At the heart of all our political debates is really one simple question. What kind of world do we want? What separates us all are not dramatic differences in the answer to this question, but rather our understanding of humanity and the potential to achieve the desired end. Mankind has struggled with this question since the time we began rational thought. Yet, here we are untold millenniums later still wrestling with it.
We’ve gone through how many great and lessor civilizations as we attempt to answer that question for the betterment of us? But it always comes down to societies where there are those with much and those with little. Why? Today, we see a continuation of the economic struggles we saw in the Nineteenth Century and earlier. The same conditions Charles Dicken’s condemned in his famous depiction of Ebenezer Scrooge.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
Why despite all the political protestations and promises of universal wealth have we apparently not progressed onto a utopia where all mankind is rewarded for their being a part of the great society and sharing in the wealth of the planet?
“Socrates defined men as limited and therefore not capable of reaching absolute truth, he also believed they had an immense capability for attaining an ever more refined idea of the just and the good. This awareness and definition of man as primarily a thinking being is the basis of Western philosophy.”[1]
As Socrates noted almost 2,500 years ago, man is limited, and therefore the solutions we enter into are limited by our understandings. Our founding fathers, in their Declaration of Independence from King George and Great Brittan, noted that “all men are created equal” a wonderful statement intended to dismiss the superiority of the Crown. But does it truly mean that all men and women are equal in all aspects of life? It wasn’t true when Thomas Jefferson wrote it and it’s not true today. If it was then everyone would excel at everything and there would be no elites. It doesn’t matter if it is in sports, entertainment, industry, politics, or finance. There are elites in each. Some are born into an elite status; others earn their way into it and still, others join elites only to fall from grace. For example, King George was born into the elite, and because of his inability to govern lost the American Colonies. O.J. Simpson was perhaps one of the greatest running backs, yet from his choices he has fallen from grace, spending time in prison and carrying with him the accusation of murder. In the 1800s, with the start of the industrial revolution, we saw the rise of wealth with tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt (shipping & trains), John D. Rockefeller (oil), Andrew Carnegie (steel) where a few men created employment for thousands, but almost unimaginable wealth for themselves.
Of course, over time, lesser men and women who did not achieve their own fortunes came to call them the “Robber Barons” of the industrial revolution. Don’t we see the exact same thing today? Where those who would seek the power and wealth of the billionaires claim billionaires are immoral for their wealth and only achieved it because the government allowed it. They, the politicians, if given half a chance would seek to redistribute their wealth to make everyone a little richer? What doesn’t get mentioned too often is what percentage would be taken by those who control the redistribution system, or what would happen to the industries they’ve created?
Mankind has understood since the advent of the written word we come to this life with a variety of qualities. Some good and some bad. For the Israelites, God gave Moses 10 rules to live by. Over time they were greatly expanded until Jesus came to simplify them back into their original form. Other faiths and societies have come to similar conclusions. At their heart is the realization mankind is greedy and selfish and allowed to go unchecked it will lead to our destruction.
Thus, we are in a struggle today, which has been repeated a thousand times throughout history. Is the path to utopia found in an all-powerful government, which makes grand promises, but at the end consolidates its power and wealth in a privileged ruling class, or do we decentralize power to the individuals and expect those individuals to act towards a common good?
Our founders argued this question and we can see the two sides laid out in the Federalist papers and the “anti-Federalist” rebuttal. In the end, they reached a compromise where they recognized the potential for abuse by the federal system and allowed the states a degree of autonomy as a check for that potential. They also established a system of “checks and balances” within the federal system. Unfortunately, over the years the government has grown so vast and powerful there is a real question as to the legitimacy of those checks.
In conclusion, we return to the question of “what kind of world do we want?” A world where everything is done for us, or one where we have the authority to choose for ourselves what course our life will take? For those are the two paths we have. The history of mankind has shown when we have an all-powerful government, the choices of the individual (at least those not in the ruling class) are limited by what the ruling class allows.
