POLITICS 101

Condensed by Tom Curtis © 4 Jul 2005

The Greek word “polis” (i.e., city-state) is the origin for the sociological concept of managing scarce resources by a dominant hierarchy that makes decisions for groups from their collective consent—as in religious, academic, corporate and government entities generally—the method of control for all human social interactions. Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth century philosopher (read: “Leviathan”), opined social contracts are developed from exchanging freedom of personal actions for stability and security.

Control is the end result of political action, inhibiting the natural individual desire to be totally free in pursuit of all available life-sustaining resources. Before the Greek example (read: “Republic”), most societies developed from family (tribal) associations, with leadership via some genetic pecking order typical in other species.

Governments exist by reason of an implied contractual agreement with citizens of a society, allowing certain restrictions and rules limiting individual freedom of action. Members of any particular society are constrained by the power of accepted authority, most often through enforcement of rules of conduct.

The basic method of enforcement is fear, intimidation by threat of consequence. The universal problem of government is resolving conflicts in the wills of its constituents, thus (per Hobbes): bellum omnium contra omnes, war of all against all. Plato, Cicero, and Rousseau similarly reduced the concept of government to that state of universal order, for conflict can be observed as basic in nature.

The necessary role of participants in any society is to control the controllers. In modern, post-tribal cultures unions of individual wills have evolved that are directed toward sustaining acceptable codes and standards for both governors and governed. Traditionally, political parties eschew change, seeking to maintain a priori values without redefining newly perceived entitlements of individuals. Thus, political parties become bastions of resistance to renewal of effective priorities for collective social needs. Loyalists hope their particular established path will eventually lead to a beneficial future, despite the human failures in inept authoritarian leadership—hypocrisy, secrecy, lies, fraud, greed, and other non-altruistic personal agendas.

In our mixed culture political associations, we are struggling to escape the constraining ideologies of the “left” and “right” extremisms. The terms “left” and “right” have questionable value in the modern world, for they were assigned to members seated in the late eighteenth century French assembly. Contemporary “Libertarians" don’t fit either definition, for they are classically liberal but reject government regulation of an individual’s properties—very like our country’s founders. Generally, “leftists” are considered supporters of socialism, extremes of which are communism and anarchy. The “rightists” tend to sustain an “old order,” status quo, religious morality, and oppose whatever social revitalizations are proposed by the Left. As noted above, polarization is a natural condition in achieving balance, whether in politics or physics.

It must follow that some form of moderating conflict must be established, i.e., by “government.” To what degree the power to make and enforce rules should be allowed any social organization is the function of politics. Every citizen is a politician, for every individual decides to which rules of society s/he should conform. In our country, most citizens have the option to ”control the controllers”—by voting. “Power to the people!” is not a sterile battle cry, but a call to every society to save itself.

The Libertarian ideal expects all individuals to be responsible for the consequences of their choices, expressed as “Live, and let live.” The proper admonition to a malicious entity is, “What if it were you?” However, we cannot expect utopian standards to prevail, for balance in every sphere of action is the result of conflict. Catch 22: in order to reduce conflict, we must engage in conflict. To do nothing is to accede to whatever conditions may be intolerable. If we wish to limit the power of political decision makers to impinge on our personal freedoms, we have to constantly challenge their ordinations.