Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Two Attitudes Toward the State
FreedomFest, Las Vegas, Nevada, July 14, 2012
I expect the worst of the economic, the political turmoil we are all going to have to deal with will hit in 2013 or, perhaps, the last months of this year. I expect the hard times to last for at least several years.
Every morning I wake up and browse about 20 newspaper or media sites in order to stock the two daily newsfeeds I maintain. So I have no illusion about the condition of the world or about the immediate future. It is dismal.
And, yet, I’m an optimist.
I am an optimist about freedom…and not just the abstract concept but living freedom in my own time. It is not that I’m mentally deficient…and it is not because I haven’t been paying attention.
As bizarre as it may sound, my current attitude arose as a result of my turning 9/11 over and over in my mind. I gave a lot of thought to what my relationship to the state was and what it should be. Nothing has politically shocked as much as the 9/11 experience.
I call it an experience because, for me, 9/11 was far more than the terrorist acts that occurred on one day. For me, it was and is primarily America’s reaction in 9/11′s wake. The entire nation seemed to give up on freedom. America seemed almost eager to surrender every freedom on which it was built. And the police state came into being so fast.
To me, the symbol of 9/11 and the legacy it left America – or, rather, the legacy America chose to embrace – can be seen at the airports where the Bill of Rights has been obliterated. Customers line up like criminals to permit uniformed agents of the state sexually assault them and their children, they allow their possessions to be pawed through. More than allow it…many people demand it in the name of security and then turn angrily on anyone who even raises the question of civil liberties.
I have been involved in libertarianism or Objectivism since I was 15 years old but after 9/11, after seeing the ease with which a police state established itself, I wondered if I had wasted my life.
The title of my presentation this morning is “Two Attitudes Toward the State” and I want to explain two attitudes between which I’ve swung for many years and are still present within me today.
Before moving onto them, however, I should be clear that I am talking about attitudes and not my evaluation of the state, which remains unchanged. The state is a thug.
Basically, it relies upon two things to elicit cooperation from people in order to ‘convince’ them to surrender their rights and wealth.
The first is the myth of legitimacy; this is the notion that an electoral process or a hereditary line-of-succession or “fill in the blank” establishes an elite group who consist of politicians and those with political pull. These elite individuals somehow have the ‘right’ to tell other individuals what to say and what to do with their own body. They live by a double standard. Theft is wrong except if done by them in the form of taxation. Killing innocent people is wrong except if done by them in the war against terrorism.
Today the myth of legitimacy is being widely seen for what it is: a myth. Every day, fewer and fewer people believe in the legitimacy of the elites. And without that myth, their actions are being seen for what they are: a vicious double standard that excuses theft and murder. This means the state has to increasingly use the second method by which it elicits your cooperation: raw force or the threat thereof. And a sure sign that the elites have lost legitimacy and know it is the fact that they are becoming more violent toward their own citizenry by the hour.
So…I have no illusions about the condition of the world and my evaluation of the state has not changed.
I should return to attitudes. The first attitude toward the state that I want to examine was best expressed in a talk by David Friedman in which he assured the audience there was an Italian saying that translated into something like “It is raining again…PIG OF A GOVERNMENT!”
I remember wincing in my seat because I had a sudden vision of myself, standing in an open street, with my fist raised in fury at the political injustice of the drizzle hitting my face. The meaning of the saying, of course, is that many people blame everything on government. This hit too close to home. I was spending so much time railing against the State that I was running the risk of defining myself by what I oppose. I was taking the state inside myself and allowing it to filter my approach to life and determine many of my emotional reactions.
To some degree that process is inevitable. Sometimes the state seems to be everywhere. As long as you care about injustice, you’re going to react deeply at the sight of it. Frankly, that reaction is not something I intend to root out from within myself. I like it. Even if the reaction doesn’t always ‘feel’ good – sometimes it can feel almost sickening – it is something I prefer to the alternative of not caring.
Having said that, I also want a life in which I am not constantly reacting to injustice, constantly crying out against the state. I’ve seen too many good people burn out, I’ve seen them become bitter, or just lose their joy in living. And, so, after 9/11, I tried to find a balance in how I ‘consume’ the state…if you want to use an economic term. Or, in how I filter the state, if you want to use a psychological term.
An invaluable resource in that quest has been Henry David Thoreau’s essay “On Civil Disobedience.” Specifically, I turned over and over the story of his famous one-night stay in jail for refusing to pay a tax…and what happened directly after his release. And here I’ll let Thoreau speak for himself…
“It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the jail window….My neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker’s… When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party…” Thoreau journeyed off with a swarm of children who moved joyfully through the fields and forest. At one point, Thoreau paused and noted to himself, “in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.”
Upon his release from jail, Thoreau felt no rage toward his neighbors, no bitterness. He did not brood or rail against the injustice of his arrest. He shed everything but the insights he had gathered from the experience. And, then, he went about what he called “the business of living.” That is a wonderful phrase. The business of living.
When a tax collector knocked on his door and confronted him with the demand to pay up, Thoreau probably asked himself the same question I’ve been asking myself since 9/11. Namely, what is my relationship to the State? In answering, it is important to understand that Thoreau’s refusal to pay the tax was not the act of a determined political dissident; it wasn’t part of a pattern in his life through which he fought for the ideal of freedom. Thoreau refused to pay because he knew the specific tax would support the Mexican-American war, which he thought was immoral; rendering support to the war violated his sense of decency. In short, he did not want to cooperate with evil.
But unless and until the state literally knocked on his door, Thoreau was happy to go about the business of living as though the state did not exist. His insight while standing on a high hill is simple but profound: “and then the State was nowhere to be seen.” The essay “On Civil Disobedience” is sometimes titled “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” and that is a mistake. Thoreau did not believe people had a duty to confront the state except when it sought to make you an accomplice in the oppression of others. Anyone who stands up against injustice when the state is not at their door but at someone else’s deserves applause. But they should not do so at the expense of their primary duty, which is to live as deeply and honestly as possible. The primary business of life is living.
It is far more difficult today than in Thoreau’s time to find places where the state cannot be seen. But, perhaps, this makes it more important for us all to try.
These are the two attitudes toward the state that define my relationship to it. On the one hand, I still shake my fist at the sky and shout PIG OF A GOVERNMENT! On the other hand, I aggressively try to expand the areas of my life about which I can say “Here there is no state.” These are areas like my home, family, friends, my community, writing, working…these are areas where the government does not define or in most cases even affect what I do or how I feel.
In a sense, and it is a simplistic sense, what these two opposing attitudes express is a distinction that is key to the entire structure of libertarianism: the distinction between state and society which is most often expressed in economic terms. The standard expression comes from Franz Oppenheimer’s book The State in which he contrasted what he called “the political means” with “the economic means” of acquiring wealth or power. The political means is the use of force – the State; the economic means is cooperation – Society. By using force the unproductive State feeds on the productivity of Society.
Instead of making an economic distinction, however, I am making a psychological one. The attitude “PIG OF A GOVERNMENT!” is who I am in relationship to the State; that is my reaction when it knocks on my door and on the door of others. That reaction remains within me and I’ll be expressing it for as long as the State keeps knocking.
The attitude “here, there is no State” is who I am in relationship to Society as I go about the business of living. It involves a commitment. As much as possible I don’t use the services or so-called ‘benefits’ the government offers but seek private means instead. I explore alternative currencies and means of exchange like barter. I join networks of individuals who cooperate together for mutual benefits. In short, I am taking my life back from the state and privatizing it.
Oddly enough, the attitude of ignoring or obviating the State – again, as much as possible – may well be the most effective strategy for countering it. That’s not my purpose; my purpose is the business of living. But by privatizing your own life, you make the state increasingly irrelevant, which is what politicians fear most. They are desperate to be part of our lives, to teach our children, to regulate our work, to read our messages and hear our phone calls, to dictate our medical choices… And the most effective personal response when the State knocks at your door may well be to not answer even by the act of raising your fist.
Regards,
Wendy McElroy
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Thursday, July 19, 2012
Where Is the Line for Revolution?
By Brandon Smith Jul 19th, 2012
The subject of revolution is a touchy one. It’s not a word that should be thrown around lightly, and when it is uttered at all, it elicits a chaotic jumble of opinions and debates from know-it-alls the world over. The “R” word has been persona non grata for quite some time in America, and until recently, was met with jeers and knee-jerk belligerence.
However, let’s face it; today, the idea is not so far fetched. We have a global banking system that is feeding like a tapeworm in the stagnant guts of our economy. We suffer an election system so fraudulent BOTH sides of the political spectrum now represent a hyper-rich minority while the rest of us are simply expected to play along and enjoy the illusion of choice. We have a judicial body that has gone out of its way to whittle down our civil liberties and to marginalize our Constitution as some kind of “outdated relic”.
We have an executive branch that issues special orders like monarchical edicts every month, each new order even more invasive and oppressive than the last. And, we have an establishment system that now believes it has the right to surveil the citizenry en masse and on the slightest whim without any consideration for 4th Amendment protections.
There are plenty of pessimists out there who would assert that Americans are totally oblivious to these developments. I have not found that to be true at all. Millions of people are awake to such issues, and millions more are, at the very least, angry at the state of things, though they may not fully understand the source of their distress.
Only a fool would deny that a fight is in the air…
Though the atmosphere of conflict is present, we are indeed experiencing a pause, a breath, a quiet moment before the breach, and this is a confusing time for many.
We human beings have a very odd tendency to view our own species as inherently and irrevocably violent, or at the very least terribly flawed. However, for all the negative press mankind gets for being “warlike”, if we look back at history it is much more customary to find people desperately trying to avoid conflict, not provoke it, especially if there is an element of tangible risk. Wars are usually not fought by the general citizenry, or the men who promote the pursuit of hostilities. They pay other people to fight for them. If they were ever expected to actually participate in the same battles they lust after, they would probably change their minds about the whole idea rather quickly.
Most often the only instances in which common people take up arms and charge towards combat based on principle have been revolutions. Some revolutions are based on lies, and some are based on inspiration, but all of them require men to conquer their own apathy and fear of confrontation. This is no easy task, and it sometimes takes years or decades of social adaptation and organization.
The elements of a revolution are synchronous. They are like the ingredients of a boiling tropical storm. Each vital aspect of the event must be in place, or there can be no energy or direction. That said, if an environment is left sweltering and volatile, and this electric stew is maintained long enough, eventually, a tempest will rise.
The real question is; where is the tipping point? What causes a population to tolerate or ignore certain crimes by governments, but not others? Where is the line in the sand that if crossed, turns an apprehensively meek citizen into an “enemy of the state” ready to lay down his life against the very system he was born into? The answer is an intuitive and psychological one, rather than mathematical.
Colonial Americans suffered through numerous and mounting indignities over the course of many years before taking up arms. They attempted nearly every method imaginable to counter or reason with British oppression without turning to violent means. They exhausted every avenue, legal, political, and social. They held rousing protests. They decentralized economically and countered British trade controls. They constructed brilliant legal arguments appealing to the monarchy to embrace logic. They attempted diplomatic redress after redress. It was abundantly clear that they did not want a war. When average Americans consider the revolution that gave birth to our free republic, they tend to forget the long struggle that was necessary to rally support for a declaration of liberties. No society, no matter how right in their position, and no matter how heinous the tyranny, jumps directly behind the muzzle of a gun to solve the problem. Revolution takes time…
As difficult as it is to rationally gauge the exact moment or circumstance that triggers revolt, the intensity or build up to conflict can certainly be felt. That pressure is tactile in America today, and is becoming difficult to ignore. The reasons are obvious. In the past 10 years alone elements of our government have cemented into place the “legal” framework to:
1) Detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without trial under the guise of enemy combatant status.
2) Assassinate U.S. citizens without trial and without due process under the law, including the very clear requirements of the treason clause.
3) Confiscate resources, including your private property, in the name of national security and preparedness.
4) Take control of or eliminate all communications networks including phone, radio, television, cell, internet, etc. in the name of national security.
5) Unleash a swarm of unmanned Predator Drones over our homes and towns to make mass surveillance of the public easier. All without probable cause or the protections of the 4th Amendment.
6) Capture, collate, and monitor the communications of millions of citizens without probable cause or a warrant under the FISA domestic spy bill.
7) Declare martial law without congressional oversight and embed active serving military amongst the populace in a law enforcement capacity. This includes the institution of Northcom, which is a standing military presence in the U.S. whose primary mission is to quell domestic dissent.
Most of the laws and executive orders that qualify this behavior from our government have been tested, at least in a limited capacity. These abuses of power have already galvanized a groundswell of activists across the country, and I believe that if implemented in a broader manner, will instigate revolution. Where is the line? I believe the line will be drawn with these trespasses:
1) Any action that involves the standardization of indefinite detainment or rendition against American citizens will result in rebellion. The second due process is thrown out the window and the right to a trial by jury is revoked, there is not much left for a population to do but fight back. This includes pre-emptive assassination as well. The more often enemy combatant status is applied to get around Constitutional protections, the more exponential public anger and fury will be. Black bagging people will lead to war.
2) Economic mismanagement or deliberate derailment by banks has been accomplished with the aid and collusion of government. This has been made abundantly clear by numerous instances of exposed fraud, including the Libor Scandal, in which the private Federal Reserve and agencies within our own system have openly admitted to hiding the precarious nature of our financial situation. Any further implosion of the overall economy will be blamed on this fraud by a considerable portion of the public. When people’s wallets and bellies become empty, it’s amazing how quickly they will get off their couches to solve a crisis. If they can’t find justice within the system, history has shown that they will look for justice outside of it.
3) The institution of checkpoints, invasive technology like naked body scanners, and exaggerated law enforcement presence on a wide scale, will invariably lead to revolt. Dealing with TSA thugs in an airport is one thing; people fly voluntarily, and when they do it often involves a particular level of fear and anxiety, which can be used as rationalization for extreme security measures. Dealing with blue-shirts on the streets near your home, at the bus stop, or on the highway, on the other hand, is not going to go over too well. These tactics have already been experimented with on a small scale. I don’t care how sheepish the American people appear to be in this era; start invading their personal space on a regular basis and many will eventually respond with fists instead of shrugged shoulders.
4) Predator drone fleets hovering over every square mile of the U.S. is not only completely unacceptable, it is going to escalate dissent into the realm of revolution. Any society that harbors even the slightest morsel of individualism is going to think “expedient regime change” when flying surveillance cameras are buzzing over their shoulders 24 hours a day. Set aside the fact that many of these drones will be launched weapons capable. No government has the right to categorize the whole of a citizenry as potential criminals. “When innocent until proven guilty” becomes “guilty until proven innocent”, revolutions become inevitable.
5) Martial Law is an impractical solution to any national crisis. The Founding Fathers understood this well, which is why they specifically opposed the use of standing armies, especially in peace time. Under the Constitution, the private citizenry was supposed to be the disaster reaction force, not government paid centurions. There were multiple reasons behind this position. First, military troops are not trained for and do not have the capacity to police a domestic population (especially their own) in a practical manner. They are trained to do one thing; dominate an enemy. Second, the citizens within a particular state or county would have a much better understanding of that region’s needs and complexities. A military composed of mostly unfamiliar outsiders would not know or care about how a local system operates, and would instead try to impose its own one-size-fits-all methodology. Finally, as apathetic as many people seem, they still do not like to feel bullied or subjugated. Being surrounded by armed troops at every turn with the executive granted legal authority to detain or kill without verifiable cause would make any man a little perturbed. I do not believe many in the U.S. will quietly accept a martial law scenario, regardless of the excuse given by government (terrorism, economic disaster, foreign war, etc.). A move towards military administration of domestic affairs will lead to revolution.
The internal strife of a nation is not predicated on the transitory moods of its people but the attitude of its government. Revolutions are not waged by happy men in an honorable land. True revolutions are a product of generations of discontent stemming from dishonest and vicious bureaucracy. An establishment government facing a wave of discord from the masses has, in most cases, done something to deserve it. I, like many, do not relish the idea of a new American revolt, but if I am to be honest in the face of the facts, I have to acknowledge that the potential for one within my lifetime is significant. I also can’t say that it is not necessary. Unless tomorrow brings a miraculous shift in current totalitarian trends, revolution may be all we have left…
Regards,
Brandon Smith
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The subject of revolution is a touchy one. It’s not a word that should be thrown around lightly, and when it is uttered at all, it elicits a chaotic jumble of opinions and debates from know-it-alls the world over. The “R” word has been persona non grata for quite some time in America, and until recently, was met with jeers and knee-jerk belligerence.
