Chapter Seven
THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED
During the age of kings, successful kingdoms all followed the same pattern: loyal followers of the king would seek a king until he was found; the followers would ask to do the king's bidding; the king would bid and then reward those who successfully accomplished his bidding. Rarely did the king's followers understand that the king's power depended on the consent of the governed.
People have always needed a Strong Man, someone to whom they could look for guidance and protection. Without the presence of the Strong Man, the government, only a few hardy (perhaps foolhardy) individuals could presume to go it along. Hermits they were called. Everyone else cried out for a ruler to lead them.
The first and best known recorded example of this need for the Strong Man is found in 1 Samuel 8. "So all the elders of Israel came to Samuel at Ramal. They said to him, 'You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.
"But when they said, 'Give us a king to lead us,' this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: 'Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected as their king, but me. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do..." (A litany of the king's abuses to come follows.) The story continues, "But the people refused to listen to Samuel. 'No!' they said, 'We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."
"When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord. The Lord answered, 'Listen to them and give them a king.'"
In light of those shaky theological underpinnings, it is surprising that the Doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings lasted as long as it did in Western Civilization. The only viable explanation for why the age of kings lasted as long as it did is because the people simply could not come up with anything better. Until 1776, that is. By that time a number of people in the American Colonies had come to understand what the story in 1 Samuel so clearly demonstrates, Rulers rule because of the consent of the governed.
Some people had figured that out long before. Within ancient kingdoms, class lines were clearly drawn between the commoner and the Nobility. The age of feudalism in Western Civilization was a time when many small kings held sway over relatively small parcels of land and the people who lived there. The common people looked to the Lord of the Manor as their king and protector. They did his bidding, and were rewarded or punished in light of the consequences of their service.
During the Middle Ages, all these small kingdoms were consolidated into much larger kingdoms with the lords conceding power to one from their ranks to whom they would swear allegiance as King. But the lesser lords never forgot where the king got his power from: their consent. In return for their consent, they expected certain things from the king.
In English law, the Magna Charta is usually held forth as a distant forerunner of the United States Constitution, but in fact the Magna Charta was a formal admission on the part of the King concerning the rights of the Nobles in the king's realm. It was the king's formal admittance of the fact that in return for the lord's consent to be governed the king owed them certain rights. The point is that the lords in the king's realm always understood that the king governed because the nobility had given their consent to be governed. Anytime enough nobility withdrew their consent, Civil War was sure to follow.
Ordinary people, common people they were called, who for centuries were unable to read the books available to the clergy and the nobility did not ignore the meaning of the events they were participating in. In time, they too came to understand where government power resided. English common law evolved over the centuries after Magna Charta to include more and more precedents suggesting that individuals had rights that could not be taken away by any monarch.
By the time of the American Revolution, the unwritten English constitution as well as English common law had a well defined notion of individual liberty. But there was still considerable confusion in the minds of the people caused by centuries of being drilled in the doctrine of the Divine Rights of Kings.
Henry Steele Commanger and Richard B. Morris, editors of THE SPIRIT OF 'SEVENTY-SIX a compilation of thousands of letters, diaries and published addresses of the participants in the Revolution, explain the events leading to independence this way: "Few things about the history of the American Revolution are ore impressive than the slowness with which feeling in favor independence matured, and the reluctance of the great majority of Americans to contemplate the necessity or the inevitability of a final separation. Far from being those rash, headstrong and violent demagogues that Hutchinson described, that Germain denounced, that King George imagined the leaders of the American Revolution were prudent, cautious and judicious. There were exceptions, to be sure... But the great majority of those who voted independence and ultimately won it were not, at the beginning, separatists..."
"The decisive change in sentiment can be dated from the publication of that remarkable pamphlet, 'Common Sense,' written by the gifted Thomas Paine, newly arrived from England. Published early in January 1776, it was speedily republished in most of the cities of the colonies, and within a few weeks its influence was felt everywhere. 'Thousands,' wrote the South Carolina historian Ramsey, 'were converted by it and were led to long for a separation from the mother country.' Some, indeed, heard Paine's words as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, but to most he spoke with the tongue of angels..."
Here is what Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" had to say about the question of the king's authority: "But there is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind."
"In the early ages of the world, according to the Scripture chronology there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion. Holland without a king hath enjoyed more peace for this last century than any of the monarchical governments in Europe. Antiquity favors the same remark; for the quiet and rural lives of the first patriarchs have a happy something in them, which vanishes when we come to the history of Jewish royalty."
"Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The heathens paid divine honors to their deceased kings, and the Christian world has improved on the plan by doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of sacred Majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!"
"As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of Scripture; for the will of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by kings..."
The last sentence quoted from Paine's "Common Sense" refers to the passage in 1 Samuel reviewed at the beginning of this chapter. The passage makes it clear that the Lord's permission to allow kingship was reluctantly given after the people had consented to be governed by a king.
Paine's "Common Sense" was published shortly after preliminary skirmishes had begun between colonial and British forces and before any formal declaration of independence had been issued by the colonies. The skirmishes had created among many in the colonies deep fear, fear that moved many to fervently seek a way to be reconciled with Great Britain. Paine addressed those fears in "Common Sense": "Ye that tell us of harmony and reconciliation, can ye give to prostitution its former innocence? Neither can ye reconcile Britain and America. The last cord is now broken, the people of England are presenting addresses against us. There are injuries which nature cannot forgive; she would cease to be nature if she did. As well can the lover forgive the ravishes of his mistress, as the continent forgive the murderers of Britain. The Almighty hath implanted in us these inextinguishable feelings for good and wise purposes. They are the guardians of his image in our hearts. They distinguish us from the herd of common animals. The social compact would dissolve, and justice be extirpated from the earth, or have only a casual existence, were we callous to the touches of affection. The robber and the murderer would often escape unpunished, did not the injuries which our tempers sustain, provoke us into justice."
