KINDS OF GOVERNMENT: Authoritarian and Republican
Authoritarian: ruling is for the few
Logic
- Power exists for the sake of glory and conquest. Might makes right. Nothing matters but being on the winning side. War is all.
- Corruption, and all other supposed public vices, are but rhetorical weapons used by the weak to bind the strong
- Only the few can exercise power with effect; power is like money; if widely shared, it is mostly wasted
- The many are a power resource to be used by the strongest few, when necessary, but never trusted
Historical Experience
Authoritarian government, in a variety of forms, sometimes benign but often brutal, prevails overwhelmingly in human history, both in time and space
- History is the rise and fall of empires and the civilizations nursed by a talented few whose ideas are protected and spread by imperial conquest
Republican: from personal to public responsibility
Note on the term "republican": Why not use the term "democratic"?
- Descriptive accuracy
- Historical consistency
- Intellectual honesty and the danger of lapsing into petty partisanship
Logic
Power exists for the sake of meeting community needs; the more widely it is shared the more power there is. Absolute power in the hands of a few always corrupts.
- A community moral code, ever-changing but based on past experience, is the starting point for personal choice and for a constitutional framework of laws that govern the community
- Prosperity, not glory, is the long-term goal of every community. Peace, not war, is essential to the commerce and trade on which prosperity is based
- Every person is to be readied for public responsibility and is accountable to the community and its laws for the exercise of such responsibility.
- Those who exercise public responsibility are accountable to the community they serve and must strive to embody the highest standards of personal and public virtue.
Historical Experience
Republics are rare and fragile, though few republics are ever conquered without first being weakened from within by decay of their moral and constitutional frameworks. Corruption and violent factionalism are more dangerous to republics than invasion by imperial enemies.
History, with its rise and fall of empires, is largely tragedy and folly. Progress and civilization depends on personal initiative and individual responsibility, resulting in commercial republics and their commitment to individual freedom and the rule of law.