However, let’s face it; today, the idea is not so far fetched. We have a global banking system that is feeding like a tapeworm in the stagnant guts of our economy. We suffer an election system so fraudulent BOTH sides of the political spectrum now represent a hyper-rich minority while the rest of us are simply expected to play along and enjoy the illusion of choice. We have a judicial body that has gone out of its way to whittle down our civil liberties and to marginalize our Constitution as some kind of “outdated relic”.
We have an executive branch that issues special orders like monarchical edicts every month, each new order even more invasive and oppressive than the last. And, we have an establishment system that now believes it has the right to surveil the citizenry en masse and on the slightest whim without any consideration for 4th Amendment protections.
There are plenty of pessimists out there who would assert that Americans are totally oblivious to these developments. I have not found that to be true at all. Millions of people are awake to such issues, and millions more are, at the very least, angry at the state of things, though they may not fully understand the source of their distress.
Only a fool would deny that a fight is in the air…
Though the atmosphere of conflict is present, we are indeed experiencing a pause, a breath, a quiet moment before the breach, and this is a confusing time for many.
We human beings have a very odd tendency to view our own species as inherently and irrevocably violent, or at the very least terribly flawed. However, for all the negative press mankind gets for being “warlike”, if we look back at history it is much more customary to find people desperately trying to avoid conflict, not provoke it, especially if there is an element of tangible risk. Wars are usually not fought by the general citizenry, or the men who promote the pursuit of hostilities. They pay other people to fight for them. If they were ever expected to actually participate in the same battles they lust after, they would probably change their minds about the whole idea rather quickly.
Most often the only instances in which common people take up arms and charge towards combat based on principle have been revolutions. Some revolutions are based on lies, and some are based on inspiration, but all of them require men to conquer their own apathy and fear of confrontation. This is no easy task, and it sometimes takes years or decades of social adaptation and organization.
The elements of a revolution are synchronous. They are like the ingredients of a boiling tropical storm. Each vital aspect of the event must be in place, or there can be no energy or direction. That said, if an environment is left sweltering and volatile, and this electric stew is maintained long enough, eventually, a tempest will rise.
The real question is; where is the tipping point? What causes a population to tolerate or ignore certain crimes by governments, but not others? Where is the line in the sand that if crossed, turns an apprehensively meek citizen into an “enemy of the state” ready to lay down his life against the very system he was born into? The answer is an intuitive and psychological one, rather than mathematical.
Colonial Americans suffered through numerous and mounting indignities over the course of many years before taking up arms. They attempted nearly every method imaginable to counter or reason with British oppression without turning to violent means. They exhausted every avenue, legal, political, and social. They held rousing protests. They decentralized economically and countered British trade controls. They constructed brilliant legal arguments appealing to the monarchy to embrace logic. They attempted diplomatic redress after redress. It was abundantly clear that they did not want a war. When average Americans consider the revolution that gave birth to our free republic, they tend to forget the long struggle that was necessary to rally support for a declaration of liberties. No society, no matter how right in their position, and no matter how heinous the tyranny, jumps directly behind the muzzle of a gun to solve the problem. Revolution takes time…
As difficult as it is to rationally gauge the exact moment or circumstance that triggers revolt, the intensity or build up to conflict can certainly be felt. That pressure is tactile in America today, and is becoming difficult to ignore. The reasons are obvious. In the past 10 years alone elements of our government have cemented into place the “legal” framework to:
1) Detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without trial under the guise of enemy combatant status.
2) Assassinate U.S. citizens without trial and without due process under the law, including the very clear requirements of the treason clause.
3) Confiscate resources, including your private property, in the name of national security and preparedness.
4) Take control of or eliminate all communications networks including phone, radio, television, cell, internet, etc. in the name of national security.
5) Unleash a swarm of unmanned Predator Drones over our homes and towns to make mass surveillance of the public easier. All without probable cause or the protections of the 4th Amendment.
6) Capture, collate, and monitor the communications of millions of citizens without probable cause or a warrant under the FISA domestic spy bill.
7) Declare martial law without congressional oversight and embed active serving military amongst the populace in a law enforcement capacity. This includes the institution of Northcom, which is a standing military presence in the U.S. whose primary mission is to quell domestic dissent.
Most of the laws and executive orders that qualify this behavior from our government have been tested, at least in a limited capacity. These abuses of power have already galvanized a groundswell of activists across the country, and I believe that if implemented in a broader manner, will instigate revolution. Where is the line? I believe the line will be drawn with these trespasses:
1) Any action that involves the standardization of indefinite detainment or rendition against American citizens will result in rebellion. The second due process is thrown out the window and the right to a trial by jury is revoked, there is not much left for a population to do but fight back. This includes pre-emptive assassination as well. The more often enemy combatant status is applied to get around Constitutional protections, the more exponential public anger and fury will be. Black bagging people will lead to war.
2) Economic mismanagement or deliberate derailment by banks has been accomplished with the aid and collusion of government. This has been made abundantly clear by numerous instances of exposed fraud, including the Libor Scandal, in which the private Federal Reserve and agencies within our own system have openly admitted to hiding the precarious nature of our financial situation. Any further implosion of the overall economy will be blamed on this fraud by a considerable portion of the public. When people’s wallets and bellies become empty, it’s amazing how quickly they will get off their couches to solve a crisis. If they can’t find justice within the system, history has shown that they will look for justice outside of it.
3) The institution of checkpoints, invasive technology like naked body scanners, and exaggerated law enforcement presence on a wide scale, will invariably lead to revolt. Dealing with TSA thugs in an airport is one thing; people fly voluntarily, and when they do it often involves a particular level of fear and anxiety, which can be used as rationalization for extreme security measures. Dealing with blue-shirts on the streets near your home, at the bus stop, or on the highway, on the other hand, is not going to go over too well. These tactics have already been experimented with on a small scale. I don’t care how sheepish the American people appear to be in this era; start invading their personal space on a regular basis and many will eventually respond with fists instead of shrugged shoulders.
4) Predator drone fleets hovering over every square mile of the U.S. is not only completely unacceptable, it is going to escalate dissent into the realm of revolution. Any society that harbors even the slightest morsel of individualism is going to think “expedient regime change” when flying surveillance cameras are buzzing over their shoulders 24 hours a day. Set aside the fact that many of these drones will be launched weapons capable. No government has the right to categorize the whole of a citizenry as potential criminals. “When innocent until proven guilty” becomes “guilty until proven innocent”, revolutions become inevitable.
5) Martial Law is an impractical solution to any national crisis. The Founding Fathers understood this well, which is why they specifically opposed the use of standing armies, especially in peace time. Under the Constitution, the private citizenry was supposed to be the disaster reaction force, not government paid centurions. There were multiple reasons behind this position. First, military troops are not trained for and do not have the capacity to police a domestic population (especially their own) in a practical manner. They are trained to do one thing; dominate an enemy. Second, the citizens within a particular state or county would have a much better understanding of that region’s needs and complexities. A military composed of mostly unfamiliar outsiders would not know or care about how a local system operates, and would instead try to impose its own one-size-fits-all methodology. Finally, as apathetic as many people seem, they still do not like to feel bullied or subjugated. Being surrounded by armed troops at every turn with the executive granted legal authority to detain or kill without verifiable cause would make any man a little perturbed. I do not believe many in the U.S. will quietly accept a martial law scenario, regardless of the excuse given by government (terrorism, economic disaster, foreign war, etc.). A move towards military administration of domestic affairs will lead to revolution.
The internal strife of a nation is not predicated on the transitory moods of its people but the attitude of its government. Revolutions are not waged by happy men in an honorable land. True revolutions are a product of generations of discontent stemming from dishonest and vicious bureaucracy. An establishment government facing a wave of discord from the masses has, in most cases, done something to deserve it. I, like many, do not relish the idea of a new American revolt, but if I am to be honest in the face of the facts, I have to acknowledge that the potential for one within my lifetime is significant. I also can’t say that it is not necessary. Unless tomorrow brings a miraculous shift in current totalitarian trends, revolution may be all we have left…
Regards,
Brandon Smith
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Thursday, July 5, 2012
Libido Dominandi: The Lust of Government
“Oligarchists (to the end they may keep all others out of the government) pretending themselves to be saints, do also pretend, that they in whom lust reigns, are not fit for reign or for government. But libido dominandi, the lust of government, is the greatest lust, which also reigns most in those that have least right, as in oligarchists: for many a king and many a people have and had unquestionable right, but an oligarchist never; whence from their own argument, the lust of government reigning most in oligarchists, it undeniably follows that oligarchists of all men are least fit for government.”
~ James Harrington, The Oceana and Other Works (1737)
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
~ Thomas Jefferson
Perhaps the two longest and most intractable trends in this country are the growth of the state and the receding of liberty at least since the days of the Lincoln
Ignorance
Sadly, most Americans are ignorant of their own heritage. They confuse freedom with democracy when the Founders knew these were mutually exclusive. "Democracy was the right of the majority to choose its own tyrants," according to Madison Washington Madison
Most people lack a basic understanding of how a market economy functions. They equate a lack of planning on the part of government with chaos, or that some things simply will not get done. For example, if the government does not take care of the poor, most assume they will starve. They fall for the "fatal conceit" that planners possess enough knowledge to actually do their job. They do not stop to think that three hundred million people (or 7 billion for that matter) acting voluntarily to cooperate, compete, and improve their lives possess far greater knowledge than the "Gang of 535" inside the Beltway ever could. Knowledge is decentralized. They overlook the immeasurable contribution of the price system which enables economic calculation — the ability for individuals to weigh trade-offs and make choices in a world of scarcity. They forget that centrally planned economies have been a disaster throughout history, including the early settlements in this country.
Greed
Most fail to differentiate between the public and private sectors. The former is coercive in nature, the latter peaceful and voluntary. They focus instead on the supposed greed of the businessman. The real greed is the businessman who crosses the line and uses the gun of the state to gain special privileges at the expense of everyone else. This is mercantilism (the very system Americans originally fought a War of Independence to overturn), synonymous with "political capitalism" and "crony capitalism." It is not laissez faire capitalism. Yet the free market gets the blame whenever the government's meddling in the economy backfires. The response is always more intervention, which ultimately means even less economic freedom and more problems down the road. Meanwhile, the state official is assumed to be selfless and above temptation.
Fear
Any centralizer of power worth his salt knows people are most willing to surrender their liberties during periods of crisis. As John Adams observed, "Fear is the foundation of most governments." Thomas Jefferson famously warned, "A nation that limits freedom in the name of security will have neither." H.L. Mencken was even more emphatic: "The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear — fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety." Fear comes in many forms — fear of foreign attack (e.g., the Cold War and War on Terror), fear that the economy will crumble without adult supervision, fear that roads, schools and parks would not exist without government provision, fear that the exhaust from our cars will melt the polar ice caps and flood our coastal cities, and even fear that one of the two political parties poses a greater threat to our livelihoods than the other.
Envy
Some apologists for Big Government are motivated by the resentment of achievement itself. According to the Foundation for Economic Education's Sheldon Richman, envy can take a large share of the blame for our current welfare apparatus: "It is bad enough that the administrators of the welfare state are moved by a hatred of ability. The greater tragedy is that they poison the minds of the constituency they so desperately need. Instead of the poor learning to admire the productive and aspire to be like them, they are taught by the system that their poverty is caused by others' affluence. They learn to resent achievement and to prefer seeing the achievers dragged down. That is all the welfare state can bring about." According to Richman, what the poor really need more than a handout is the "invisible hand" of markets: "The welfare statist will cry out that we have responsibility to those less fortunate. We do, but in a sense other than the egalitarian imagines. We have a responsibility to create and maintain a free society so that all may go as far as their abilities and determination will take them."
Fantasy
Finally, we have the dreamer, the idealist. He naïvely imagines a world of harmony and abundance which, of course, someone must plan and run. The only inconvenience? At the end of the day his Utopia requires brute force. That such fantasy provided the basic foundation of the great atrocities of the 20th century — Stalin's collectivist famines in the Ukraine, Hitler's gas chambers, and Pol Pot's killing fields in Cambodia — always escapes the dreamer. Perhaps this is why Hollywood celebrities routinely fawn all over tyrants like Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, or why Western journalists were enamored of the mass murderer Joe Stalin during the 1920s and 1930s. To the Utopian, it is always the particular implementers at fault, never the system or the theory itself.
As Milton Friedman pointed out three decades ago, it is the knaves and the naïve who primarily drive the inexorable upswing of centralized power and planning. "You almost always, when you have bad programs, have an unholy coalition of the do-gooders on the one hand and the special interests on the other."
When will these trends of expanding government and contracting freedom end? Likely when they exhaust themselves. Trends tend to move through several phases: disbelief, gradualism, acceleration, blow off (accompanied by signs of hubris and rationalization), decline (with denial and desperate acts to keep the game going), and collapse (i.e., a return to sanity). Perhaps the Iraq War was the blow off stage of the foreign policy engine that drove the bull market in state power. And perhaps our recent credit bubble was the blow off phase of the monetary engine. If so, a major change in trend is mercifully upon us.
Kevin Duffy
November 15, 2007
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Secession Principals
PRIMACY OF THE RIGHT TO SECEDE
The primary political right of the individual and of political communities must be to secede from any larger political entity, whether they were born into it, were forced to join it, or voluntarily joined it. If one denies or relinquishes that right, one is little more than a slave--and no agreement to become a slave can be legally or morally binding.
Secession of individuals and communities does not have to mean war and violence. It should be a natural evolutionary feature of all political entities. Communities can form networks or confederations, since secession is accepted by both in principle. However, communities will not form "federations" which by definition do not allow secession. We will suggest practical and nonviolent means by which such separation can occur and the kinds of networks and confederations that could be created to replace oppressive nation states.
COMMUNITY-BASED SECESSION:
In the name of nationalism, religion, ideology, tradition or "the common good," the governments of the world suppress individual liberty and individuals' control of their own communities. Special interest- corporate- state- bureaucratic- military elites worldwide tax, regulate, bully, beat, prosecute, jail and execute citizens into submission. They discriminate against, rob, ethnically cleanse and genocide members of oppressed racial/ethnic/religious/regional groups. Without government control, these elites would have little real power over individuals and communities.
The concept of individual liberty is simple: individuals should be free to do whatever they please as long as they don't harm others by using force or fraud. This is the basic ethical tenet or "golden rule" of all religions, one corrupted by layers of theology and ritual and centuries of kowtowing to political authority. Individual consent–not some nationalist, racial, religious, tribal or, ideological construct or “social contract”–is the only legitimate basis of any social, economic and political organization. However, supporting the idea and value of individual liberty is not enough to obtain liberty. We must support institutional structures that make it impossible for public or private entities to crush individual liberty.
Throughout history most individuals have chosen to live in community with others, be it on communally held or privately held lands, as either owners or renters. Large, multi-national nation states were created by military conquest of smaller independent communities, tribes and nations. Individuals today have little control over their local communities, most of which have become mere administrative units of large, distant, oppressive nation states. Government and special interest confiscation of communal and private land has further muddied the territorial basis of many communities.
In the last 50 years the largest and most powerful nation states have been building big super-national organizations like the United Nations, NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization to ensure that special interest-corporate-state-bureaucratic-military elites further concentrate their control. What some call "corporate globalization" is really government globalization in service of (mostly "First World") corporate and political elites.
Many think in terms of "state's rights" secession, especially in the United States, with such states opposed to secession by smaller political units. However, Secession.Net promotes "community-based secession," assuming that smaller entities like communities, towns, small cities, neighborhoods within larger cities will and must become the basic political unit, after the individual.
The map at left suggesting hundreds or even thousands of independent, networked or loosely confederated communities as an alternate to the United States of America, Canada and Mexico. However, communities can be both geographical and non-geographical. Geographical communities can include contiguous "bedroom" or vacation communities, industrial or commercial "parks", counties including a number of farms and tiny communities, shopping malls, environmental preserves or be mixed use communities. Non-geographical communities are communities of interest, be they industrial, professional, trade or service-related, charitable, cultural, ethnic, racial, political, etc. and may include members all over a continent or the planet. It is possible that members of geographical communities not only can hold overlapping memberships in non-geographical ones, but conduct most of their affairs with those communities.