In the language of Paine's diatribe we can see him struggling to find words that would invalidate the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, that would explain how colonial independence was in accordance with the will of god. Without such validation the governed could never consent to support independence. Once again, we see how governmental authority always, in the final analysis, rests on what the governed consider to be the will of god.
But Paine's interpretation of the will of god was just that--Paine's interpretation. It did not go unchallenged. The diary of Colonel Landon Carter of Virginia demonstrates the difficulty of the governed finding anything approaching a consensus on so difficult a question as the will of god: "24 Saturday, February, 1776. I was at Col. Tayloe's yesterday. Jones was there. At first he introduced the pamphlet called Common Sense, of Philadelphia production, as a most incomparable performance. I replied it was as rascally and nonsensical as possible, for it was only a sophisticated attempt to throw all men out of principles, and I showed him several parts, and it was as much the random of a despot as anything could be, for it declared every man a damned scoundrel that didn't think as he did, a coward and a sycophant; and, after reducing mankind to mere brutish nature, that of an implacable and unforgiving temper, it tells us it is that image of God at first implanted in us. Just as if he who said "Father, forgive them," etc., in his expiring moments, intended to instance himself on the cross as an example of unforgiveness. This man writes for independency, and is under the necessity of stating an independence in man at his creation, when it is evident that he must be a social being..."
Thomas Paine's remarks and Landon Carter's response demonstrate clearly that at the heart of the thing called the American Revolution was the question of the will of god. No person could be comfortable supporting a Revolution until that question had been answered, for the people of 18th century America, like the people of the rest of the world, were very reluctant to find themselves in opposition to the will of the Creator.
By the time the American Revolution began, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, and the people who supported them, knew that all it took to nullify the king's right to govern was for the people to withdraw their consent to be governed. To see how they arrived at that conclusion is to see precisely how the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings met its demise in the United States of America.
And that's exactly what the Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence, "...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." By the time the Revolutionary War ended, there were hardly any commoners left in United States of America: all those who supported the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings had been forced to flee the country.
Why did it take so long for people to figure out where government got its just powers from? Social scientists have spent a lot of time studying an interesting phenomenon called "reification." Reification occurs when people create something--anything--then forget they created the something. In other words, reification occurs when people stand back and treat the thing they created as if it had not been created by themselves, as if it somehow had an existence and power independent of those who created it. Reification, in this sense, corresponds exactly with what the Bible calls idolatry. People would build an idol out of wood or clay then worship the idol as if the idol had power in itself. That is reification, and it is precisely what Thomas Paine was talking about when he said, "The heathens paid divine honors to their deceased kings, and the Christian world has improved on the plan by doing the same thing to their living ones."
It is no coincidence that in most dictionaries the word "reify" immediately precedes the word "reign." For in reality as in the dictionary, most reign is a product of reification. The kings of this world have always existed first as a concept, an abstraction, in the minds of people (a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles); then, when a person was found who conformed to the abstract image, power was bestowed by the people on that person who was then called king, and people stood back and treated the king as if the king had an existence independent of the people who created him. Inevitably the king and his Court hastened reification by defining the king's existence not as a product of the ability of people to transform an abstract image into a material object, but as a product of that which the will of God had created independent of the will of the people of this world.
In the discussion concerning the phenomenon called "reification" we encounter the various aspects of that most interesting phenomenon called "government." With reification in view, government begins to be understandable as something other than the authoritative "given" which, by definition, allows no questions. The relationship, the connection, between the imagination and the will of the many and the imagination and the will of the one begins to come in focus. This is not to deny the fact that after a government has been instituted, the governors are actually "out there" and have a power in themselves, but, remove the power invested in them by those who established them, and the power in the governors is no less or no greater than the power in any other individual of the same age, gifts and accomplishments.
A knowledge of the process of reification forces the individual to begin to distinguish between that which is a product of the will of man and that which is not a product of the will of man. To distinguish between those two categories of things is to disengage oneself from the power of reification, from the power of idolatry.
Some things become clear. The subjective will of man is not the source of the tree. Or the bird. Or the rocks on the moon. Or the moon. Or the stars. Or the wind. Those are things that exist even though the will of man is absent. The subjective will of man appears to be the source of the automobile. And the windmill. And the computer. And the Constitution of the United States of America. In other words, some things are created by man and others things are not created by man: government is one of the things created by man. For this reason everyone has a vested interest in government.
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Once we admit the propensity of the mind of man to confuse that which is a creation of the will of man with that which exists independent of the will of man, it becomes possible to analyze what has been happening in the halls of power in the United States of America in recent years. The reason this analysis is important is because the competition between ideas that will rule public opinion in the United States of America are a microcosm of the ideas in competition to rule the minds of all the people on this planet. Unless the people of all nations understand clearly these ideas, the response of the masses to the problem created by nuclear proliferation will be, at best, a response manipulated by leaders who have consciously chosen the ideas that will rule them, or, at worst, all of us, leaders as well as followers, will be like dogs reflexively responding to events that condition us.
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