Conclusion: Good Government & the Logic of INTER-Dependence
America’s Founders fought for freedom from tyranny and bad government. They aimed to advance those arcs of history that tend toward juster governments. As the Founders made clear in the Constitution, good governments have a duty to promote the general welfare. Their nation now threatens itself, by not resisting a tyrantless tyranny of errors in the ideas that dominate its political. But a free democratic people can only be subdued by elective errors. And such errors are possible only if the people wrongly understand their real interests. Properly understood, these interests must build on, to use the words of the Declaration of Independence, “Laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
Tyrannies share with all forms of bad government the essential error that they rule for the benefit of the rulers. These essays expose errors that have loosened our grip on how “of the people,” and “by the people,” must meet the just end of all good government, which is ruling “for the people” as a whole. Are leaders governing “for the people” when they enact laws enabling private interests to profit by plundering the public purse (we saw examples of this by the pharmaceutical industry, ExxonMobil, and General Electric), or seek tax changes that would have the strong and successful do less for the public good while asking that the less strong do more? Too often, seeing those sorts of errors leads to greater support for the idea that less government is better. But whether big or small, a government that isn’t strong enough to prevent an unbridled machinery of markets from mercilessly maximizing private gain at the expense of the public good cannot meet the test of the logic of Lincoln and the Founders.
Some feel they need to get the government off their backs, but the truth is little else has your back, especially in times of trouble. The Founders knew nothing else is designed to, or has incentives to, invest in and protect “the public good” or to promote “the general welfare”. Both of which are the common ground in which we all grow our fortunes.
Resistance to injustice and oppression may be an essential element of human nature, with its origins deep in prehistory. The anthropologist Chris Boehm, writing about the largest survey of known hunter-gatherer cultures, has proposed that “counter-dominant coalitions” are essentially universal and therefore could be a common human trait. Cultures that successfully harness the division of labor must also develop sustainable rules for fair division of the resulting proceeds. Otherwise, those who feel unjustly treated can form unions of the dominated to constrain those who would oppress them (e.g. by abusing their power and overexploiting common resources). This is precisely the force that fired the foundry of our freedoms. The power “of the people” properly organized against domination that damages the general welfare cannot be resisted. William Berkley, who governed the colony of Virginia in the mid-1600s, understood this when he wrote, “Oh how miserable is that man who must govern a people [of which] six parts of seven are poor, in debt, discontented, and armed!”
Those who would now run the country not “for the people” but for the benefit of their own narrowly conceived interests should heed Berkley’s warning and remind themselves that the nation’s independence is built on a logic of national INTER-dependence. The Founders made this clear in their declarations of the importance of “Laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” Good government is all about interdependences. It’s the process of prioritizing and refereeing those interdependencies for the benefit of the whole.
In this, as in every, election we must stir once more those mystic chords that connect us to our constitutional duties to the “public good” and the “general welfare.” And remain loyal to the logic and limits the Founders laid down in the nations defining document. Or we risk cracking the noble heart of this great nation’s foundation.
Tyrannies share with all forms of bad government the essential error that they rule for the benefit of the rulers. These essays expose errors that have loosened our grip on how “of the people,” and “by the people,” must meet the just end of all good government, which is ruling “for the people” as a whole. Are leaders governing “for the people” when they enact laws enabling private interests to profit by plundering the public purse (we saw examples of this by the pharmaceutical industry, ExxonMobil, and General Electric), or seek tax changes that would have the strong and successful do less for the public good while asking that the less strong do more? Too often, seeing those sorts of errors leads to greater support for the idea that less government is better. But whether big or small, a government that isn’t strong enough to prevent an unbridled machinery of markets from mercilessly maximizing private gain at the expense of the public good cannot meet the test of the logic of Lincoln and the Founders.
Some feel they need to get the government off their backs, but the truth is little else has your back, especially in times of trouble. The Founders knew nothing else is designed to, or has incentives to, invest in and protect “the public good” or to promote “the general welfare”. Both of which are the common ground in which we all grow our fortunes.
Resistance to injustice and oppression may be an essential element of human nature, with its origins deep in prehistory. The anthropologist Chris Boehm, writing about the largest survey of known hunter-gatherer cultures, has proposed that “counter-dominant coalitions” are essentially universal and therefore could be a common human trait. Cultures that successfully harness the division of labor must also develop sustainable rules for fair division of the resulting proceeds. Otherwise, those who feel unjustly treated can form unions of the dominated to constrain those who would oppress them (e.g. by abusing their power and overexploiting common resources). This is precisely the force that fired the foundry of our freedoms. The power “of the people” properly organized against domination that damages the general welfare cannot be resisted. William Berkley, who governed the colony of Virginia in the mid-1600s, understood this when he wrote, “Oh how miserable is that man who must govern a people [of which] six parts of seven are poor, in debt, discontented, and armed!”
Those who would now run the country not “for the people” but for the benefit of their own narrowly conceived interests should heed Berkley’s warning and remind themselves that the nation’s independence is built on a logic of national INTER-dependence. The Founders made this clear in their declarations of the importance of “Laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” Good government is all about interdependences. It’s the process of prioritizing and refereeing those interdependencies for the benefit of the whole.
In this, as in every, election we must stir once more those mystic chords that connect us to our constitutional duties to the “public good” and the “general welfare.” And remain loyal to the logic and limits the Founders laid down in the nations defining document. Or we risk cracking the noble heart of this great nation’s foundation.