Communities must be free to join or secede from any larger regional, continental or even worldwide networks and confederations they join to deal with a variety of issues. While communities may choose to confederate along traditional linguistic, ethnic or racial national lines, these confederations must recognize the rights of sub-communities among them to maintain their autonomy. And communities themselves must recognize the right of members and geographical sections of the community to secede and become autonomous or attach to other communities. Only the right to secession guarantees true autonomy. (Future articles will detail how these processes have and can work.)
Many worry that corporations would run roughshod over such communities. But without central government- limited liabilities, privileges, welfare and stifling of competition, most existing huge multinational corporations would disappear or break up into much smaller entities that would have little real power to control communities. Those who look to central governments for such protection are enslaving themselves to a phantom.
LIBERTARIAN/DECENTRALIST POLITICAL PROCESSES
Communities may create whatever economic, social or cultural systems they choose. However, we believe that in order to prevent communities from re-creation of warring nation states or abusing individual rights and liberties, they must follow five principles of political process, which are both libertarian and decentralist:
A Bill of Rights: Any community may fall victim to prejudice, intolerance, exploitation, suspicion or hysteria towards one or more of its members. Therefore it is necessary to have a written guarantee of (a) freedom of association and of movement in and out of the community; (b) equal political rights to participate in community decision-making or to access community-related information; and (c) procedural rights--right to trial and due process, right to counsel, right of appeal, no cruel and unusual means of interrogation or punishment.
"Polycentric" Law: Over the last few centuries legislatively decreed law ("fiat" law), made by and for elites, has restricted individual liberty worldwide. It has supplanted more naturally and freely evolved "common law," private commercial law or law governing voluntary associations. Because such laws come from many centers of activity and interest they can be called "polycentric" law. Individuals and communities must be free to choose the legal system by which they will abide. They may choose different systems to deal with personal, business, or other matters. They may choose how much of their lives will be ruled by contractual obligations and how much, if any, by democratic decision-making. They can do so, in large part, simply by deciding what legal system and what community or communities to join.
Consensus-Oriented or Super-Majority Democracy: . "Democracy" means "rule of the people"--a phrase which has been interpreted in ways both authoritarian and libertarian. Even those who attempt to form communities only by contract usually will encounter unexpected situations which require some sort of democratic decision-making. Majority rule decision-making usually turns into a cloak for defacto minority rule by special interests and elites which ever increase their control over society. Contracts and consensus democracy are both examples of consensus-oriented decision-making where decisions, including those to restrict liberty, are not made until all affected parties agree. Super-majority decision-making means at least two-thirds, three-quarters or even nine-tenths of all those eligible to vote must agree to the decision. These processes contribute to community harmony because members propose and adopt only rules and policies that enjoy overwhelming support by all members.
Direct Democracy: Representative democracy, even in groups of a few dozen people, usually results in rule by cliques or elites, usually for their own benefit. Direct democracy means only the votes of individual members can approve or reject laws/rules/regulations and taxes/fees/contributions (depending on what each community chooses to call these functions). The growth of the Internet makes it easy for people to vote from home, office, library, etc. Direct democracy also discourages elites from suggesting special interest laws or taxes since only a small number of people will be motivated to vote for them, and at least a super-majority of all eligible voters must approve them. Voters may still elect, appoint or hire adminstrators and managers, but their policy-making ability is strictly limited.
Sunset Provisions: People too often are panicked into creating rules and regulations to deal with one time or emergency situations. Therefore it is necessary to include a provision allowing a minority of members (15 to 25%) to vote to rescind rules after a few months have passed. And all rules and fees should have "sunset" provisions so that they are phased out after a few years unless explicitly re-instated by voters. There also should be explicit "fair exit provisions" ensuring individuals disagreeing with a near-consensus rule or policy are given sufficient time to settle affairs and leave a community.
Variations on the principles above also should be followed in the regional, continental and other networks and confederations communities choose to form or join. While some sort of representation (probably proportional) probably would be used in these bodies, important decisions still would be referred back to community members. Most important we must all remember that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
NONVIOLENT SECESSION AND INSTITUTIONS
The world's large nation states are maintained through threatened and actual military violence against even perceived secessionists. Democratic welfare states bribe their citizens with unsustainable social welfare programs while they build up powerful and increasingly nuclear-armed militaries. Dictatorships dispense with social welfare bribes, sacrificing their people as they focus on military buildups. Only abolition of large multi-national nation states and their militaries will prevent destructive regional wars and eventual and inevitable, accidental or intentional, nuclear war.
Nonviolence is the belief that no racial, ethnic, religious, ideological, social, or economic belief or goal excuses the use of individual or state violence to force the compliance of others. Nonviolent philosophy and practices extend to interpersonal, group and community conflict resolution, nonviolent legal sanctions and nonviolent policing and defense.
The purpose of non-violent action is to withdraw consent from government or other authorities, rather than wrest power from them--defacto secession. Non-violence heightens the moral superiority of the actionists in the eyes of the general public--especially if the authorities respond to their sincere and open nonviolent protest with violence. Even members of the ruling classes can be swayed to sympathy by such non-violent actions. Police and soldiers wooed with sound political arguments and non-violent demonstrations are more likely to come over to the side of the activists than ones afraid of being harmed by protesters.
Political violence destroys public sympathy and unites the people with the elites and the police against the protesters--that's why governments infiltrate demonstrations with violent "agent provocateurs." Violent action usually is practiced predominantly by angry young males, often with military training, who often become as ruthless towards other dissidents as they do towards the oppressor. When violent revolutionaries take power, their regimes often are as ruthless as their revolutions.
Similarly, we must work to remove violence as a means of resolving conflicts in, or regulating, our private and public affairs. The acceptance of personal violence, public violence, government violence and war between nations are intimately connected. Nonviolent conflict resolution within and between communities, nonviolent enforcement of contracts and rules and regulations, and even nonviolent policing, peacekeeping and defense have all proved workable in many places, at many times. A commitment to nonviolent conflict resolution helps create tolerance among people, despite their ethnic, racial, religious, ideological and other differences. We must extend them to all place and all times, if humanity is to survive and prosper.
The primary political right of the individual and of political communities must be to secede from any larger political entity, whether they were born into it, were forced to join it, or voluntarily joined it. If one denies or relinquishes that right, one is little more than a slave--and no agreement to become a slave can be legally or morally binding.
Secession of individuals and communities does not have to mean war and violence. It should be a natural evolutionary feature of all political entities. Communities can form networks or confederations, since secession is accepted by both in principle. However, communities will not form "federations" which by definition do not allow secession. We will suggest practical and nonviolent means by which such separation can occur and the kinds of networks and confederations that could be created to replace oppressive nation states.
COMMUNITY-BASED SECESSION:
In the name of nationalism, religion, ideology, tradition or "the common good," the governments of the world suppress individual liberty and individuals' control of their own communities. Special interest- corporate- state- bureaucratic- military elites worldwide tax, regulate, bully, beat, prosecute, jail and execute citizens into submission. They discriminate against, rob, ethnically cleanse and genocide members of oppressed racial/ethnic/religious/regional groups. Without government control, these elites would have little real power over individuals and communities.
The concept of individual liberty is simple: individuals should be free to do whatever they please as long as they don't harm others by using force or fraud. This is the basic ethical tenet or "golden rule" of all religions, one corrupted by layers of theology and ritual and centuries of kowtowing to political authority. Individual consent–not some nationalist, racial, religious, tribal or, ideological construct or “social contract”–is the only legitimate basis of any social, economic and political organization. However, supporting the idea and value of individual liberty is not enough to obtain liberty. We must support institutional structures that make it impossible for public or private entities to crush individual liberty.
Throughout history most individuals have chosen to live in community with others, be it on communally held or privately held lands, as either owners or renters. Large, multi-national nation states were created by military conquest of smaller independent communities, tribes and nations. Individuals today have little control over their local communities, most of which have become mere administrative units of large, distant, oppressive nation states. Government and special interest confiscation of communal and private land has further muddied the territorial basis of many communities.
In the last 50 years the largest and most powerful nation states have been building big super-national organizations like the United Nations, NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization to ensure that special interest-corporate-state-bureaucratic-military elites further concentrate their control. What some call "corporate globalization" is really government globalization in service of (mostly "First World") corporate and political elites.
Many think in terms of "state's rights" secession, especially in the United States, with such states opposed to secession by smaller political units. However, Secession.Net promotes "community-based secession," assuming that smaller entities like communities, towns, small cities, neighborhoods within larger cities will and must become the basic political unit, after the individual.
The map at left suggesting hundreds or even thousands of independent, networked or loosely confederated communities as an alternate to the United States of America, Canada and Mexico. However, communities can be both geographical and non-geographical. Geographical communities can include contiguous "bedroom" or vacation communities, industrial or commercial "parks", counties including a number of farms and tiny communities, shopping malls, environmental preserves or be mixed use communities. Non-geographical communities are communities of interest, be they industrial, professional, trade or service-related, charitable, cultural, ethnic, racial, political, etc. and may include members all over a continent or the planet. It is possible that members of geographical communities not only can hold overlapping memberships in non-geographical ones, but conduct most of their affairs with those communities. Communities must be free to join or secede from any larger regional, continental or even worldwide networks and confederations they join to deal with a variety of issues. While communities may choose to confederate along traditional linguistic, ethnic or racial national lines, these confederations must recognize the rights of sub-communities among them to maintain their autonomy. And communities themselves must recognize the right of members and geographical sections of the community to secede and become autonomous or attach to other communities. Only the right to secession guarantees true autonomy. (Future articles will detail how these processes have and can work.)
Many worry that corporations would run roughshod over such communities. But without central government- limited liabilities, privileges, welfare and stifling of competition, most existing huge multinational corporations would disappear or break up into much smaller entities that would have little real power to control communities. Those who look to central governments for such protection are enslaving themselves to a phantom.
LIBERTARIAN/DECENTRALIST POLITICAL PROCESSES
Communities may create whatever economic, social or cultural systems they choose. However, we believe that in order to prevent communities from re-creation of warring nation states or abusing individual rights and liberties, they must follow five principles of political process, which are both libertarian and decentralist:
A Bill of Rights: Any community may fall victim to prejudice, intolerance, exploitation, suspicion or hysteria towards one or more of its members. Therefore it is necessary to have a written guarantee of (a) freedom of association and of movement in and out of the community; (b) equal political rights to participate in community decision-making or to access community-related information; and (c) procedural rights--right to trial and due process, right to counsel, right of appeal, no cruel and unusual means of interrogation or punishment.
"Polycentric" Law: Over the last few centuries legislatively decreed law ("fiat" law), made by and for elites, has restricted individual liberty worldwide. It has supplanted more naturally and freely evolved "common law," private commercial law or law governing voluntary associations. Because such laws come from many centers of activity and interest they can be called "polycentric" law. Individuals and communities must be free to choose the legal system by which they will abide. They may choose different systems to deal with personal, business, or other matters. They may choose how much of their lives will be ruled by contractual obligations and how much, if any, by democratic decision-making. They can do so, in large part, simply by deciding what legal system and what community or communities to join.
Consensus-Oriented or Super-Majority Democracy: . "Democracy" means "rule of the people"--a phrase which has been interpreted in ways both authoritarian and libertarian. Even those who attempt to form communities only by contract usually will encounter unexpected situations which require some sort of democratic decision-making. Majority rule decision-making usually turns into a cloak for defacto minority rule by special interests and elites which ever increase their control over society. Contracts and consensus democracy are both examples of consensus-oriented decision-making where decisions, including those to restrict liberty, are not made until all affected parties agree. Super-majority decision-making means at least two-thirds, three-quarters or even nine-tenths of all those eligible to vote must agree to the decision. These processes contribute to community harmony because members propose and adopt only rules and policies that enjoy overwhelming support by all members.
Direct Democracy: Representative democracy, even in groups of a few dozen people, usually results in rule by cliques or elites, usually for their own benefit. Direct democracy means only the votes of individual members can approve or reject laws/rules/regulations and taxes/fees/contributions (depending on what each community chooses to call these functions). The growth of the Internet makes it easy for people to vote from home, office, library, etc. Direct democracy also discourages elites from suggesting special interest laws or taxes since only a small number of people will be motivated to vote for them, and at least a super-majority of all eligible voters must approve them. Voters may still elect, appoint or hire adminstrators and managers, but their policy-making ability is strictly limited.
Sunset Provisions: People too often are panicked into creating rules and regulations to deal with one time or emergency situations. Therefore it is necessary to include a provision allowing a minority of members (15 to 25%) to vote to rescind rules after a few months have passed. And all rules and fees should have "sunset" provisions so that they are phased out after a few years unless explicitly re-instated by voters. There also should be explicit "fair exit provisions" ensuring individuals disagreeing with a near-consensus rule or policy are given sufficient time to settle affairs and leave a community.
Variations on the principles above also should be followed in the regional, continental and other networks and confederations communities choose to form or join. While some sort of representation (probably proportional) probably would be used in these bodies, important decisions still would be referred back to community members. Most important we must all remember that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
NONVIOLENT SECESSION AND INSTITUTIONS
The world's large nation states are maintained through threatened and actual military violence against even perceived secessionists. Democratic welfare states bribe their citizens with unsustainable social welfare programs while they build up powerful and increasingly nuclear-armed militaries. Dictatorships dispense with social welfare bribes, sacrificing their people as they focus on military buildups. Only abolition of large multi-national nation states and their militaries will prevent destructive regional wars and eventual and inevitable, accidental or intentional, nuclear war.
Nonviolence is the belief that no racial, ethnic, religious, ideological, social, or economic belief or goal excuses the use of individual or state violence to force the compliance of others. Nonviolent philosophy and practices extend to interpersonal, group and community conflict resolution, nonviolent legal sanctions and nonviolent policing and defense.
The purpose of non-violent action is to withdraw consent from government or other authorities, rather than wrest power from them--defacto secession. Non-violence heightens the moral superiority of the actionists in the eyes of the general public--especially if the authorities respond to their sincere and open nonviolent protest with violence. Even members of the ruling classes can be swayed to sympathy by such non-violent actions. Police and soldiers wooed with sound political arguments and non-violent demonstrations are more likely to come over to the side of the activists than ones afraid of being harmed by protesters.
Political violence destroys public sympathy and unites the people with the elites and the police against the protesters--that's why governments infiltrate demonstrations with violent "agent provocateurs." Violent action usually is practiced predominantly by angry young males, often with military training, who often become as ruthless towards other dissidents as they do towards the oppressor. When violent revolutionaries take power, their regimes often are as ruthless as their revolutions.
Similarly, we must work to remove violence as a means of resolving conflicts in, or regulating, our private and public affairs. The acceptance of personal violence, public violence, government violence and war between nations are intimately connected. Nonviolent conflict resolution within and between communities, nonviolent enforcement of contracts and rules and regulations, and even nonviolent policing, peacekeeping and defense have all proved workable in many places, at many times. A commitment to nonviolent conflict resolution helps create tolerance among people, despite their ethnic, racial, religious, ideological and other differences. We must extend them to all place and all times, if humanity is to survive and prosper.
Mark of the Beast
“When your life and all you love are on the line”
-Verichip
It’s been hailed as the ultimate in personal identification and human tracking technology, and now it’s going mainstream. The VeriMed system, formerly known as the Verichip, is a passive RFID microchip measuring about the size of a grain of rice and is implantable under your skin, making it possible for health care providers and other parties to instantly access your medical history and other personally identifying information.
The chip itself doesn’t store a whole lot of information other than a personal identification number, much like a social security number. When scanned it connects directly to the Healthlink global network via the internet allowing doctors immediate retrieval of everything they need to know about you.
The systems are not only limited to human medical data storage, however, and have been used for years as location tracking for cattle and pets by Verichip’s former parent company Applied Digital Solutions.
Recently the UK prison system proposed that these machine-readable chips be implanted into prisoners to keep tabs on their whereabouts and help prevent escape:
Because of concerns about the security of existing tagging systems and prison overcrowding, the British Ministry of Justice is investigating the use of satellite and radio-wave technology to monitor criminals.
