Nothing can positively be said of the Federal Court's forcing of homosexual marriage upon the people. It is an era of concentrating wealth and political power corrupting the polity, social moral norms and degrading the prospects and reason of the people. Hitler's S.A. of led by the homosexual Ernst Rohm had a comparable radicalism. The Catholic Church in Mussolini's fascist state had a certain perhaps necessary recalcitrance about expressing anti-fascist policy. A polity incapable of violent revolt because of the concentration of military power is inevitably doomed to experience the oppression and dictates of ruling elites. Americans are permitted to have democracy so long as they acquiesce in the will of the rich to inimically degrade and dehumanize them. This is not the first instance of systematic political corruption that is economically inefficient for the masses.
Human nature expressing itself in capitalism substantively co-opts the beneficial aspects of free enterprise negating the hypothetical inventions and individual allocations of opportunity and competition with proprietary exploitation of advantage. The advantaged purge the less advantaged from the field and import cheap labor not able to expect government benefits or a right to vote. Serialized social-economic purges of theoretical political peers permit concentration of wealth and power in elites. As the broadcast media is controlled by concentrated power a unofficial yet viable purge of antipathetic political opinion occurs. Propaganda in support of the new social order becomes normalized.
Human nature seeks to totalize advantage over all land. Concentrated wealth would own every possible place anyone might exist without paying tribute to the rich power of control. Monarchy and aristocracy had absolute power over people regarded as subjects. Subjects and those that cannot exist in freedom any place without paying rent for existing to the concentrated power are effectively slaves. Though the developing new planetary slavery may not form on a particularly racist basis with equal opportunity enslavement for all, may yet be a developing condition wherein no human might exist free of enslavement to the Plutonomy.
Karl
Barth wrote of a prior era...quote-
”Only
the clever English, perhaps one of the few nations really gifted
politically foresaw in time the folly of this development, though
they were just as penetrated by the spirit of absolutism as the rest,
and introduced checks which spared them the catastrophe to which the
system by its nature must lead.
This
political absolutism from above has, as is known, two variants. They
have in fact crossed and mingled in many ways; their roots are one,
but they may be clearly distinguished. The principle 'through power
to power' had of course also a non-military aspect. This could
consist in the princely display of splendour and pomp at which Louis
XIV was so inventive, even creative, setting a baleful example which
was widely followed. The name of Versailles has thrice had
great historical significance resulting in grave consequences. The
first time it was as the prototype and symbol of a princely attitude
to life and form of life, based on unqualified power. From this life
there flowed a brilliance, like the glory of a god, into
architecture, the gardens and parks, the decoration in the houses,
into comforts and enjoyments of every kind, but above all into the
transitory but all the more intoxicating splendour of the
festivities. Far beyond the boundaries of France there
arose small and miniature imitations of Versailles whose
princely and noble inhabitants attempted, with more or less luck and
dignity and taste, to emulate Louis XIV.
After
his death the Regent Philip of Orleans, then Louis' grandson,
Louis XV, in Germany Augustus the Strong of Saxony,
Eberhard Ludwig, Karl Alexander, and Karl Eugen of Wurtemberg, Max
Emanuel and Karl Theodor of Bavaria, Ludwig IX of Hesse,
and many others, were absolute princes of this kind. The notorious
immorality, even debauchery, the just as notorious financial
transactions, and the scandalous arbitrariness of justice at all
these courts, was perhaps not the necessary, but as has happened in
all similar phenomena in history the practical, consequence of the
representation which one thought to be owing and that not without
some logic to the conception of the prince by divine right.”
“The
idea inevitably presupposed great demands upon the economy of the
country, which were made with an astonishing unconcern not to speak
of the sons of Hesse and Brunswick who were sold
out of hand to America! And ironically enough the command was in
fact often not in the hands of its true possessor, but largely and
for all to see in those of a woman sometimes, admittedly, in those of
a woman far from unfitted for such an office, but only in a
derivative sense can her rule ever have been described as by the
grace of God. But all these things cannot and must not blind us to
the tremendous stimulus imparted to economic and artistic life by the
fantastic burgeoning of absolutism.
Neither
must we forget that the luxury these potentates cultivated, though so
dubious in many respects, acted in practice as a safety valve and
corrective against the possibility of a universal state of war, which
should really have been the logical consequence of the general
principle 'through power to power' and of dynastic cabinet politics.
If
it had not been for the Sun-king's notion of the unfolding of power
and the relative enervation which was involved herein, Louis himself
and all the other God-kings might well with the absolute power they
had arrogated have reduced Europe to even greater disasters than
those they did in fact cause. Lastly it should be added that anyone
who failed to sense not only the pathos imparted by lavishness of
ideas, space and materials, but the underlying, unending and truly
insatiable yearning in the midst of sensual delight which emanates
from every line and form of the art of the age would be guilty of
badly misunderstanding those artistic and architectural monuments of
that time which still hold a meaning for us. It is this eternal
yearning which is the style's inmost beauty, a beauty peculiarly
moving for all the horror which is sometimes apt to seize the
beholder.
