The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion. Without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by courtesy. Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which, is nevertheless subject to change, and which, every secret enemy is endeavouring to dissolve. Our present condition, is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independance contending for dependance. The instance is without a precedent; the case never existed before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts. Nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason; wherefore, every one thinks himself at liberty to act as he pleases. The Tories dared not have assembled offensively, had they known that their lives, by that act, were forfeited to the laws of the state. A line of distinction should be drawn, between, English soldiers taken in battle, and inhabitants of America taken in arms. The first are prisoners, but the latter traitors. The one forfeits his liberty, the other his head.
- Common Sense, Thomas Paine, 1776.
What is the Constitution With No Name?
Have Americans seen it before?
Is it coming again or is it always there?
Does it require you to have Belief or to have Faith?
To any who have read this blog off and on over the years, these are questions that lay under everything that I have written, and not only in this blog but my others and in my fictional writing, also. I come at this from many different angles, yet it always boils down to the simple things, and it is those simple things, described by many, that have been masked by imposed complexity.
Ah, what is 'imposed complexity'?
Imposed complexity are those things that we create as complex from the start. Imposed complexity is our will upon our ourselves to create order. It is the belief that complexity will give us order. It is the belief in the expansion of cumulative or collective power will create a better world when that is channeled and guided by complexity. Yet complex things tend to fail. To paraphrase Montgomery Scott from Star Trek: 'The more they overhaul the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drains.'
Created complexity falls apart to simplicity.
Thus regulatory regimes cause chaos because they attempt to impose order on the human spirit, on human nature. Belief in regulation falls apart when it is imposed on those that have Faith in themselves and their fellow man. Complexity creates chaos because it cannot rule Simplicity.
Belief in God is not enough to have Faith.
Most provocatively, to have Faith in human nature does not require Belief in God, but the simple observation that Man is a part of Nature. Thus my other writings examining the difference between Moral Law, Civil Law and Natural Law (via the examination of Pufendorf, for all his pluses and minuses) put into play that Moral Law, God given Law, is not enough for man to rule himself. The creation of society, which man does by Natural Law, is a pre-requisite for instituting Moral Law. Man as animal creates society which then puts in play Moral Law as those two come together to create Civil Law. Thus if you have Faith in yourself and God, you can create a civil self, a civil person, that then partakes of creating Civil Law.
When man creates society and accepts that there is Moral Law necessary to regulate himself within society, then there is the basis for Civil Law. Natural Law creates society, Moral Law allows us to self-govern, and we then join with these other self-governing individuals in society to create Civil Law. It is an order that has a precedent order in that if you do not get the first part you cannot get to the other parts. For us, as individuals, to enact Moral Law we must first come together to form a society under Natural Law. So long as there is Nature and that we accept the drives of Nature to form society, the basis for enacting Moral Law is present.
Together these two create The Constitution With No Name.
That construct is more formally called The Law of Nations, which is unwritten law that can be discovered by creating society under Natural Law to accept Moral Law and then create the Nation. In man this has a particular instance where it is founded: in marriage.
Marriage is that time that we accede that for our children to survive we must no longer exercise all of our Natural Liberties with our Natural Rights so as to create society and then have self-order under Moral Law. With that acceptance The Law of Nations is created and re-created over and over and over again, so long as man and woman may live to have families.
The act of marriage is an act of Faith in the one that you marry. With that individual you are taking the primary Leap of Faith that they will put aside the savage order of Natural Law and self-govern so as to accept Moral Law.
Faith begins at home, doesn't it?
Kindness also begins there and begats Charity.
Charity is the kindness of helping your fellow man in a selfless fashion so as to make society better for all involved so that your progeny can survive and learn to self-govern.
Notice where Civil Law comes into that?
Oh, that's right, it doesn't. Governments which are organs of society are not organs of Charity nor are they enactors of Charity: only people can do that.
Belief cannot drive this Faith.
Faith must drive Belief for this system to work, any other system will quickly become unhinged as simple Belief can fail, but Faith in what you see, hear, and understand can never be shaken as your eyes and ears will continue to beat reality into your head until you finally recognize that YOU must deal with it.
You.
Not your neighbor.
Not the police.
Not any part of government.
You are the basis for all the rest of that working, and when you deny what is going on around you, then all the rest begins to fail.
This is how you create Order from Chaos, and Chaos gains Order from similar means.
What? Did you think you were just an unimportant member of society to be ruled over? You are a moral actor. Unfortunately, in a realm of Chaos, you have to make up your role as you go along. You don't get a script or even a plot outline as there are no set ends, just destinations you can determine on your own. Individuals do that. Animals cannot. We have a braced order of self-government as individuals, not an un-braced one of animals requiring herding.
The answer to all of those trying to impose a civil order from the top, downwards?
From The Prisoner: "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or NUMBERED. I am not a Number, I am a free man."
You are born free.
It takes government to enslave you.
To close with Paine, again:
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. WHEREFORE, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows, that whatever FORM thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
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3 comments:
Politically, I'm onside with and shall quote you in a post today and even this:
"Belief in God is not enough to have Faith.
Most provocatively, to have Faith in human nature does not require Belief in God, but the simple observation that Man is a part of Nature."
... is essentially right. However, it does not take into account the existence of G-d, which has not been debunked effectively and in fact is shown, in so many ways, to be, in the Christian sense, the driver of peace and ordered society - hence its mention in the foundation documents.
Revisionists today might like to silently sidestep this but it's all part of one package.
By the way, if by Jacksonian you're referring to Andrew Jackson and the concept of the nation, then I've always been a Jackson fan - the last great POTUS and a man who had it right. The biz with Biddle was to his eternal credit.
James - I take the name A Jacksonian from the piece by Walter Russell Mead on The Jacksonian Tradition and the works of SDB in examining what that tradition means in the world at 9/11/01. I also take particular exception to the Federal Reserve and revisionist history that does not see that the Jacksons took in an Indian child, nor Jackson's direct view that what was happening to the natives was already an atrocity... and yet the federal form of government limited the hand of that government in solving these problems.
To examine the source of Moral Law and its role in shaping our society, is an ongoing task by me for my own interests. As was put forward by some of the Federalist supporters at the Founding, our Nation must accept good Moral Law and its directives for our behavior wherever it may arise. If that comes from those who created good systems prior to our understanding of the Diety who is at the root of Judeo-Christian teachings, then so be it: we are not to say how the expression of good Moral Law will arise, but must accept its value when it helps to secure our Liberty and Freedom as well as a Just society. We cannot say how such a Diety will render unto us good Moral Law, but we are to recognize it when we see it via the use of Reason. To do that requires Faith in our understandings and that Natural Law is not enough to create such security and justice, and then to apply our gift of Reason so as to fashion ourselves and our society into a better and more just form.
It is part of the Enlightenment and understanding of post-Westphalian comprehension that while Nature is created she also has a separate form of law that is different from Moral and Civil law and that we are to abide by that. When we seek to make Moral law absolute, we miss the direct application of the Diety to Nature and run afoul of her laws that are a prerequisite for us to get Moral law so as to create Civil law. Moral directives without stated punishments require us to use Reason to craft our own law to rule ourselves both as individuals and as members of society. From one direct and one indirect sources of law come our ability to synthesize them into human created law. When we cut ourselves off from either Moral or Natural law, we then cannot craft just civil law.
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