But, instead of being contained in bracelets worn around the ankle, the tiny chips would be surgically inserted under the skin of offenders in the community, to help enforce home curfews.
…
“All options are on the table, and this is one we would like to pursue.”
Source: NZ Herald
While reportedly plagued with security problems and health concerns, RFID chips are being rapidly implemented into society, often with the argument that that they will protect the safety of our loved ones, namely our children:
While interviewing Scott Silverman (Applied Digital CEO), Sean Hannity said on October 24, 2008: “[Parents are saying:] we can’t even allow our kids to play in the front yard. Is there anything – technologically speaking – that [parents] can do that can help the situation, like a kidnapping. Is there, for example, a microchip…we can use for our kids?” In the interview, Silverman describes a PLD, which is an acronym for “Personal Locating Device,” which is an RFID chip. This PLD is to be implanted into the body of the “child or someone you are interested in tracking.”
While Hannity initially presents the RFID’s use into the context of “protecting children from being kidnapped,” Silverman quickly admits the multi-function purpose of the RFID: “It is the first implantable microchip for humans that has multiple security, financial and healthcare applications.” Sean Hannity’s response: “I love this idea, Scott.” Security, financial, and healthcare: These are the vast categories of use which would encompass all of human life and activity in America.
Source: Right Side News
While VeriMed and its precursor the Verichip are reportedly designed for medical application, the system itself is already capable of wide ranging tracking implementation that includes personal location services. Coupled with the recent advances in federal surveillance technologies that include a massive newly built National Security Agency data center and tens of thousands of drones patrolling the skies of America, an implantable tracking chip would give the government unfettered access into the personal lives and daily goings on of every man, woman and child in the country.
As Mark Dice points out in the Resistance Manifesto, the ultimate goal of the chips is to replace “drivers licenses and cash by using these devices so that every person on the planet will not be able to buy or sell anything without one.”
I’ll Never Stick One of Those In My Body!
Revelations refers to it as the mark of the beast.
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the MARK, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Revelation 13:16-18
To suggest that Americans would willingly accept such a “mark” under their skins for the purposes of health care or financial security may sound ridiculous, but it is not out of the realm of possibility.
Consider the current state of affairs in America and the world and we can see how easily global governing entities may move to force such a technology on the vast majority of the population.
There are hundreds of millions of people worldwide, including half of all American households, on some form of government assistance, be it medical insurance, welfare, food stamps, disability or retirement stipend. With all of the fraud rampant in the system as it exists today and the lack of funds to maintain it, it would only take one major crisis for the government to step in and pass a law that forces anyone receiving government benefits of any kind to be implanted with an RFID chip in order to continue receiving those services they can no longer live without.
Can’t happen? Heck, these days the government doesn’t even need to pass a law. The President can either mandate such an action through Executive Order (as he and his predecessors have done so many times before), or a government alphabet agency can simply instigate a new rule requiring it, such as the USDA’s recent call for exactly what is mentioned above – RFID tracking for those receiving food stamps.
Some would bow out of the system on personal moral or religious grounds, but millions would be left with no other choice but to concede their liberty.
Do you need to put food on the table to feed your family or gain access to that life saving medicine for your wife or child? Then you and your family had better have the chip, otherwise there will be no help coming to you.
It’s that simple, really.
With more Americans than ever before dependent on government redistribution of wealth and services to get by, acceptance by most people of this technology is not such a far off proposition, especially with the threat of cutting off access to those services which people have come to depend for survival.
Those who refuse the chip, of course, would soon be labeled unpatriotic domestic terrorists, added to no fly lists (because if you’re not chipped, you’re probably hiding something and are obviously dangerous), and we’d soon see FBI/DHS bulletins distributed to doctors, retailers and government bureaucrats about how to identify potentially threatening activities of non-chippers.
If you see an unchipped, say something. It’s your duty.
Regards,
Mac Slavo
-Verichip
It’s been hailed as the ultimate in personal identification and human tracking technology, and now it’s going mainstream. The VeriMed system, formerly known as the Verichip, is a passive RFID microchip measuring about the size of a grain of rice and is implantable under your skin, making it possible for health care providers and other parties to instantly access your medical history and other personally identifying information.
The chip itself doesn’t store a whole lot of information other than a personal identification number, much like a social security number. When scanned it connects directly to the Healthlink global network via the internet allowing doctors immediate retrieval of everything they need to know about you.
The systems are not only limited to human medical data storage, however, and have been used for years as location tracking for cattle and pets by Verichip’s former parent company Applied Digital Solutions.
Recently the UK prison system proposed that these machine-readable chips be implanted into prisoners to keep tabs on their whereabouts and help prevent escape:
Because of concerns about the security of existing tagging systems and prison overcrowding, the British Ministry of Justice is investigating the use of satellite and radio-wave technology to monitor criminals.
But, instead of being contained in bracelets worn around the ankle, the tiny chips would be surgically inserted under the skin of offenders in the community, to help enforce home curfews.
…
“All options are on the table, and this is one we would like to pursue.”
Source: NZ Herald
While reportedly plagued with security problems and health concerns, RFID chips are being rapidly implemented into society, often with the argument that that they will protect the safety of our loved ones, namely our children:
While interviewing Scott Silverman (Applied Digital CEO), Sean Hannity said on October 24, 2008: “[Parents are saying:] we can’t even allow our kids to play in the front yard. Is there anything – technologically speaking – that [parents] can do that can help the situation, like a kidnapping. Is there, for example, a microchip…we can use for our kids?” In the interview, Silverman describes a PLD, which is an acronym for “Personal Locating Device,” which is an RFID chip. This PLD is to be implanted into the body of the “child or someone you are interested in tracking.”
While Hannity initially presents the RFID’s use into the context of “protecting children from being kidnapped,” Silverman quickly admits the multi-function purpose of the RFID: “It is the first implantable microchip for humans that has multiple security, financial and healthcare applications.” Sean Hannity’s response: “I love this idea, Scott.” Security, financial, and healthcare: These are the vast categories of use which would encompass all of human life and activity in America.
Source: Right Side News
While VeriMed and its precursor the Verichip are reportedly designed for medical application, the system itself is already capable of wide ranging tracking implementation that includes personal location services. Coupled with the recent advances in federal surveillance technologies that include a massive newly built National Security Agency data center and tens of thousands of drones patrolling the skies of America, an implantable tracking chip would give the government unfettered access into the personal lives and daily goings on of every man, woman and child in the country.
As Mark Dice points out in the Resistance Manifesto, the ultimate goal of the chips is to replace “drivers licenses and cash by using these devices so that every person on the planet will not be able to buy or sell anything without one.”
I’ll Never Stick One of Those In My Body!
Revelations refers to it as the mark of the beast.
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the MARK, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Revelation 13:16-18
To suggest that Americans would willingly accept such a “mark” under their skins for the purposes of health care or financial security may sound ridiculous, but it is not out of the realm of possibility.
Consider the current state of affairs in America and the world and we can see how easily global governing entities may move to force such a technology on the vast majority of the population.
There are hundreds of millions of people worldwide, including half of all American households, on some form of government assistance, be it medical insurance, welfare, food stamps, disability or retirement stipend. With all of the fraud rampant in the system as it exists today and the lack of funds to maintain it, it would only take one major crisis for the government to step in and pass a law that forces anyone receiving government benefits of any kind to be implanted with an RFID chip in order to continue receiving those services they can no longer live without.
Can’t happen? Heck, these days the government doesn’t even need to pass a law. The President can either mandate such an action through Executive Order (as he and his predecessors have done so many times before), or a government alphabet agency can simply instigate a new rule requiring it, such as the USDA’s recent call for exactly what is mentioned above – RFID tracking for those receiving food stamps.
Some would bow out of the system on personal moral or religious grounds, but millions would be left with no other choice but to concede their liberty.
Do you need to put food on the table to feed your family or gain access to that life saving medicine for your wife or child? Then you and your family had better have the chip, otherwise there will be no help coming to you.
It’s that simple, really.
With more Americans than ever before dependent on government redistribution of wealth and services to get by, acceptance by most people of this technology is not such a far off proposition, especially with the threat of cutting off access to those services which people have come to depend for survival.
Those who refuse the chip, of course, would soon be labeled unpatriotic domestic terrorists, added to no fly lists (because if you’re not chipped, you’re probably hiding something and are obviously dangerous), and we’d soon see FBI/DHS bulletins distributed to doctors, retailers and government bureaucrats about how to identify potentially threatening activities of non-chippers.
If you see an unchipped, say something. It’s your duty.
Regards,
Mac Slavo
Your Privacy is Yours
“I Lived. I Died. Now Mind Your Own Business.” That’s how I want my tombstone to read.
What do I have to hide? Everything! Which is to say, every piece of personal information someone or something demands to know is something I don’t want to tell because no one has the right to demand access to my life.
The right to privacy rests largely on a presumption of innocence. It assumes that — in the absence of evidence of wrongdoing — an individual has a right to shut his front door and tell other people (including government) to mind their own business.
Today, this assumption has been twisted inside out so that a desire for privacy means you have something to hide. You are expected to prove your innocence by revealing every financial transaction, by filling in pages of government paperwork, by allowing state agents to frisk your person and property when you board a plane or enter a public building. These invasions rest upon the presumption of guilt.
Privacy is also is the single most effective means of preserving freedom against an encroaching state. The act of closing your front door expresses the key distinction between the private and public spheres.
The private sphere consists of the areas of life over which you, as a peaceful human being, exert absolute authority and into which the government or any other uninvited party cannot properly intrude. Traditionally, the home or family is viewed as the private sphere. But it also includes the food you eat, your sex life, the books you read, your opinions of life.
The public sphere consists of the civic duties you owe to others. In a free society, these duties include paying your bills, respecting the equal rights of all and living up to contracts. In the current society, a set of designed duties require you to pay ruinous taxes, to restrain your own rights and to abide by a mushrooming mass of laws.
The Austrian school economist Murray N. Rothbard expressed what he considered to be the central political issue confronting mankind when he wrote, “My own basic perspective on the history of man… is to place central importance on the great conflict that is eternally waged between liberty and power.”
Historically, privacy has stood on the side of liberty as a bulwark between the individual and government, between freedom and social control.
Imagine a world in which you do not report your income; there are no government forms or census data; registration of everything from birth to marriage is optional; no permission is needed to open a business or travel abroad. Imagine a world in which personal data are private.
How could the tax man collect money without knowing your income or address? How could the military draft your children into war without knowing where to find them at home or at school? How could the censor punish your reading habits when no record exists of which books you buy? The machinery of the state is paralyzed without information about who you are.
Information has always empowered the state. On his infamous 1864 march through Georgia, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman used county maps with information about livestock and crops in order to loot and pillage more efficiently.
After the 1942 bombing of Pearl Harbor, the American military used census data to locate Japanese-Americans and herd them into detention camps. The IRS has routinely compared the names on foreign government lists with those on its own in order to locate “hidden” assets.
The difference today is the higher efficiency of data collection, due to technology. Most people’s employment, financial, medical, military, educational, housing, marital, telephone, travel, Internet, automobile and family records are now stored or easily accessed by government.
It is no coincidence that statist governments are renowned for wiretapping, surveillance, identification papers, informants, secret police and censorship. The control of information throughout society is akin to the control of blood flow through a body; it is vital to functioning.
Today’s governments are intent on completely identifying everyone, as a miser takes inventory of his possessions. This has always been the case. In 1889, in a speech before the International Penitentiary Congress, France’s prison director, Louis Herbette, advocated fingerprinting in order “to fix the human personality, to give to each human being an identity, an individuality that can be depended upon with certainty, lasting, unchangeable, always recognizable and easily adduced…”
The difference today is technology… and the active cooperation of businesses like Facebook and Google, who curry government favor by catering to all requests for information. Technology converts the collection of data into an art form.
At this point, it is useful to take a “time out” to assert that the collection of data and issuance of documents can be a valid function of a free society. Quite apart from facilitating social control, identifying (ID-ing) people can function as a free-market mechanism of authentication. It authenticates those who should have access to bank accounts, property titles or inheritance; it certifies people as being skilled — for example, as a thoracic surgeon. But this authentication does not involve exploring their bank accounts, sexual preferences, reading habits, travel plans and political beliefs.
In asserting its superior claim over any free-market function of identifying people, the state does not outlaw competition; the state merely renders the free-market function irrelevant. The state makes its ID a de facto condition for functioning well in daily life.
The state and its documentation have become the only way for a person to “prove” his or her identity and, thus, to access the basic rights and “niceties” of life. The “unidentified” human being cannot board a plane or train, nor drive a car. He cannot open a bank account, cash a check, take a job, attend school, get married, rent a video (let alone an apartment) or buy a house. The unidentified person is a second-class citizen to whom the government closes off much of life and almost all opportunity to advance through labor, education or entrepreneurship.
Meanwhile, those who are “identified” by the state are vulnerable to having their bank accounts frozen, their access to health care denied, credit cards canceled, wages garnished, records subpoenaed. To become known to the state is to become vulnerable to a myriad of invasions that come from the government knowing exactly where and how to find you.
Those who resist being inventoried present a problem for the state. The first line of statist attack is to accuse them of being “suspicious” — that is, of having criminal or shameful reasons for refusing to answer questions.
“If you have nothing to hide…” the remark begins; it always ends with a demand for compliance. Invoking privacy has gone from being the exercise of a right to an indication of guilt.
This is a sleight of hand by which privacy is redefined as “concealment” or “secrecy”; of course, it is neither. It is merely a request for the personal to remain personal. As well as enabling freedom, privacy is part of a healthy, self-reflecting life.
Consider one example: Since childhood, I’ve kept a diary into which I pour my hopes, my doubts, my disappointments and desires. When I read them, I can still viscerally feel who I was at 10 years old, and this makes me understand who I am today. I don’t share these diaries, not because I am ashamed of them, but because they are personal. They are for me alone, for my eyes, my reflection — and not for anyone else.
Everyone has areas of utter privacy to protect. Some people wear lockets containing photos of deceased relatives; others daydream about a forbidden love; still other people lock the door while luxuriating in a hot bubble bath; or perhaps, they write a love letter that is meant for one other set of eyes only. These acts are a line drawn between the private and public sphere; they constitute a boundary over which no other human being can rightfully cross without invitation.
If a neighbor took it upon himself to read letters in your mailbox or copy down the details of deposits in a bankbook he “encountered” in your desk drawer, you would feel violated and enraged by the invasion. What is wrong for your neighbor to do is also wrong for a government agent to do, because there is only one standard of morality. Theft is theft; invasion is invasion. You have the right to slam the door on the face of anyone who says differently. A peaceful human being owes no debt to any other person.
Hold the state up to the same standard as your neighbors… because there are no double standards of right and wrong. Privacy is a right, not an admission of guilt. Your identity properly belongs to you… not to the state.
Regards,
Wendy McElroy
What do I have to hide? Everything! Which is to say, every piece of personal information someone or something demands to know is something I don’t want to tell because no one has the right to demand access to my life.
The right to privacy rests largely on a presumption of innocence. It assumes that — in the absence of evidence of wrongdoing — an individual has a right to shut his front door and tell other people (including government) to mind their own business.
Today, this assumption has been twisted inside out so that a desire for privacy means you have something to hide. You are expected to prove your innocence by revealing every financial transaction, by filling in pages of government paperwork, by allowing state agents to frisk your person and property when you board a plane or enter a public building. These invasions rest upon the presumption of guilt.
Privacy is also is the single most effective means of preserving freedom against an encroaching state. The act of closing your front door expresses the key distinction between the private and public spheres.
The private sphere consists of the areas of life over which you, as a peaceful human being, exert absolute authority and into which the government or any other uninvited party cannot properly intrude. Traditionally, the home or family is viewed as the private sphere. But it also includes the food you eat, your sex life, the books you read, your opinions of life.
The public sphere consists of the civic duties you owe to others. In a free society, these duties include paying your bills, respecting the equal rights of all and living up to contracts. In the current society, a set of designed duties require you to pay ruinous taxes, to restrain your own rights and to abide by a mushrooming mass of laws.
The Austrian school economist Murray N. Rothbard expressed what he considered to be the central political issue confronting mankind when he wrote, “My own basic perspective on the history of man… is to place central importance on the great conflict that is eternally waged between liberty and power.”
