2008-10-23 - 10:54 a.m.
I was pondering the point and reason for the existence of a government, and I got to thinking, what the heck is it good for anyway? We know that governments takes on different forms and they are all frought with problems. Whether you're the Queen of Tajikistan or the Dictator of Bhutan, there's always someone protesting you, there's always someone losing their home because of the new law you passed, and there's always, ALWAYS people who need more, more, more. We know people do not understand the point of government, most of the time beyond that they pave your roads, take your tax money and they give you welfare checks. Much of the time, we don't even know who is doing what for us, and who has what responsibility and jurisdiction for different things going on around us. Is it an agency? Is it city, state or federal government that is supposed to do this or that? Who do I complain to about this problem or that problem and who do I go to for this license or that license? Is this a city cop or a state marshal or a county sheriff or a fed or what? Who does what? What's with all the bureaucracy? Why is government bloated and how does one streamline it?
All of these questions have gone through my mind at some point or another, and it can get daunting. My point, however, is something grander than this. Long ago, government was not what we know it as today. Long, long ago, it was much closer to the ideal represented in the preamble of our US Constitution. Long long ago, government was truly, "We the people".
Groups of people have always had to deal with each other as a community and with outside communities in order to survive. There have always been collaborations. There have always been confrontations. The most basic form of "government", then, comes from the most local and intimate group of coexisting people, whether that be a household of close kin, or a village of a particular part of a tribe. In these units, collaborations help the group survive and thrive. In these units, confrontations are dealt with in accordance to a standard of customs.
So it seems that from the very foundation of what can be considered the rudiments of government, the job of government is to protect its people. Furthermore, at the same level of foundation, it is essential that the government that is protecting the people is made up of and all-inclusive of the people. So in other words, WE ARE the government and our job is to help protect each other.
Now all of this collaboration and responsibility toward people and government has never really replaced the more basic unit of one individual human being's existence. I am responsible for me. I have free will. I have a life that I call my own. I make the decisions that affect me directly. No one else lives my life for me. No one else is responsible to take care of me. No one else NEEDS to take away from their own lives to contribute anything to mine.
So the integration of everyone for themselves and everyone for each other must mesh for good government to work. We fend for ourselves. We take care of our own. But we also see the upholding of our cohesive units as necessary for the well-being of our tribe. It adds fitness to the group to uphold the group rather than fend for ourselves all the time, and to have complete anarchy.
I would like to extrapolate that line of thinking to what "government" is doing for us now. Are we being "protected"? Are we participants in the governing of our "tribe"? Are we aware of every level of our tribe? Are the decisions being made at the government level protecting the whole tribe equally? I would love to say yes, but that is not the case. Our tribe is too big for one type of protection system to work for everyone. There are cultural, physical, climatic, environmental and social differences even within our one country of the United States.
The core of our government at the federal level has the trident separation of powers helping us deal with the way we take care of each other. One group discusses problems, comes up with the best solution, and writes it down as a law. The next group makes sure that people adhere to that law. And the last group takes people who have broken the laws and listens to their arguments about what happened and why they did what they did, dealing out appropriate punishments. In this way, we have set up "laws" as the standard of our way of dealing with each other.
If my government, with me included in it, is supposed to protect me as its basic function, then I expect it to protect me in most foreseeable circumstances. As individual human beings with lives that, at their essential level of existence, are equal, we deserve to be protected equally. In our day and age, however, we have allowed certain people to become more equal than others. With money and influence, certain people are able to break laws that are there for the equal protection of everyone, and the leveling of the playing field of a functional and scrupulous government.
The concept of money, which is an equitable substance, is supposed to help people contribute their share to the tribe in return for the benefits of the protection granted by the tribe's government. However, when we take away the idea of protecting people and we let money be the driving force of laws, we undercut the purpose of government and we cheat the people of their contribution to government. We steal the contribution because there is no protection. What I mean is, when we mix the protection that is supposed to be provided by the politics of government with the "free-trade" that is bestowed by the economics of government, we, as a people and as a governing body, are cutting the legs out from beneath ourselves. "Free-trade" means no rules. And the closer we get to "free-trade", the less the government can do about how people make money, including cheating.
As an equitable means of exchange, money must be earned through something produced. Whether substance or service, the production justifies the earning. Since the time our government allowed the economics of the country to go forth unchecked and without structured oversight of laws and agencies discerning what is and what is not equitable means of making money, the people in the field of economics have managed to swindle money from people with false promises. They cheated. They stole. They broke the laws...which did not exist in the first place, but general sensibilities of a tribal unit would call it criminal. Free trade was bought from the government by the "haves" and the "have nots" were left holding the bag of empty credit. In the name of sound economy, the people we put in the seat of our government, with our complacency, with our approval, and with OUR ability to know how to curtail such treachery, have given the green light to MORE OF THE SAME. Not only have we been stabbed in the back, but our protectors are sharpening the next set of knives for the plunging.
It is not just jay-walkers, murderers, terrorists, rapists and other tribes that our tribe needs protection from. We need to be protected from our own tribe members who come up with new ways to skirt the laws to benefit more for themselves than for the betterment of the tribe. The contributions from the members of the tribe to the protectors needs to STOP until the situation improves and we have, once again, a government that understands that it is its job to enforce laws for equitable protection in exchange for equitable contribution.
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