Seth has become a bit of a friend. I say “bit” because I have not yet had the opportunity to meet him. Like many of the chaps I meet my son’s age, Seth, like my Son, is a man who is well grounded and quite sharp. Here I take exception to an idea that I find being expressed by more than a few of these young chaps who are quite sharp.
Seth writes;
Fallenness negates sentimental trust, not the legitimacy of authority.
Bret responds,
Since power is inescapable, power never goes away, even when it is distributed properly. There is NEVER an absence of power. The idea of vertical and horizontal checks and balances was a good way to distribute power that can never be flushed away. The vertical balances in our current Government were destroyed and the result is that the FEDS took power so that we live in an era where “in the state we live and move and have our being.” That is because power was concentrated in the Federal Government.
The argument that “man is fallen, therefore the state must be weak” is an argument based on the fact that an unrestricted powerful state will gobble up other delegated power centers such as family, and church. Without the state being assigned a checked and balanced power base, eventually the state will become synonymous with society as the motto arises “everything inside the state, nothing outside the state.” We have seen this happen as the power of the state, since the rise of Lincoln, but especially with the Woodrow Wilson and FDR administrations, has expanded the control of the state. Without proper checks and balances on the power of the state the state gobbles up everything as we have seen and have lived through.
When it is said that “politics is governed by necessity” whose standard of necessity are we talking about here? If one leaves that standard for “necessity” to be determined by the state that will mean the state will discover all kinds of actions are considered “necessity.”
Seth wrote,
“The active character of Government is the precondition for liberty.”
Tell that to those who lived under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Pol Pot.
We are currently living under tyrannical statism and you want to suggest that the threat of tyrannical statism is overblown?
Man is fallen. The state is comprised of fallen men. Therefore there is a necessity to properly distribute power because it remains true, despite some denials of this I’ve seen lately, that;
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I agree that it is sin to abandon authority given by God. Tons of marriages display this truth, (And tons of marriage display the truth that women need to submit) but power not used, when properly assigned, isn’t our problem right now. Our problem now is power improperly used by the FEDS. It is why Jefferson once wrote of “tying them down with the chains of the constitution.”
You wrote;
Order is preserved only where authority is exercised with judgment and at the scale necessity demands.
Bret responds,
Yes … but by what standard, necessity?
I don’t trust the FEDS (including the Trump administration) to determine what does and does not constitution “necessity.”
Seth finished by writing,
Liberty does not endure by abdicating power, it survives only where power is wielded rightly.
Bret finishes
I agree 100% with that final sentiment, especially on the word “rightly.”
Look, I’m all for power being properly used. However, in my lifetime I’ve seldom seen the FEDS use power properly.
Bret wrote:
“Power is dangerous– but most dangerous in the vacuum of its absence, surrendering order to unaccountable forces. In this sense, imperialism is not tyrannical aggression but nationalism bearing the burdens of sovereignty.”
Ala RJR, power is inescapable. It’s not a question of taking power away from various players or institutions. It will always end up in the hands of someone or some institution. The question is always going to be, whose hands will administer power, and what standard they operate by.
Ummm… Bret recorded there what Seth wrote. Bret certainly would NEVER write what is in the quote marks. That quote is what Seth wrote. Bret disagrees with that.
I certainly 100% agree w/ your observation as leaning on RJR.