Historically, privacy has stood on the side of liberty as a bulwark between the individual and government, between freedom and social control.
Imagine a world in which you do not report your income; there are no government forms or census data; registration of everything from birth to marriage is optional; no permission is needed to open a business or travel abroad. Imagine a world in which personal data are private.
How could the tax man collect money without knowing your income or address? How could the military draft your children into war without knowing where to find them at home or at school? How could the censor punish your reading habits when no record exists of which books you buy? The machinery of the state is paralyzed without information about who you are.
Information has always empowered the state. On his infamous 1864 march through Georgia, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman used county maps with information about livestock and crops in order to loot and pillage more efficiently.
After the 1942 bombing of Pearl Harbor, the American military used census data to locate Japanese-Americans and herd them into detention camps. The IRS has routinely compared the names on foreign government lists with those on its own in order to locate “hidden” assets.
The difference today is the higher efficiency of data collection, due to technology. Most people’s employment, financial, medical, military, educational, housing, marital, telephone, travel, Internet, automobile and family records are now stored or easily accessed by government.
It is no coincidence that statist governments are renowned for wiretapping, surveillance, identification papers, informants, secret police and censorship. The control of information throughout society is akin to the control of blood flow through a body; it is vital to functioning.
Today’s governments are intent on completely identifying everyone, as a miser takes inventory of his possessions. This has always been the case. In 1889, in a speech before the International Penitentiary Congress, France’s prison director, Louis Herbette, advocated fingerprinting in order “to fix the human personality, to give to each human being an identity, an individuality that can be depended upon with certainty, lasting, unchangeable, always recognizable and easily adduced…”
The difference today is technology… and the active cooperation of businesses like Facebook and Google, who curry government favor by catering to all requests for information. Technology converts the collection of data into an art form.
At this point, it is useful to take a “time out” to assert that the collection of data and issuance of documents can be a valid function of a free society. Quite apart from facilitating social control, identifying (ID-ing) people can function as a free-market mechanism of authentication. It authenticates those who should have access to bank accounts, property titles or inheritance; it certifies people as being skilled — for example, as a thoracic surgeon. But this authentication does not involve exploring their bank accounts, sexual preferences, reading habits, travel plans and political beliefs.
In asserting its superior claim over any free-market function of identifying people, the state does not outlaw competition; the state merely renders the free-market function irrelevant. The state makes its ID a de facto condition for functioning well in daily life.
The state and its documentation have become the only way for a person to “prove” his or her identity and, thus, to access the basic rights and “niceties” of life. The “unidentified” human being cannot board a plane or train, nor drive a car. He cannot open a bank account, cash a check, take a job, attend school, get married, rent a video (let alone an apartment) or buy a house. The unidentified person is a second-class citizen to whom the government closes off much of life and almost all opportunity to advance through labor, education or entrepreneurship.
Meanwhile, those who are “identified” by the state are vulnerable to having their bank accounts frozen, their access to health care denied, credit cards canceled, wages garnished, records subpoenaed. To become known to the state is to become vulnerable to a myriad of invasions that come from the government knowing exactly where and how to find you.
Those who resist being inventoried present a problem for the state. The first line of statist attack is to accuse them of being “suspicious” — that is, of having criminal or shameful reasons for refusing to answer questions.
“If you have nothing to hide…” the remark begins; it always ends with a demand for compliance. Invoking privacy has gone from being the exercise of a right to an indication of guilt.
This is a sleight of hand by which privacy is redefined as “concealment” or “secrecy”; of course, it is neither. It is merely a request for the personal to remain personal. As well as enabling freedom, privacy is part of a healthy, self-reflecting life.
Consider one example: Since childhood, I’ve kept a diary into which I pour my hopes, my doubts, my disappointments and desires. When I read them, I can still viscerally feel who I was at 10 years old, and this makes me understand who I am today. I don’t share these diaries, not because I am ashamed of them, but because they are personal. They are for me alone, for my eyes, my reflection — and not for anyone else.
Everyone has areas of utter privacy to protect. Some people wear lockets containing photos of deceased relatives; others daydream about a forbidden love; still other people lock the door while luxuriating in a hot bubble bath; or perhaps, they write a love letter that is meant for one other set of eyes only. These acts are a line drawn between the private and public sphere; they constitute a boundary over which no other human being can rightfully cross without invitation.
If a neighbor took it upon himself to read letters in your mailbox or copy down the details of deposits in a bankbook he “encountered” in your desk drawer, you would feel violated and enraged by the invasion. What is wrong for your neighbor to do is also wrong for a government agent to do, because there is only one standard of morality. Theft is theft; invasion is invasion. You have the right to slam the door on the face of anyone who says differently. A peaceful human being owes no debt to any other person.
Hold the state up to the same standard as your neighbors… because there are no double standards of right and wrong. Privacy is a right, not an admission of guilt. Your identity properly belongs to you… not to the state.
Regards,
Wendy McElroy
The State at Human Scale
Aristotle taught that “To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements, for none of these things retain their natural power when they are too large or too small.”1 In this paper I want to explore Hume’s views on the proper size and scale of political order. Size and scale are not the same. The scale of a thing is the size appropriate to its function. Scale for human things is the human body and its capacities. Classical architects have long explored the relation between the human frame, its sensory capacities, and the proper size of doors, windows, courtyards, gardens, the width of streets, plazas, and so forth. What is the proper size and scale of political order?
The answer depends on what we think the function of political order is. Plato and Aristotle thought the function of political association is to achieve human excellence. Since virtue is acquired through emulation of character, face to face knowledge is required of political participants, and this places a limit on the size of the polity. Aristotle said it should contain “the largest number which suffices for the conduct of life, and can be taken in at a single view.”
Ancient Greek civilization was the work of some one thousand five hundred small, independent republics of which Athens, one of the largest, had a population of around one hundred sixty thousand. Notwithstanding their small size these Greek polities created a brilliant civilization from which we still draw inspiration. The republic of Rousseau’s Social Contract was modeled on Geneva, which contained around twenty-five thousand people. A wide range of scholars from different disciplines who have studied the matter have concluded that every need of high culture, along with a high standard of living, can be achieved in a modern city state of between fifty and two hundred thousand.
Hume inherited both the Aristotelean insistence on human scale, virtue, balance, and propriety in political things and an anti-Aristotelean Europe of Hobbesian individuals (and states), each disposed to pursue its power and glory with as few limits as possible. His political philosophy may be viewed as an effort to think through and make the best of this tension. Let us begin with the Aristotelean side of Hume’s thought. Throughout his career Hume gives primacy to the republican tradition. Civilization, he says, began in small barbarous republics which first cultivated the rule of law. This in turn created a measure of stability which encouraged curiosity and the development of the arts and sciences. Monarchies can also become civilized, but they owe their progress to what was first learned from human scale republics. So it becomes a contingent matter as to whether a particular republic or a monarchy is superior. Nevertheless, Hume remained committed to the republican form as, on balance, the most desirable for human beings.
And size alone tends to foster a sense of equality: “All small states naturally produce equality of fortune, because they afford no opportunities of great encrease; but small commonwealths much more, by that division of power and authority which is essential to them” (E, 401). All things being equal, then, the ideal polity for Hume would be a polity of human scale: “Where each man had his little house and field to himself, and each county had its capital, free and independent; what a happy situation of mankind!” (ibid.). Human scale polities also provide the material conditions for moral virtue. “A man,” Hume says, “who loves only himself, without regard to friendship and desert, merits the severest blame; and a man, who is only susceptible of friendship, without public spirit, or a regard to the community, is deficient in the most material part of virtue” (E, 26-27). Virtue is known and practiced through emulation: “A noble emulation is the source of every excellence” (E, 135). And emulation requires a polity of human scale. Again Hume writes: “A small commonwealth is the happiest government in the world within itself, because every thing lies under the eye of the rulers,” and the actions of the rulers lie under the eye of the citizens (E, 525). Human scale polities are essential to Hume’s conception of the material conditions for the virtues of rational inquiry. The ideal condition for learning, he says, is “division into small states” connected by trade and common interests (E, 120). Competition sharpens the wits of men, while national loyalty and jealousy hinder the spread of popular error from one state to another. Hume presents, as the best exemplification of this principle, the civilization of ancient Greece, which was composed of over a thousand human scale polities in competition with each other, while sharing a common language and broad cultural interests. Hume contrasts this civilization with medieval Europe where the Church, which he describes as “being really one large state within itself”, dominated learning and extinguished all competition (E, 121). By the eighteenth century, this vast centralized regime had been overthrown, and Europe, Hume says, “is at present a copy at large, of what GREECE was formerly a pattern in miniature” (ibid.). As an instance, Hume observes how French national enthusiasm for Cartesian philosophy hid its weaknesses, which were uncovered by jealous foreigners. Likewise, Newton’s philosophy was refined and made perfect by the necessity of responding to foreign critics. Hume’s view of eighteenth century European civilization, as the Greek model writ large, gives rise to two problems. First, the units of European civilization are monarchies, not republics, and, secondly, they are astronomically larger than the human scale republics of the Greeks. In a word, the political units of European civilization appear to be out of scale and of the wrong form. Now on first glance this might not seem a serious difference. For Hume taught that a civilized monarchy could be superior to a republic. He also held that the moderns have cultivated a deeper and more extensive sentiment of humanity and have a better understanding of the rule of law and liberty than did the ancient republics. Consequently, both modern monarchies and republics are generally superior to their ancient counterparts. So a civilization of modern monarchies might not be a bad thing (E, 94-95). Nevertheless, on balance Hume remains a republican, and much of his writing is an effort to theorize a place for the republican values of human scale in a Europe ruled by out of scale centralized monarchies.
The sort of monarchy that must be challenged is what was called “absolute monarchy.” Hume judged in 1752 that this kind of monarchy was only three generations old. What distinguished “absolute” monarchy from mere monarchy was the extraordinary efficiency with which it could centralize power by hollowing out smaller political units. Prior to the advent of absolute monarchy in the seventeenth century, Europe was composed of thousands of independent and quasi-independent political societies. There were small kingdoms, principalities, dukedoms, lesser noble estates, bishoprics, free cities, and leagues of free cities. As late at the seventeenth century the region known as Germany was made up of some 230 states and some 50 free cities. But gradually, over a period of four centuries, hundreds of smaller political societies were crushed into larger and fewer monarchies. By the end of the middle ages, monarchs had defeated the Church, the independent towns, and many small principalities. In Hume’s time monarchs were engaged in a contest to consolidate the nobility which gave rise in Britain to the Court and Country parties. Philosophical theories would be put forth to legitimate this new regime of centralization, notably by Jean Bodin in The Six Books of the Republic (1576) and by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651).The central idea in both Bodin and Hobbes is the concept of “sovereignty,” a notion taken from theological discourse and applied to the centralized states being built by monarchs. According to this theory there must be lodged somewhere an office having legally irresistible, infallible, and indivisible authority. This office, by whatever name it might be called, is what is meant by sovereign power. A polity of this kind is incompatible with the republican tradition, which demands divided and competing social authorities down to the human scale. Just as Plato removed poets from his republic, so Hobbes removed republican literature from the Leviathan.
In the essay “Of Some Remarkable Customs,” Hume went out of his way to refute this modern theory of sovereignty, according to which “imperium in imperio” is impossible. That is, there cannot be in the same political society two legislative bodies, both of which have full authority to make laws and neither of which is ranked above the other. Hume presents as a counter example the comita centuriata and the comita tributa in the Roman republic. Both had authority to make law and to nullify the laws of the other. Not only did this system of divided authority not lead to stalemate and the annihilation of government, it produced one of the most active, energetic, and illustrious republics in history (E, 370-73). Hume flatly rejected the modern theory of sovereignty. Not only can authority be divided, he defined what he called “free government” as one with divided authority: “All free governments must consist of two councils, a lesser and a greater...” (E, 522). And again: “The government, which, in common appellation, receives the appellation of free, is that which admits of a partition of power among several members, whose united authority is no less, or is commonly greater than that of any monarch; but who... must act by general and equal laws, that are previously known to all the members and to all their subjects” (E, 41).
In a monarchy that claims to be a “free government,” power will be divided among different social authorities and shared with the people. Each part of the constitution, Hume says, “must have a right of self-defence, and of maintaining its antient bounds against the encroachment of every other authority.” It follows that, in free governments, cases “wherein resistance is lawful, must occur much oftener, and greater indulgence be given to the subjects to defend themselves by force of arms, than in arbitrary governments.” So what Hobbes considered a disposition to anarchy, Hume considerslawful resistance.7 Hume supported secession of the American colonies as early as 1768, before most Americans did. In October, 1775, he wrote: “I am an American in my Principles, and wish we would let them alone to govern or misgovern themselves as they think proper.”8 “Friends of America” such as Edmund Burke and William Pitt sought reconciliation within the empire. Hume appears to be the only major British thinker at the time to have supported outright secession of the colonies. Indeed, as we will see, Hume was opposed to the very idea of a British empire. I have explored Hume’s reasons for supporting American secession elsewhere.{footnote Donald W. Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998). See especially chapters 9-12. The vast, centralized administration, first created by seventeenth century absolute monarchs to control and exploit the small polities coerced into them, gradually developed an esprit de corps of its own, at the expense of society and eventually of the king himself. One instrument of exploitation that especially worried Hume was the invention of public credit or the policy of mortgaging future revenues. This device had a number of pernicious effects. First, “national debts cause a mighty confluence of people and riches to the capital, by the great sums, levied in the provinces to pay the interest” and “by the advantages in trade ... which they give the merchants in the capital above the rest of the kingdom” (E, 354). Second, a state with mortgaged revenues would have to create new ones; these would fall on consumption leading to “vexation and ruin of the poor” (E, 356). They would next fall on the proprietors of land, making life more difficult for their tenants. Third, with the collapse of the landed gentry and nobility, a traditional order rooted in land and place would collapse in favor of rule by a new rootless class of stockjobbers and paper money men. “These men,” Hume writes, having “no connections with the state...can enjoy their revenue in any part of the globe in which they chuse to reside, who will naturally bury themselves in the capital or great cities, and who will sink into the lethargy of a stupid and pampered luxury, without spirit, ambition, or enjoyment. Adieu to all ideas of nobility, gentry, and family” (E, 353). Hume’s criticism of public credit mirrors exactly Jefferson’s criticism of the public debt system proposed by Alexander Hamilton.9 Since the national stocks are constantly fluctuating and can be traded instantly, they can scarcely hold together “three generations from father to son,” and “even if they remain in one family, they convey no authority” (E, 358). What follows will be the destruction of those independent social authorities which had formed a protective buffer between the individual and centralized power. These constitute, Hume says, “a kind of independent magistracy in a state, instituted by the hand of nature” (E, 358). And elsewhere he describes them as a “middle power between King and people” (E, 358).With their elimination, a pure Hobbesian state would emerge with a centralized authority ruling directly over an aggregate of millions of individuals. In this condition, “every man in authority derives his influence from the commission alone of the sovereign.” And “the whole income of every individual in the state must lie entirely at the mercy of the sovereign” (E, 358-59). Hume thinks this form of despotism intimated in eighteenth century centralized states, if realized, would be “a degree of despotism, which no oriental monarchy has ever yet attained” (E, 359). What Hume considered despotism is viewed as normal today. A European monarch in Hume’s day could not order military conscription nor impose an income tax, which would have been viewed as a form of forced labor.
Hume’s vision of an order of human scale polities was at odds with the practice of political centralization begun by the great monarchs and imitated by smaller principalities. “Europe,” he said, “is shared out mostly into great monarchies,” and the smaller ones ruin their people by emulating the great with taxes, a superb court, and a standing army. He laments that “Swisserland alone and Holland resemble the ancient republics” (E, 403). It would be impossible to break the great monarchies of Europe into a large number of human scale republics in conformity to the model Hume took from the Greeks. But it might be possible gradually to transform a monarchy, especially a limited one, into a great republic which would be divided into human scale republics. And this is just the reform Hume proposes in the essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” (1752). The proposal was a radical one, for the traditional wisdom, from the ancients down to Montesquieu and Rousseau, was that a republic had to be small. Hume agrees that it is “more difficult to form a republican government in an extensive country than in a city.” But once established, its extensive size and division into small republics would make it less likely to fall into faction and disorder which has been the weakness of small republics throughout history (E, 527). Sheer size alone would make it difficult for the parts to combine to form a special interest. I will not take space here to explore the essay in detail; rather, my remarks will be limited to the parts salient to Hume’s view on the size and scale of political order.
