglected or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the power
devolve into the hands of those that gave it.” Moreover, the people always
retain “a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the
legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.” And they are entitled
“to resume their original liberty.”
What to do when government goes wrong?
So, John Locke has spoken. If a government goes rogue, we
the people have a right to kick it out. We have, in essence, three levels of
sanction open to us:
·
One, we can alter the legislative, by putting
different people in charge.
·
Two, if putting new leaders in is not enough, we
can remove the legislative. We can dismantle the whole corrupt system, kick out
the degenerates that infest it, and build a new system to replace it.
·
And three, we can ditch the whole caboodle and
go back to the state of Nature.
It is my contention that, in the position in which we in the
UK now find ourselves, the first option is no longer workable. As Tories and
Labour have played “pass the parcel” over the decades, things have got worse
virtually every time. And none of the other mainstream parties are any better.
Even putting Nigel Farage and Richard Tice in charge of the Augean stables that
the governmental system has become would not be enough, because the system they
would inherit is too corrupt. To reform (one word) that system would be
unworkable.
So, I posit, we need to plan for the second option. If reforming
the UK government cannot work, then it needs re-forming. That means,
dismantle and replace the whole system. Legislative, executive, and where
necessary judiciary too. Get rid of the monarchy as a political force; though
there may be scope for retaining a ceremonial rump as a self-financing tourist
attraction. Get rid of the parliament – at least in its current form. Sack
every government employee or contractor that has worked against the interests
of, or been dishonest or deceptive towards, the people who paid their wages;
and any government employee that failed even to try to benefit the people they
were supposed to serve. Cancel their cushy pensions, and make them pay
compensation to those they ripped off. And punish them on top, if that is
appropriate.
Get rid of the quangos, BBC, Met Office, corrupt “advisors”
and academics, and all the rest of the degenerates that have lived off us,
exploited us and oppressed us for so long. And investigate, and where
appropriate bring to justice, the companies that have co-operated with or knowingly
profited from the corruption.
There will, no doubt, be quite a bit of disruption for a
while. Some unlucky people will get caught in the crossfire. And there will be lots
of noise and squeals from those that have unjustly gained from the current, bad
system, and are finally experiencing justice for what they did, and not
enjoying it. But in my view, there is no other viable alternative. In the words
of Ferdinand von Schill: “Better an end with horror than a horror without end.”
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