Institutional Malfeasance

“If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and its finisher.”

These words were spoken by Abraham Lincoln… (for those of you who are currently in public school, the robot guy at Disneyland with the funny beard)… and they ring true today.

Over the last week, we have seen the deconstruction of our Republic. To be sure, this has been in the works for quite some time, but we have now reached a point where hammer and sickle are being openly used to dismantle our institutional structures, and the end game is not pretty.

To begin with, let’s discuss a little bit about operative political theory: Institutionalized government is nothing more than acquiescence to a fictional authority supported by the implicit threat of force.

Yep… that is it.

We can talk all day long about the “divine right of kings”, “power residing in the people”, “the father state”, “the mother state”, or a “shining city on a hill”… In the end, it is the willingness of the people to accept the authority of institutionalized government and an institutionalized government willing to exert force on the people to gain their submission.

If this sounds depressing, it kinda is… but it also kinda works. When the government is kept in check through institutionalized checks on power, the benefit of that restraint is the people who would be subjected to that government.

Our Framers were genius and generous in their recognition and implementation of just such a system, and it is one of the reasons why we are on our first Republic, as opposed to another liberal democracy like France, which is on number five.

But in the end, whether it is crafted in inspiration from Divine Providence or the baser instincts of men, it is still an artificial construct.

There is a reason why we have the great marble halls of power… they look impressive. If the seat of government looked like a two-story office building made in the 1960s, there would not be the same level of awe and inspiration felt by junior high students as they made their school-sponsored pilgrimages to the seats of power.

Yet, that veneer of majesty has now begun to peel off with the heat of political passions. Ironically, the same people who absolutely need an authoritarian government to enact their will upon unwilling subjects are doing their best to destroy the architecture of their machinery of power. One could say they are devious in nature, secretly plotting a new edifice of power to replace the crumbling Republic… I think that is far too charitable. These people are morons and have absolutely no idea the damage they are inflicting upon us.

Trust is essential, in fact… THE essential requirement for a society to function properly. Sometimes that “trust” is based on the knowledge that your behavior if it falls against the will of the regime, will result in your “disappearance”. There is some value to that predictive ability. This is not an essay on the moral value of authoritarianism, but rather a simple empirical observation. Many of my readers are well aware of the accolades I give to Francis Fukuyama. A modern political scientist and political philosopher in his own right, his 1995 book, “Trust”, outlines this concept.

Without trust, especially in the judiciary, an entire society is lost. If I don’t trust that, I will receive a predictive outcome in either a civil or criminal court, I will mitigate my risk of loss civilly by not engaging in commercial activity, and criminally I may engage in enhanced criminal activity because the risk of loss is so low.

We are seeing the latter in New York and Los Angeles right now. We are about to see the consequences of perceived judicial illegitimacy across our entire economy.

When a decision is reached, especially at the Supreme Court level, there must be an acceptance. The battle has not been completely finished. That is specifically why we have the structural ability to amend the Constitution. Dred Scott… a thoroughly loathsome decision was ultimately overruled by the people through the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Abolishing the Supreme Court as a form of remedy for a distasteful decision was not part of the deliberative process of the body politic.

Secession? Well… that is a different story… and one that ultimately happened, with over 600,000 dead as a result. This is not the road the collectivists want to go down.