The extensive republic, which Hume says is the size of Britain or France, is divided into one hundred small republics; each of which is further divided into one hundred parishes. Those satisfying a property qualification for voting meet annually in the parish church and elect one representative to their small republican government. This body of one hundred representatives elect, among themselves, ten magistrates and one senator. The senators, to the number of one hundred, meet in the national capital and exercise the executive and supreme judicial powers of the commonwealth. However, the ten magistrates and one hundred representatives remain in the capitals of their respective republics. The magistrates exercise the executive and judicial powers of the provincial republic while the representatives exercise the legislative powers. The provincial republics can pass laws within their territory, but these can be vetoed by the national senate or by another republic, in which case the matter must be decided by the legislative power of the whole commonwealth. The vote is by republics. Each republic has one vote, and a majority of republics decides the question. If there is a tie the senate casts the deciding vote. Laws are introduced and debated in the senate. If passed, they are sent to the small republics for ratification. If a vote fails in the senate, any ten of a hundred senators can require that the law be sent to the republics for ratification. Because it would be troublesome to assemble all ten thousand representatives for every trivial law, the senate has the choice of sending the law down to the ten magistrates of each republic. If sent to the magistrates, any five of the one hundred representatives can demand that the whole body of representatives be called for a vote on the proposed law.
Either the provincial magistrates or the representatives may give to their senator a copy of a law to be presented to the senate. Should the senate veto the proposed law, it, nevertheless, must be sent to the republics for a vote if only five of the republics concur. In addition to the checks just mentioned, there is the court of competitors designed to detect and prosecute fraud and corruption in the senate. Its members are constituted as follows. If a candidate for the senate loses an election but gains a third or more votes of the representatives, he automatically enters the court of competitors. This court has only the power of inspecting public accounts of the commonwealth and of bringing a vote of impeachment against members of the senate. If the senate acquits the person, the court of competitors can appeal to the people either in the form of the magistrates or the representatives for a new trial, under prescribed rules, which excludes members of the senate. Hume’s extensive republic is designed to check the centralization of power, which is the death of human scale political order in a large modern state, whether of monarchical or republican form. It would be more difficult in Hume’s republic to institute and abuse the policy of public credit. Everywhere there is a check on majority rule, and Hume’s polity is one in which the people enjoy considerable political participation. Only ten (out of one hundred senators) are needed to nullify the senate’s vote against a proposed law and send it to the people for ratification; only five (out of one hundred representatives) are needed to take a proposed law out of the hands of the magistrates and put it to a vote of the representatives. Only five republics (out of one hundred) are needed to override the senate’s veto of a law proposed by the representatives and to compel a vote by representatives of the whole commonwealth. Only twenty republics (out of one hundred) are needed to throw any official out of office for a year; only thirty, for three years. And there are a number of other minority checks to power which cannot be discussed here, including a militia army modeled on the Swiss militia, along with a law requiring that it be regularly exercised. Finally, to keep the republic fromexpanding beyond its proper size, there is a constitutional prohibition against conquests (E, 529).
Hume presents this extensive republic not as a philosopher’s utopia, but as an ideal identity already intimated in European political practice. Republican intimations are strong in limited monarchies, such as Britain, and are fully exemplified in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Even the absolute monarchy of France contains republican intimations as, in Hume’s view, do all civilized monarchies. But Hume’s extensive republic is not the only form intimated in European political practice. More oppressive forms of absolute monarchy are intimated, as well as a uniquely modern form of tyranny that could be generated, for example, by the repeated abuse of public credit. Hume’s hope, however, was that Europe would evolve into an order of republics (both extensive and small) held together by trade and common cultural interests on the Greek model. And it might appear that vast regimes such as the European Union and the United States conform to Hume’s ideal of a vast territory divided into extensive republics. It is certainly true that the republican ideology is triumphant. Most regimes in the world today describe themselves as republics. There are democratic republics, democratic socialist republics, people’s republics, federative republics such as the United States and the former Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics, and so on. What this ubiquitous republican idiom ignores, and what is essential to republicanism, is the factor of human scale. Rousseau was one of the few westerners to be honored by the People’s Republic of China under Mao Tse Tung. And Rousseau has been invoked by the legacy of the French Revolution. Rousseau’s idea of “the general will” makes some sense in the human scale republic theorized in The Social Contract which he suggests at one point is a polity of around ten thousand people. But it makes no sense at all if mapped onto a country the size of France, not to mention China. So small is Rousseau’s republic that he does not even allow representatives, but requires direct political participation, something impossible if pitched to a scale of millions of political participants.
Even if we reject Rousseau’s demand for direct political participation as extravagant, entertaining a larger sphere for republican life, as Hume did, the ratio of population to representation should still be measured by the human scale if it is to be called republican. To appreciate this, let us compare Hume’s extensive republic with its modern equivalent, Great Britain, in respect to representation. Hume’s national legislature is divided into one hundred small republics, each with one hundred representatives. The total number of representatives in the nation is ten thousand. These sit and debate proposed legislation in their own provincial capitals. The legislators of modern Britain, however, meet and debate in London to the number of only 635 representatives. Britain in Hume’s day had around nine million inhabitants; today it has over sixty-five million. In Hume’s Britain there is one representative for every nine hundred persons; in Britain today there is one for every one hundred four thousand, not a human scale ratio of representation to population. Or consider the United States, which styles itself a republic. There are only 435 representatives in the House of Representatives, ruling over some 309 million people. This yields a ratio of around one representative for every seven hundred ten thousand people. A regime with this ratio cannot be considered a republic, not even a large Humean republic. What is true of the out-of-scale ratio of representatives to people in Britain and the United States is true of most large regimes in the world that style themselves republics. But if they are not in any meaningful sense republics, what are they? An answer was suggested by Tocqueville, who viewed the emerging European “republics” as in reality extensions of absolute monarchy. The French Revolution produced the first modern large scale republic ruling in the name of the people and declaring itself, in Hobbesian fashion, to be “one and indivisible.” The Revolution pretended to effect a total change of French political society, and was thought by many to have done so. Tocqueville, however, argued that the Revolution had fundamentally changed nothing.10 What he meant by this counter-intuitive claim was this. What was wrong with monarchy was not a hereditary executive, but the creation of a centralized bureaucratic administration with a would-be monopoly on coercion over individuals in a territory. The Revolution did not devolve power back to smaller, human scale units in France, but greatly expanded central power beyond anything eighteenth century monarchs could have imagined. No eighteenth century monarch could have ordered universal conscription, a barrier which limited the size of armies and the scale of war. The French “republic” was the first to order universal conscription. The result opened the era of total war. Whereas Louis XVI could raise an army of little more than one hundred eighty thousand troops, the French Republic at the demise of Napoleon had run through some three million troops, the largest military force ever assembled in history. One way to understand Tocqueville’s point is through the doctrine of the two bodies of the king. The first body was the flesh and blood king; the second body was the artificial corporation, the crown, seeking a monopoly on coercion over individuals in a territory. In the expression given upon the death of a monarch, “The king is dead, long live the king,” it was the second body that was affirmed to be immortal. What happened in the French Revolution was that the flesh and blood king was thrown out as the chief executive officer of the corporation, but the second body of the king remained, namely, the centralized system of coercion. The Revolution merely replaced the person of the king with the fiction of the nation-person. The people of France were now said to be sovereign, and what had been the second body of the king was now said to be their representative.
But this was little more than a pious fiction, for the “sovereign people” had little participation in the exercise of sovereignty. The Queen of Great Britain is said to be sovereign; and the government, her majesty’s government. But the British sovereign participates in political conduct only in a ceremonial capacity. Likewise, in large modern republics, the people are said to be sovereign, but their participation too is largely ceremonial and consists typically of choosing periodically between two candidates selected by national political parties of vast scale over which there is little popular control. Hobbes was the first to clearly understand the character of a modern European state. He theorized it as an artificial corporation, what he called an “artificial man.” Government as a public corporation differs from a business corporation in that it possesses a monopoly on coercion in a territory. Its subjects are compelled to buy shares in the corporation through taxes, but cannot trade them, i.e., they cannot secede from the corporation. Hobbes saw clearly that the modern state is owned by no one, neither an individual (the king), nor a collective (the people); nor does it represent anyone in the republican sense. It consequently is neither a monarchy nor a republic, though it may be called either. In its pure form, it cannot tolerate those independent social authorities that Hume called “a kind of independent magistracy in a state, instituted by the hand of nature,” capable of resisting centralization—and which Hobbes called “Wormes” in the commonwealth (E, 358). The Hobbesian modern state is only an ideal identity, but modern states, whether called republics or monarchies, have sought approximation to it. In Hume’s time the closest approximation was absolute monarchy. In our time it is mass democracy.
With these reflections of Hobbes and Tocqueville in mind, we might say that a modern state of vast size, such as the United States or France, is an eighteenth century absolute monarchy without the monarch, but falsely calling itself a republic to gain the legitimacy afforded by the human scale connotations of the term. A modern state cannot bear to describe itself in the stark terms theorized by Hobbes, namely, as an artificial corporation with a monopoly on coercion over individuals in a territory. But Hume provides us with another way of thinking about the matter. He taught that modern absolute monarchies contain “a source of improvement” and republican governments “a source of degeneracy, which in time will bring these species of civil polity still nearer an equality” (E, 95). The source of degeneracy in republics is the inevitable tendency to abuse public credit. Monarchs also borrow, but, if need be, they can declare a bankruptcy without destroying the people. This is not likely in a republic where the creditors either are the chief office holders themselves or financially support the chief office holders. It is through degenerate republics, therefore, that the most despotic form of modern centralized government is likely to occur—one, Hume says, that would be worse than an Oriental despotism and, consequently, worse than an eighteenth century absolute monarchy. A regime of this kind would be able to centralize power beyond anything previously known in history. Hans Herman Hoppe has explored the political economy of European monarchies where government was viewed as private property, in comparison with modern Hobbesian states styling themselves republics or democracies. He judges the monarchical age to run from the eleventh century to the mid-nineteenth century. During this period monarchs were never able to exploit more than five to eight percent of gross national product; whereas mass “republics” and “democracies” have been able to exploit some fifty percent.11 This would be a level of centralization and control quite beyond anything in Hume’s experience. However, he saw it intimated in the state’s exploitation of public credit, hollowing out the economy of the provinces and, consequently, driving people as well as financial and political power to the center, where a few hundred people—through finance capitalism structured on public debt—would determine the economic prospects of millions. Even worse, public credit enabled Britain to pursue needless wars of national glory and a policy of uniting trade with war, which necessarily issued in colonial empire and competition with other states for empire. We have seen that Hume supported secession of the American colonies, but this was merely part of his opposition to the emerging British empire itself, the symbol of which was “the great commoner” William Pitt. That “wicked madman Pitt,” as Hume called him, had come to power on a mercantilist platform of uniting commerce with war, funded by public credit, and legitimated by a republican ideology. Shortly after repeal of the Stamp Act, Hume wrote Gilbert Eliot 22 July, 1768 supporting American secession from the empire: “These are fine doings in America. O! How I long to see America and the East Indies revolted totally & finally, the Revenue reduc’d to half, public Credit fully discredited by Bankruptcy, [and] the third of London in Ruins....”12
A year later in a letter to William Strahan Hume indulged the same fantasy: “Notwithstanding my Age, I hope to see a public Bankruptcy, the total Revolt of America, the Expulsion of the English from the East Indies, the Diminution of London to less than a half, and the Restoration of the Government to the King, Nobility, and Gentry of this Realm.”13 In both of these outbursts there is a rejection not only of empire, but of the bloated size of London. But this sort of republicanized Hobbesian regime that Hume feared Britain was becoming could not really show what it could do, in terms of destroying independent social authorities and concentrating great masses of people under state control, until the industrial revolution. Hume’s philosophy was framed prior to that revolution, and he simply could not anticipate the changes a modern Hobbesian state could bring about. For example, Hume thought there was a natural limit to the growth of cities, and that no city could grow much beyond seven hundred thousand. That was about the size of London in Hume’s time when he judged that, in relation to the country, the “head is undoubtedly too large for the body” (E, 447-48, 354). He could not have imagined cities of over ten million, such as we have today. There are ten cities in the world today of nearly 20 million, and these are estimated by mid-century to expand to some 30 to 40 million, at which time a new crop of cities in the 20 million range is expected to emerge. Most of this growth is, and will continue to be, in the third world where functioning government services are scarce if existent at all. Such concentrations of rootless masses are not a city at all in the traditional sense, and new names had to be created. It is said to be a "conurbation," a "megalopolis," or an "agglomeration." Monster "cities" of this kind are artifacts of the twentieth century. Mexico City, for instance, had around five hundred thousand in 1900. Today it has over twenty million.14
The industrial revolution certainly facilitated the emergence of such agglomerations, but they were not the “natural” result of it. Such concentrations of population could not have occurred without the global triumph of centralized Hobbesian states that hollow out independent social authorities within a territory, leaving a mass of deracinated individuals controlled by the center. Three contemporary cities of twenty million each would equal the entire population of the Roman empire at the height of its power. There are, of course, more people in the world today than in ancient times. But that is not why monster cities exist. Nor do such cities exist because “the jobs are there.” The jobs are there because, as Hume saw, the rules are rigged by a union of public credit, business and finance corporations, and the centralized state (“one and indivisible”) to concentrate them there. Consider Mexico, which has a population of around a hundred million, over twenty million of which live in Mexico City. Mexico has an abundance of arable land, is rich in oil, and opens out to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Its land mass and resources are enough to accommodate a number of countries the size of Switzerland. Though land locked, and in a mountainous region, Switzerland is frequently ranked among the top ten richest countries in the world in terms of per capita income. If the territory of Mexico were composed of, say, fourteen small Swiss sized states, each would have a population of around seven million. In that case there could be no monster city of twenty million people, and growing, in the territory known as Mexico. But this cannot happen today without secession. And as long as Mexico imagines itself to be a Hobbesian state “one and indivisible,” secession is ruled out a priori, as it is in every Hobbesian state.
The Hobbesian centralized state is not the natural or only form of political association, as many have come to think. It is an artifact little more than three centuries old. It was first constructed by European absolute monarchs, and perfected by mass democracies. After World War II, signs of its decline began to appear. Martin Van Creveld and others have argued that cultural and political elites are shifting their allegiances away from the post-French Revolutionary nation state to supra-national and to sub-national entities.15 The Hobbesian state was said to be one and indivisible, so downsizing it through secession was, as noted above, ruled out a priori. But that is no longer believable, given the relatively peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union and other modern states thought to be “indivisible.” When the League of Nations was formed, it was limited to large states, but that is not the case with the United Nations. The current disposition to devolve power to smaller political units has led to a dramatic increase in the number of small states. Today, over two thirds of the states in the world are ten million or less. Over half have populations of five million or less. And more than a third have populations of one million or less. Seventy states have populations of five hundred thousand or less. Fifty states are in the Aristotelean range of one hundred thousand or less. Thirty-five states occupy no more than twice the land area of Washington, D.C. And one state is smaller than the Washington Mall: the Vatican.16 Theoretically and practically, there is no reason why more small states, even on the scale of the Aristotelean polis, cannot exist today. Indeed, technological innovations and global trade make small states more feasible than in the past. And even large states such as Britain, France, and the United States could be reformed, with an eye to a human scale ratio of representation to population, by reconstituting a “national” legislature into the joint voice of several regional or provincial legislatures in accord with Hume’s model of an extensive republic.
Modern political philosophy, from Hobbes to Habermas, has largely ignored the topic of size and human scale that was central to the republican tradition for some two thousand years. Hume, Montesquieu, and Rousseau are latter day exceptions, and have been largely ignored. But, as the Hobbesian state is in visible decline and is losing its moral authority, perhaps it is time to make the human scale of political order once again a central topic of political discourse—and especially of republican discourse.
This article is a further revised and amended version of Donald Livingston's essay, 'David Hume, Republicanism, and the Human Scale of Political Order,' which was first published in Arator: A Journal of Southern History, Thought, and Culture, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2010).