Besides
this kind of political absolutism there was another, going by the
name of enlightened absolutism. It is possible for the 'through power
to power' principle to manifest itself in depth rather than in
extent, rationally rather than aesthetically. In that case it takes
the form of experiments in social reform in the technical advance of
civilization, in agriculture, industry and in the economic sphere in
general, in health measures and policies designed to benefit the
population as a whole. There are attempts to improve the state of the
law, but also to advance the arts and sciences, to raise the general
standard of education in short all sorts of measures tending to the
so-called 'welfare' of the subjects of the state. In chastising a
Jew, Frederick William I says: 'You should love me rather than fear
me, love me, I say! ‘”
“There
is no blinking the fact, either, that Frederick's state had to be a
welfare state a Frederick naturally sees farther than the usual run
of despots in order to be precisely as welfare state a state
worshipping power, an absolute state. The fact remains that the
measure of wisdom and rectitude with which the king happened to be
endowed, together with the limitations imposed upon these qualities
by his highly individual character, his taste and his whims
limitations common to every mortal had the significance of destiny
for his people, his country and for every individual within his
realms a destiny which like God could bless or punish, might cherish
or destroy, and could do so without let of appeal to any higher law.”
It
is of course possible to question whether that other policy, pursued
in the Middle Ages in the name of the imperial ideal, ever became a
reality anywhere. But there was at least a chance that it might be
realized while it was still at least an active point of reference
(question-able in itself but at least fairly well-defined) within the
framework of the imperial ideal. It was when this fell away that the
realization of such a policy became impossible. For when the prince's
power was made absolute, a step which brought with it the death of
the imperial ideal, the prerequisite of such a policy, the very
notion of a concrete responsibility, of a higher authority, was
removed also, and in its place there arose the state without a
master, or alternatively the state governed by an arbitrary master,
beneath whose sway, even if he were the best of all possible
monarchs, justice was a matter of pure chance.
We
have taken the one kind of political absolutist, the absolute prince,
as the first for discussion. The second kind, his perfectly
legitimate brother, his alter ego, following in his footsteps as
inevitably as the darkness following the light, as the thunder
following the lightning, is the absolute revolutionary or perhaps it
would be better to say, since his predecessor was already a
revolutionary the revolutionary from below, the representative of the
lower class, who conceiving those above him to have injured him in
his rights, and even to have deprived him of them, takes steps to
defend himself by snatching the power lying in the hands of the
governing princes in order that he might now determine without let of
appeal what is right and just, because he in his turn has the power
in his hands. The roles
are reversed. Whereas before it had been the prince who had declared
himself to be identical with the state, it was now the people, the
'nation', as it at this time began to be called, who assumed the
title by means of a simple inversion of Louis XIV's dictum. This
happened true to type in Paris on the 17th
June, 1789. The representatives of the so-called third estate, who
were, be it remembered, the delegates of that section of the
population of France which was in the overwhelming majority,
formed themselves into a 'National Assembly 9 and three days later
declared with a collective oath, that they were determined in the
teeth of all opposition never to disband until they had given the
state a new constitution.
Everything
that happened afterwards, up to the execution of Louis XVI and
beyond, was a direct result of this event. Its inner logic is,
however, as follows. (We shall restrict ourselves in the following to
the two classic revolutionary documents, the Declaration of
Independence of the United States of America of June 1776
and the Statement of Human and Civil Rights ratified by the French
National Assembly in August 1789). According to the revolutionary
doctrine there exists a self-evident truth which can and must be
recognized and announced en presence et sous les auspices de verre
supreme:
1.
All men are equal, i.e. created with equal rights (Am.), or
alternatively
(as in the Fr.), born with equal rights.
2.
These equal rights are of nature, inalienable, sacred (Fr.), endowed
by their creator (Am.).
3.
Their names are freedom, property, security and the right to protect
oneself from violence (Fr.) or: life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness (Am.). The French statement goes on to make a special point
of saying that freedom consists in being able to do anything which
does not harm anybody and is not as such forbidden by law. And it
also considers the right to property important enough to describe it
in a special last article as inviolable et sacral
4.
It is in order to protect these rights that governments are
instituted among men (Am.). Le but de toute association publique est
la conservation des droits . . . de I'homme (Fr.).
5.
Governments derive their just authority from the consent of the
governed.
Le principe de toute souverainite' reside essentiellement dans la
nation. All authority exercised by individuals or corporate bodies
stems expressly from the people.
6.
The law is V expression de la volonte finale so all must have a part
in making it, all are equal in its eyes and every office and honour
for which it provides are as a matter of principle open to all.
7.
Whenever a form of government becomes injurious to the aims
of
the state, i.e. to the upholding of the rights aforementioned it is
the people's right to remove it and replace it by a government more
conducive to their safety and happiness. It will be advisable not to
proceed too hastily in such an event, but once it has become plain
that a government is seeking to establish absolute despotism it is
not only the citizen's right but his duty to free himself of its
yoke.”-end quote
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