We're all in this together but not necessarily on the same side.

[danieldwilliam]

Whilst watching the student protests and the subsequent police riots I was thinking about our constitution and how flawed it is.

My view is…

Essentially we are dealing with the fall out of a failed move from an Oligarchy to an Absolutist Monarchy where power is highly centralised. Parliament took on many of the powers of an Absolute Monarch and much of the mind set. Specifically, that people and The People, were up to no good and must be controlled. We have a formal tyranny of Parliament (and have had for centuries). The UK comports itself like a paranoid state where drunken uncouth scum with property and access to acute rented physical violence dominate (usually) property drunken uncouth scum with limited access to home grown violence.

Government must keep control of the streets as an act of will rather than facilitating people being orderly as a natural occurrence.

Government is seen as the legitimisation of the appropriation of goods, property, labour and military effort for the private glory of the Monarch (or His successors in law, Parliament) rather than as a mechanism for their allocation for the public good or in accordance with relative models of fairness.

In this regard we are having the opposite experience to the Late Roman Republic and Early Empire (and the US?)

There has been some movement towards a more democratic structure but essentially, it’s still about them and us. At no point have we as nation-state had a conversation with ourselves about how we should best govern ourselves. Why not? Because the apparatus of government is still designed to wield the absolute power of a monarch. In order to get anywhere near that power you have to think like an absolutist and be prepared to become one.

This works okay when nothing very stressful is happening or when we are all agreed on a course of action but it works less well where there is stressful disagreement.

I'm glad I live in Scotland where we seem to have a more settled view on how we live and work together.  I currently view the English state with great distrust and cynicism and I'm actively contemplating voting for independence if every offered the opportunity.

So, I take an interest in voting reform, because if the bastards doen't work for us, we work for them.
 

Comments

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

How are you on Hobbes? (Not Calvin and Hobbes, the other one). Most of my understanding of the social contract comes from there. Basically, I think we gave up the right to exact individual revenge in return for giving the state a monopoly on violence. All the other hedges of freedom are frippery compared to that one. If you do that, there must be a mechanism for removing a government that exercises that right improperly, which is the difference between a tyranny and a democracy (it's a formal distinction: there can be no mechanism for removing the tyrant in a tyranny. One of the things that makes The Declaration of Arbroath a revolutionary document, centuries ahead of its time in Europe, is that it stated that the people could remove a monarch acting contrary to the people's will. No wonder the English never trusted the Scots).

Distrust is a good and appropriate response to the exercise of power. It should be questioned whenever you see it happening. Cynicism, OTOH, is corrosive because you start out by assuming the worst. This can be appropriate, but it eats away at yourself and at the body politic. It leads to statements like "All politicians are the same", or the shorter formulation, "All politicians are bastards" when actually there are huge differences in intent and action in different politicians and many of them are driven by noble intentions. Which doesn't mean I agree with them, but if there are no Gods, then there are no Monsters.