David Hume and the Republican Tradition of Human Scale
Written by Donald W. Livingston 5 Republicanism is inclined to the self government of human scale communities, and, in Hobbes’ view, encourages permanent resistance to sovereign authority and, hence, anarchy. Hobbes calls these surviving republican dispositions “Wormes” in the commonwealth that must be purged.64 What does Hume have to say about the relationship of size to political order? There is, first of all, a deep presumption against large monarchies and large cities. “Enormous monarchies,” he says “are, probably, destructive to human nature; in their progress, in their continuance, and even in their downfall, which never can be very distant from their establishment” (E, 340-341). And “Enormous cities are ... destructive to society, beget vice and disorder of all kinds, starve the remoter provinces, and even starve themselves, by the prices to which they raise all provisions” (E, 401). In the essay “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” he argues that size alone, independent of other factors, is a material condition for moral and political virtue. “Extended governments,” he says, “soon become absolute,” whereas “small ones change naturally into commonwealths” (E, 119). Ancient Greek civilization, which began as a “cluster of little principalities,” gradually and naturally evolved into an order of small republics. Government over a vast territory is able to maintain control, even if a majority are discontented, because each part, being ignorant of the resolutions of the other parts, is afraid to resist. Great distance also enables the regime to magnify the virtues of rulers, whatever the form of government might be; whereas, in a small government, familiarity with the rulers subverts myths of greatness. In a small government, an act of oppression is immediately known to the whole, and it arouses more intense indignation because of the familiarity of ruler and ruled which human scale makes possible (E, 119-120).3 Throughout history republics have fallen within or even below this range. The Italian republics that created the Renaissance: Florence, Padua, Venice, Bologna, and others were in this range. Venice had a population of around one hundred ninety thousand. Florence and Bologna had around sixty thousand each. I turn now to a quite different notion of the function of political order, that put forth by Thomas Hobbes in his masterpiece Leviathan (1651), and one which, consequently, entails a quite different notion of size and scale. For Hobbes, the function of political order is to allow an aggregate of individuals to pursue their power and glory limited only by the constraints of civil association. Since, in Hobbes’ view, virtue vanishes as a condition of political association, the requirement of human scale also vanishes. All that is needed is a sovereign office capable of enforcing the rules of civil association. The limit of the state, in respect to territory and population, ends with the sovereign’s ability to enforce the rules. So there is no internal limit as to how large a Hobbesian state can be. Indeed its logic is to expand, if possible, to global scale, for the entire human race can be viewed as an aggregate of individuals in pursuit of their power and glory. Hobbes rightly named it Leviathan.2 Another classical measure was that one should be able to walk across the polity in a single day. The ancient Greek republics were of this human size and scale.
The answer depends on what we think the function of political order is. Plato and Aristotle thought the function of political association is to achieve human excellence. Since virtue is acquired through emulation of character, face to face knowledge is required of political participants, and this places a limit on the size of the polity. Aristotle said it should contain “the largest number which suffices for the conduct of life, and can be taken in at a single view.”
Ancient Greek civilization was the work of some one thousand five hundred small, independent republics of which Athens, one of the largest, had a population of around one hundred sixty thousand. Notwithstanding their small size these Greek polities created a brilliant civilization from which we still draw inspiration. The republic of Rousseau’s Social Contract was modeled on Geneva, which contained around twenty-five thousand people. A wide range of scholars from different disciplines who have studied the matter have concluded that every need of high culture, along with a high standard of living, can be achieved in a modern city state of between fifty and two hundred thousand.
Hume inherited both the Aristotelean insistence on human scale, virtue, balance, and propriety in political things and an anti-Aristotelean Europe of Hobbesian individuals (and states), each disposed to pursue its power and glory with as few limits as possible. His political philosophy may be viewed as an effort to think through and make the best of this tension. Let us begin with the Aristotelean side of Hume’s thought. Throughout his career Hume gives primacy to the republican tradition. Civilization, he says, began in small barbarous republics which first cultivated the rule of law. This in turn created a measure of stability which encouraged curiosity and the development of the arts and sciences. Monarchies can also become civilized, but they owe their progress to what was first learned from human scale republics. So it becomes a contingent matter as to whether a particular republic or a monarchy is superior. Nevertheless, Hume remained committed to the republican form as, on balance, the most desirable for human beings.
And size alone tends to foster a sense of equality: “All small states naturally produce equality of fortune, because they afford no opportunities of great encrease; but small commonwealths much more, by that division of power and authority which is essential to them” (E, 401). All things being equal, then, the ideal polity for Hume would be a polity of human scale: “Where each man had his little house and field to himself, and each county had its capital, free and independent; what a happy situation of mankind!” (ibid.). Human scale polities also provide the material conditions for moral virtue. “A man,” Hume says, “who loves only himself, without regard to friendship and desert, merits the severest blame; and a man, who is only susceptible of friendship, without public spirit, or a regard to the community, is deficient in the most material part of virtue” (E, 26-27). Virtue is known and practiced through emulation: “A noble emulation is the source of every excellence” (E, 135). And emulation requires a polity of human scale. Again Hume writes: “A small commonwealth is the happiest government in the world within itself, because every thing lies under the eye of the rulers,” and the actions of the rulers lie under the eye of the citizens (E, 525). Human scale polities are essential to Hume’s conception of the material conditions for the virtues of rational inquiry. The ideal condition for learning, he says, is “division into small states” connected by trade and common interests (E, 120). Competition sharpens the wits of men, while national loyalty and jealousy hinder the spread of popular error from one state to another. Hume presents, as the best exemplification of this principle, the civilization of ancient Greece, which was composed of over a thousand human scale polities in competition with each other, while sharing a common language and broad cultural interests. Hume contrasts this civilization with medieval Europe where the Church, which he describes as “being really one large state within itself”, dominated learning and extinguished all competition (E, 121). By the eighteenth century, this vast centralized regime had been overthrown, and Europe, Hume says, “is at present a copy at large, of what GREECE was formerly a pattern in miniature” (ibid.). As an instance, Hume observes how French national enthusiasm for Cartesian philosophy hid its weaknesses, which were uncovered by jealous foreigners. Likewise, Newton’s philosophy was refined and made perfect by the necessity of responding to foreign critics. Hume’s view of eighteenth century European civilization, as the Greek model writ large, gives rise to two problems. First, the units of European civilization are monarchies, not republics, and, secondly, they are astronomically larger than the human scale republics of the Greeks. In a word, the political units of European civilization appear to be out of scale and of the wrong form. Now on first glance this might not seem a serious difference. For Hume taught that a civilized monarchy could be superior to a republic. He also held that the moderns have cultivated a deeper and more extensive sentiment of humanity and have a better understanding of the rule of law and liberty than did the ancient republics. Consequently, both modern monarchies and republics are generally superior to their ancient counterparts. So a civilization of modern monarchies might not be a bad thing (E, 94-95). Nevertheless, on balance Hume remains a republican, and much of his writing is an effort to theorize a place for the republican values of human scale in a Europe ruled by out of scale centralized monarchies.
The sort of monarchy that must be challenged is what was called “absolute monarchy.” Hume judged in 1752 that this kind of monarchy was only three generations old. What distinguished “absolute” monarchy from mere monarchy was the extraordinary efficiency with which it could centralize power by hollowing out smaller political units. Prior to the advent of absolute monarchy in the seventeenth century, Europe was composed of thousands of independent and quasi-independent political societies. There were small kingdoms, principalities, dukedoms, lesser noble estates, bishoprics, free cities, and leagues of free cities. As late at the seventeenth century the region known as Germany was made up of some 230 states and some 50 free cities. But gradually, over a period of four centuries, hundreds of smaller political societies were crushed into larger and fewer monarchies. By the end of the middle ages, monarchs had defeated the Church, the independent towns, and many small principalities. In Hume’s time monarchs were engaged in a contest to consolidate the nobility which gave rise in Britain to the Court and Country parties. Philosophical theories would be put forth to legitimate this new regime of centralization, notably by Jean Bodin in The Six Books of the Republic (1576) and by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651).The central idea in both Bodin and Hobbes is the concept of “sovereignty,” a notion taken from theological discourse and applied to the centralized states being built by monarchs. According to this theory there must be lodged somewhere an office having legally irresistible, infallible, and indivisible authority. This office, by whatever name it might be called, is what is meant by sovereign power. A polity of this kind is incompatible with the republican tradition, which demands divided and competing social authorities down to the human scale. Just as Plato removed poets from his republic, so Hobbes removed republican literature from the Leviathan.
In the essay “Of Some Remarkable Customs,” Hume went out of his way to refute this modern theory of sovereignty, according to which “imperium in imperio” is impossible. That is, there cannot be in the same political society two legislative bodies, both of which have full authority to make laws and neither of which is ranked above the other. Hume presents as a counter example the comita centuriata and the comita tributa in the Roman republic. Both had authority to make law and to nullify the laws of the other. Not only did this system of divided authority not lead to stalemate and the annihilation of government, it produced one of the most active, energetic, and illustrious republics in history (E, 370-73). Hume flatly rejected the modern theory of sovereignty. Not only can authority be divided, he defined what he called “free government” as one with divided authority: “All free governments must consist of two councils, a lesser and a greater...” (E, 522). And again: “The government, which, in common appellation, receives the appellation of free, is that which admits of a partition of power among several members, whose united authority is no less, or is commonly greater than that of any monarch; but who... must act by general and equal laws, that are previously known to all the members and to all their subjects” (E, 41).
In a monarchy that claims to be a “free government,” power will be divided among different social authorities and shared with the people. Each part of the constitution, Hume says, “must have a right of self-defence, and of maintaining its antient bounds against the encroachment of every other authority.” It follows that, in free governments, cases “wherein resistance is lawful, must occur much oftener, and greater indulgence be given to the subjects to defend themselves by force of arms, than in arbitrary governments.” So what Hobbes considered a disposition to anarchy, Hume considerslawful resistance.7 Hume supported secession of the American colonies as early as 1768, before most Americans did. In October, 1775, he wrote: “I am an American in my Principles, and wish we would let them alone to govern or misgovern themselves as they think proper.”8 “Friends of America” such as Edmund Burke and William Pitt sought reconciliation within the empire. Hume appears to be the only major British thinker at the time to have supported outright secession of the colonies. Indeed, as we will see, Hume was opposed to the very idea of a British empire. I have explored Hume’s reasons for supporting American secession elsewhere.{footnote Donald W. Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998). See especially chapters 9-12. The vast, centralized administration, first created by seventeenth century absolute monarchs to control and exploit the small polities coerced into them, gradually developed an esprit de corps of its own, at the expense of society and eventually of the king himself. One instrument of exploitation that especially worried Hume was the invention of public credit or the policy of mortgaging future revenues. This device had a number of pernicious effects. First, “national debts cause a mighty confluence of people and riches to the capital, by the great sums, levied in the provinces to pay the interest” and “by the advantages in trade ... which they give the merchants in the capital above the rest of the kingdom” (E, 354). Second, a state with mortgaged revenues would have to create new ones; these would fall on consumption leading to “vexation and ruin of the poor” (E, 356). They would next fall on the proprietors of land, making life more difficult for their tenants. Third, with the collapse of the landed gentry and nobility, a traditional order rooted in land and place would collapse in favor of rule by a new rootless class of stockjobbers and paper money men. “These men,” Hume writes, having “no connections with the state...can enjoy their revenue in any part of the globe in which they chuse to reside, who will naturally bury themselves in the capital or great cities, and who will sink into the lethargy of a stupid and pampered luxury, without spirit, ambition, or enjoyment. Adieu to all ideas of nobility, gentry, and family” (E, 353). Hume’s criticism of public credit mirrors exactly Jefferson’s criticism of the public debt system proposed by Alexander Hamilton.9 Since the national stocks are constantly fluctuating and can be traded instantly, they can scarcely hold together “three generations from father to son,” and “even if they remain in one family, they convey no authority” (E, 358). What follows will be the destruction of those independent social authorities which had formed a protective buffer between the individual and centralized power. These constitute, Hume says, “a kind of independent magistracy in a state, instituted by the hand of nature” (E, 358). And elsewhere he describes them as a “middle power between King and people” (E, 358).With their elimination, a pure Hobbesian state would emerge with a centralized authority ruling directly over an aggregate of millions of individuals. In this condition, “every man in authority derives his influence from the commission alone of the sovereign.” And “the whole income of every individual in the state must lie entirely at the mercy of the sovereign” (E, 358-59). Hume thinks this form of despotism intimated in eighteenth century centralized states, if realized, would be “a degree of despotism, which no oriental monarchy has ever yet attained” (E, 359). What Hume considered despotism is viewed as normal today. A European monarch in Hume’s day could not order military conscription nor impose an income tax, which would have been viewed as a form of forced labor.
Hume’s vision of an order of human scale polities was at odds with the practice of political centralization begun by the great monarchs and imitated by smaller principalities. “Europe,” he said, “is shared out mostly into great monarchies,” and the smaller ones ruin their people by emulating the great with taxes, a superb court, and a standing army. He laments that “Swisserland alone and Holland resemble the ancient republics” (E, 403). It would be impossible to break the great monarchies of Europe into a large number of human scale republics in conformity to the model Hume took from the Greeks. But it might be possible gradually to transform a monarchy, especially a limited one, into a great republic which would be divided into human scale republics. And this is just the reform Hume proposes in the essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” (1752). The proposal was a radical one, for the traditional wisdom, from the ancients down to Montesquieu and Rousseau, was that a republic had to be small. Hume agrees that it is “more difficult to form a republican government in an extensive country than in a city.” But once established, its extensive size and division into small republics would make it less likely to fall into faction and disorder which has been the weakness of small republics throughout history (E, 527). Sheer size alone would make it difficult for the parts to combine to form a special interest. I will not take space here to explore the essay in detail; rather, my remarks will be limited to the parts salient to Hume’s view on the size and scale of political order.
The extensive republic, which Hume says is the size of Britain or France, is divided into one hundred small republics; each of which is further divided into one hundred parishes. Those satisfying a property qualification for voting meet annually in the parish church and elect one representative to their small republican government. This body of one hundred representatives elect, among themselves, ten magistrates and one senator. The senators, to the number of one hundred, meet in the national capital and exercise the executive and supreme judicial powers of the commonwealth. However, the ten magistrates and one hundred representatives remain in the capitals of their respective republics. The magistrates exercise the executive and judicial powers of the provincial republic while the representatives exercise the legislative powers. The provincial republics can pass laws within their territory, but these can be vetoed by the national senate or by another republic, in which case the matter must be decided by the legislative power of the whole commonwealth. The vote is by republics. Each republic has one vote, and a majority of republics decides the question. If there is a tie the senate casts the deciding vote. Laws are introduced and debated in the senate. If passed, they are sent to the small republics for ratification. If a vote fails in the senate, any ten of a hundred senators can require that the law be sent to the republics for ratification. Because it would be troublesome to assemble all ten thousand representatives for every trivial law, the senate has the choice of sending the law down to the ten magistrates of each republic. If sent to the magistrates, any five of the one hundred representatives can demand that the whole body of representatives be called for a vote on the proposed law.
Either the provincial magistrates or the representatives may give to their senator a copy of a law to be presented to the senate. Should the senate veto the proposed law, it, nevertheless, must be sent to the republics for a vote if only five of the republics concur. In addition to the checks just mentioned, there is the court of competitors designed to detect and prosecute fraud and corruption in the senate. Its members are constituted as follows. If a candidate for the senate loses an election but gains a third or more votes of the representatives, he automatically enters the court of competitors. This court has only the power of inspecting public accounts of the commonwealth and of bringing a vote of impeachment against members of the senate. If the senate acquits the person, the court of competitors can appeal to the people either in the form of the magistrates or the representatives for a new trial, under prescribed rules, which excludes members of the senate. Hume’s extensive republic is designed to check the centralization of power, which is the death of human scale political order in a large modern state, whether of monarchical or republican form. It would be more difficult in Hume’s republic to institute and abuse the policy of public credit. Everywhere there is a check on majority rule, and Hume’s polity is one in which the people enjoy considerable political participation. Only ten (out of one hundred senators) are needed to nullify the senate’s vote against a proposed law and send it to the people for ratification; only five (out of one hundred representatives) are needed to take a proposed law out of the hands of the magistrates and put it to a vote of the representatives. Only five republics (out of one hundred) are needed to override the senate’s veto of a law proposed by the representatives and to compel a vote by representatives of the whole commonwealth. Only twenty republics (out of one hundred) are needed to throw any official out of office for a year; only thirty, for three years. And there are a number of other minority checks to power which cannot be discussed here, including a militia army modeled on the Swiss militia, along with a law requiring that it be regularly exercised. Finally, to keep the republic fromexpanding beyond its proper size, there is a constitutional prohibition against conquests (E, 529).
