Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the reason the great thinkers of the Enlightenment as well as their predecessor Aristotle, reasoned that a republic is the best form of government, is because no matter how effective a monarchy is, flexible an aristocracy or fair as polity… each of them has a predilection to become oppressive, ie, tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. In a mixture of them however, they stand against the constant incentive to oppress far better than any alone. As a despot will blunder into a war over a slight, an oligarchy will plunder the wealth of a nation by inflation, or a democracy will “liberate” private property for the “beneficence to the poor.” Republics dampen this… but even a republic has it’s flaws.
As the old adage goes, “in a democracy if the majority want your bike, it is theirs, but in a republic, your bike is yours and no one can take it.” The same cliche could be used for tyranny or oligarchy, if the oligarch or despot want’s your bike… Which is saying, one measure of a wrong form of government, is the predilection to take what it doesn’t own, in the name of whatever sophist justification the thieves, sorry, rulers want to use. If we accept a government is a form of entity, with self awareness, self interest, free will and action. It must then be held to the same standards we hold all entities to. If a dog bites random people it is put down. If a government slaughters millions the leader is lionized and remembered. In this case we see that a dog is held to a higher standard than a ruler.
History shows us that republics generally only last as long as the first few generations after it’s founding. Only Rome lasted for nearly eight hundred years, before collapsing into the tyranny of the Praetorian Guard, (the standing army in Rome) and their puppet emperors. During the Enlightenment, people who sought not to be ruled by tyrants, created Constitutions, to maintain a republic for more than two or three generations. Having limited success, and that success only in places where the elite didn’t immediately become an oligarchy, the people didn’t start voting themselves largess from the public treasury… or a despot didn’t rise up, in the name of the people, to subdue the constitution and install a glorious revolutionary government.
Even in the US, our Constitution has been reduced to a chiffon dress covering naked oppression, since almost everything our government does today is unconstitutional, by an originalist reading. That is why our rulers, sorry, representatives, demand we abandon original intent and embrace the progressive’s living breathing doctrine. Because let’s face it, the Constitution is a set of negative liberties, telling the government what it cannot do to the people… instead it “should” tell the government what to do to the people… at least that is the progressive angle on constitutional law. Which is essentially a means to undermine it’s liberties, by eliminating our Natural Rights and making us dependents. The Judicial Branch has embraced this view on Constitutional law… removing our last line of defense.
Since republics and constitutions have failed, maybe we should pit the elite against the elite, by adding a forth branch of government… a Numa. A Numa would be the police of the elite. Every office, meeting room, phone and apartment of every judge, congressperson, senator, cabinet member, top bureaucrat and even the President, would be constantly surveilled. The video and sound sent to the internet in real time for citizens to watch. They would be randomly drug tested. Any meeting that was deemed national security, and thus off limits to real time surveillance, would have to go through a judge ahead of time. If granted the meetings recorded and released at a later date depending on the judge’s ruling. Any member of the elite caught in criminality would be made an example of. Because, if they are making our laws and ruling over us, shouldn’t they be held to the highest standards, or none at all… like today?
Sincerely,
John Pepin