Hume presents this extensive republic not as a philosopher’s utopia, but as an ideal identity already intimated in European political practice. Republican intimations are strong in limited monarchies, such as Britain, and are fully exemplified in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Even the absolute monarchy of France contains republican intimations as, in Hume’s view, do all civilized monarchies. But Hume’s extensive republic is not the only form intimated in European political practice. More oppressive forms of absolute monarchy are intimated, as well as a uniquely modern form of tyranny that could be generated, for example, by the repeated abuse of public credit. Hume’s hope, however, was that Europe would evolve into an order of republics (both extensive and small) held together by trade and common cultural interests on the Greek model. And it might appear that vast regimes such as the European Union and the United States conform to Hume’s ideal of a vast territory divided into extensive republics. It is certainly true that the republican ideology is triumphant. Most regimes in the world today describe themselves as republics. There are democratic republics, democratic socialist republics, people’s republics, federative republics such as the United States and the former Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics, and so on. What this ubiquitous republican idiom ignores, and what is essential to republicanism, is the factor of human scale. Rousseau was one of the few westerners to be honored by the People’s Republic of China under Mao Tse Tung. And Rousseau has been invoked by the legacy of the French Revolution. Rousseau’s idea of “the general will” makes some sense in the human scale republic theorized in The Social Contract which he suggests at one point is a polity of around ten thousand people. But it makes no sense at all if mapped onto a country the size of France, not to mention China. So small is Rousseau’s republic that he does not even allow representatives, but requires direct political participation, something impossible if pitched to a scale of millions of political participants.
Even if we reject Rousseau’s demand for direct political participation as extravagant, entertaining a larger sphere for republican life, as Hume did, the ratio of population to representation should still be measured by the human scale if it is to be called republican. To appreciate this, let us compare Hume’s extensive republic with its modern equivalent, Great Britain, in respect to representation. Hume’s national legislature is divided into one hundred small republics, each with one hundred representatives. The total number of representatives in the nation is ten thousand. These sit and debate proposed legislation in their own provincial capitals. The legislators of modern Britain, however, meet and debate in London to the number of only 635 representatives. Britain in Hume’s day had around nine million inhabitants; today it has over sixty-five million. In Hume’s Britain there is one representative for every nine hundred persons; in Britain today there is one for every one hundred four thousand, not a human scale ratio of representation to population. Or consider the United States, which styles itself a republic. There are only 435 representatives in the House of Representatives, ruling over some 309 million people. This yields a ratio of around one representative for every seven hundred ten thousand people. A regime with this ratio cannot be considered a republic, not even a large Humean republic. What is true of the out-of-scale ratio of representatives to people in Britain and the United States is true of most large regimes in the world that style themselves republics. But if they are not in any meaningful sense republics, what are they? An answer was suggested by Tocqueville, who viewed the emerging European “republics” as in reality extensions of absolute monarchy. The French Revolution produced the first modern large scale republic ruling in the name of the people and declaring itself, in Hobbesian fashion, to be “one and indivisible.” The Revolution pretended to effect a total change of French political society, and was thought by many to have done so. Tocqueville, however, argued that the Revolution had fundamentally changed nothing.10 What he meant by this counter-intuitive claim was this. What was wrong with monarchy was not a hereditary executive, but the creation of a centralized bureaucratic administration with a would-be monopoly on coercion over individuals in a territory. The Revolution did not devolve power back to smaller, human scale units in France, but greatly expanded central power beyond anything eighteenth century monarchs could have imagined. No eighteenth century monarch could have ordered universal conscription, a barrier which limited the size of armies and the scale of war. The French “republic” was the first to order universal conscription. The result opened the era of total war. Whereas Louis XVI could raise an army of little more than one hundred eighty thousand troops, the French Republic at the demise of Napoleon had run through some three million troops, the largest military force ever assembled in history. One way to understand Tocqueville’s point is through the doctrine of the two bodies of the king. The first body was the flesh and blood king; the second body was the artificial corporation, the crown, seeking a monopoly on coercion over individuals in a territory. In the expression given upon the death of a monarch, “The king is dead, long live the king,” it was the second body that was affirmed to be immortal. What happened in the French Revolution was that the flesh and blood king was thrown out as the chief executive officer of the corporation, but the second body of the king remained, namely, the centralized system of coercion. The Revolution merely replaced the person of the king with the fiction of the nation-person. The people of France were now said to be sovereign, and what had been the second body of the king was now said to be their representative.
But this was little more than a pious fiction, for the “sovereign people” had little participation in the exercise of sovereignty. The Queen of Great Britain is said to be sovereign; and the government, her majesty’s government. But the British sovereign participates in political conduct only in a ceremonial capacity. Likewise, in large modern republics, the people are said to be sovereign, but their participation too is largely ceremonial and consists typically of choosing periodically between two candidates selected by national political parties of vast scale over which there is little popular control. Hobbes was the first to clearly understand the character of a modern European state. He theorized it as an artificial corporation, what he called an “artificial man.” Government as a public corporation differs from a business corporation in that it possesses a monopoly on coercion in a territory. Its subjects are compelled to buy shares in the corporation through taxes, but cannot trade them, i.e., they cannot secede from the corporation. Hobbes saw clearly that the modern state is owned by no one, neither an individual (the king), nor a collective (the people); nor does it represent anyone in the republican sense. It consequently is neither a monarchy nor a republic, though it may be called either. In its pure form, it cannot tolerate those independent social authorities that Hume called “a kind of independent magistracy in a state, instituted by the hand of nature,” capable of resisting centralization—and which Hobbes called “Wormes” in the commonwealth (E, 358). The Hobbesian modern state is only an ideal identity, but modern states, whether called republics or monarchies, have sought approximation to it. In Hume’s time the closest approximation was absolute monarchy. In our time it is mass democracy.
With these reflections of Hobbes and Tocqueville in mind, we might say that a modern state of vast size, such as the United States or France, is an eighteenth century absolute monarchy without the monarch, but falsely calling itself a republic to gain the legitimacy afforded by the human scale connotations of the term. A modern state cannot bear to describe itself in the stark terms theorized by Hobbes, namely, as an artificial corporation with a monopoly on coercion over individuals in a territory. But Hume provides us with another way of thinking about the matter. He taught that modern absolute monarchies contain “a source of improvement” and republican governments “a source of degeneracy, which in time will bring these species of civil polity still nearer an equality” (E, 95). The source of degeneracy in republics is the inevitable tendency to abuse public credit. Monarchs also borrow, but, if need be, they can declare a bankruptcy without destroying the people. This is not likely in a republic where the creditors either are the chief office holders themselves or financially support the chief office holders. It is through degenerate republics, therefore, that the most despotic form of modern centralized government is likely to occur—one, Hume says, that would be worse than an Oriental despotism and, consequently, worse than an eighteenth century absolute monarchy. A regime of this kind would be able to centralize power beyond anything previously known in history. Hans Herman Hoppe has explored the political economy of European monarchies where government was viewed as private property, in comparison with modern Hobbesian states styling themselves republics or democracies. He judges the monarchical age to run from the eleventh century to the mid-nineteenth century. During this period monarchs were never able to exploit more than five to eight percent of gross national product; whereas mass “republics” and “democracies” have been able to exploit some fifty percent.11 This would be a level of centralization and control quite beyond anything in Hume’s experience. However, he saw it intimated in the state’s exploitation of public credit, hollowing out the economy of the provinces and, consequently, driving people as well as financial and political power to the center, where a few hundred people—through finance capitalism structured on public debt—would determine the economic prospects of millions. Even worse, public credit enabled Britain to pursue needless wars of national glory and a policy of uniting trade with war, which necessarily issued in colonial empire and competition with other states for empire. We have seen that Hume supported secession of the American colonies, but this was merely part of his opposition to the emerging British empire itself, the symbol of which was “the great commoner” William Pitt. That “wicked madman Pitt,” as Hume called him, had come to power on a mercantilist platform of uniting commerce with war, funded by public credit, and legitimated by a republican ideology. Shortly after repeal of the Stamp Act, Hume wrote Gilbert Eliot 22 July, 1768 supporting American secession from the empire: “These are fine doings in America. O! How I long to see America and the East Indies revolted totally & finally, the Revenue reduc’d to half, public Credit fully discredited by Bankruptcy, [and] the third of London in Ruins....”12
A year later in a letter to William Strahan Hume indulged the same fantasy: “Notwithstanding my Age, I hope to see a public Bankruptcy, the total Revolt of America, the Expulsion of the English from the East Indies, the Diminution of London to less than a half, and the Restoration of the Government to the King, Nobility, and Gentry of this Realm.”13 In both of these outbursts there is a rejection not only of empire, but of the bloated size of London. But this sort of republicanized Hobbesian regime that Hume feared Britain was becoming could not really show what it could do, in terms of destroying independent social authorities and concentrating great masses of people under state control, until the industrial revolution. Hume’s philosophy was framed prior to that revolution, and he simply could not anticipate the changes a modern Hobbesian state could bring about. For example, Hume thought there was a natural limit to the growth of cities, and that no city could grow much beyond seven hundred thousand. That was about the size of London in Hume’s time when he judged that, in relation to the country, the “head is undoubtedly too large for the body” (E, 447-48, 354). He could not have imagined cities of over ten million, such as we have today. There are ten cities in the world today of nearly 20 million, and these are estimated by mid-century to expand to some 30 to 40 million, at which time a new crop of cities in the 20 million range is expected to emerge. Most of this growth is, and will continue to be, in the third world where functioning government services are scarce if existent at all. Such concentrations of rootless masses are not a city at all in the traditional sense, and new names had to be created. It is said to be a "conurbation," a "megalopolis," or an "agglomeration." Monster "cities" of this kind are artifacts of the twentieth century. Mexico City, for instance, had around five hundred thousand in 1900. Today it has over twenty million.14
The industrial revolution certainly facilitated the emergence of such agglomerations, but they were not the “natural” result of it. Such concentrations of population could not have occurred without the global triumph of centralized Hobbesian states that hollow out independent social authorities within a territory, leaving a mass of deracinated individuals controlled by the center. Three contemporary cities of twenty million each would equal the entire population of the Roman empire at the height of its power. There are, of course, more people in the world today than in ancient times. But that is not why monster cities exist. Nor do such cities exist because “the jobs are there.” The jobs are there because, as Hume saw, the rules are rigged by a union of public credit, business and finance corporations, and the centralized state (“one and indivisible”) to concentrate them there. Consider Mexico, which has a population of around a hundred million, over twenty million of which live in Mexico City. Mexico has an abundance of arable land, is rich in oil, and opens out to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Its land mass and resources are enough to accommodate a number of countries the size of Switzerland. Though land locked, and in a mountainous region, Switzerland is frequently ranked among the top ten richest countries in the world in terms of per capita income. If the territory of Mexico were composed of, say, fourteen small Swiss sized states, each would have a population of around seven million. In that case there could be no monster city of twenty million people, and growing, in the territory known as Mexico. But this cannot happen today without secession. And as long as Mexico imagines itself to be a Hobbesian state “one and indivisible,” secession is ruled out a priori, as it is in every Hobbesian state.
The Hobbesian centralized state is not the natural or only form of political association, as many have come to think. It is an artifact little more than three centuries old. It was first constructed by European absolute monarchs, and perfected by mass democracies. After World War II, signs of its decline began to appear. Martin Van Creveld and others have argued that cultural and political elites are shifting their allegiances away from the post-French Revolutionary nation state to supra-national and to sub-national entities.15 The Hobbesian state was said to be one and indivisible, so downsizing it through secession was, as noted above, ruled out a priori. But that is no longer believable, given the relatively peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union and other modern states thought to be “indivisible.” When the League of Nations was formed, it was limited to large states, but that is not the case with the United Nations. The current disposition to devolve power to smaller political units has led to a dramatic increase in the number of small states. Today, over two thirds of the states in the world are ten million or less. Over half have populations of five million or less. And more than a third have populations of one million or less. Seventy states have populations of five hundred thousand or less. Fifty states are in the Aristotelean range of one hundred thousand or less. Thirty-five states occupy no more than twice the land area of Washington, D.C. And one state is smaller than the Washington Mall: the Vatican.16 Theoretically and practically, there is no reason why more small states, even on the scale of the Aristotelean polis, cannot exist today. Indeed, technological innovations and global trade make small states more feasible than in the past. And even large states such as Britain, France, and the United States could be reformed, with an eye to a human scale ratio of representation to population, by reconstituting a “national” legislature into the joint voice of several regional or provincial legislatures in accord with Hume’s model of an extensive republic.
Modern political philosophy, from Hobbes to Habermas, has largely ignored the topic of size and human scale that was central to the republican tradition for some two thousand years. Hume, Montesquieu, and Rousseau are latter day exceptions, and have been largely ignored. But, as the Hobbesian state is in visible decline and is losing its moral authority, perhaps it is time to make the human scale of political order once again a central topic of political discourse—and especially of republican discourse.
This article is a further revised and amended version of Donald Livingston's essay, 'David Hume, Republicanism, and the Human Scale of Political Order,' which was first published in Arator: A Journal of Southern History, Thought, and Culture, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2010).
David Hume and the Republican Tradition of Human Scale
Written by Donald W. Livingston 5 Republicanism is inclined to the self government of human scale communities, and, in Hobbes’ view, encourages permanent resistance to sovereign authority and, hence, anarchy. Hobbes calls these surviving republican dispositions “Wormes” in the commonwealth that must be purged.64 What does Hume have to say about the relationship of size to political order? There is, first of all, a deep presumption against large monarchies and large cities. “Enormous monarchies,” he says “are, probably, destructive to human nature; in their progress, in their continuance, and even in their downfall, which never can be very distant from their establishment” (E, 340-341). And “Enormous cities are ... destructive to society, beget vice and disorder of all kinds, starve the remoter provinces, and even starve themselves, by the prices to which they raise all provisions” (E, 401). In the essay “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” he argues that size alone, independent of other factors, is a material condition for moral and political virtue. “Extended governments,” he says, “soon become absolute,” whereas “small ones change naturally into commonwealths” (E, 119). Ancient Greek civilization, which began as a “cluster of little principalities,” gradually and naturally evolved into an order of small republics. Government over a vast territory is able to maintain control, even if a majority are discontented, because each part, being ignorant of the resolutions of the other parts, is afraid to resist. Great distance also enables the regime to magnify the virtues of rulers, whatever the form of government might be; whereas, in a small government, familiarity with the rulers subverts myths of greatness. In a small government, an act of oppression is immediately known to the whole, and it arouses more intense indignation because of the familiarity of ruler and ruled which human scale makes possible (E, 119-120).3 Throughout history republics have fallen within or even below this range. The Italian republics that created the Renaissance: Florence, Padua, Venice, Bologna, and others were in this range. Venice had a population of around one hundred ninety thousand. Florence and Bologna had around sixty thousand each. I turn now to a quite different notion of the function of political order, that put forth by Thomas Hobbes in his masterpiece Leviathan (1651), and one which, consequently, entails a quite different notion of size and scale. For Hobbes, the function of political order is to allow an aggregate of individuals to pursue their power and glory limited only by the constraints of civil association. Since, in Hobbes’ view, virtue vanishes as a condition of political association, the requirement of human scale also vanishes. All that is needed is a sovereign office capable of enforcing the rules of civil association. The limit of the state, in respect to territory and population, ends with the sovereign’s ability to enforce the rules. So there is no internal limit as to how large a Hobbesian state can be. Indeed its logic is to expand, if possible, to global scale, for the entire human race can be viewed as an aggregate of individuals in pursuit of their power and glory. Hobbes rightly named it Leviathan.2 Another classical measure was that one should be able to walk across the polity in a single day. The ancient Greek republics were of this human size and scale.
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