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Governments, ah governments, we love them, we hate them, don't we?
We set up governments over us. The very reasons why we set them up and the duties we charge them to perform for us make them very dangerous to our health.
Let us see, in the Bible, it was said that Israelites felt threatened by their neighbors and to organize themselves for war, to protect themselves, they needed a secular/military leader. Apparently, they could no longer trust their divine leader, God, to protect them in human affairs. God granted them their wish alright and had them appoint Saul as their first King.
Beware of what you ask for, for if you get it, you might regret it. In addition to helping the Jews defeat their enemies Saul turned around and oppressed the Jews. Saul became the Jews worst nightmare. We ask for governments but governments can be tyrannical hence our worst nightmares.
Let us try another track, this time, secular. Why do we have government? Logical positivists, empiricists who eschewed reference to God, responded to that question with several philosophical treatises, including those by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, Jean Jacque Rousseau and others. Whereas in the past someone might have said that we have governments because God gave them to us, in the age of Cartesian skepticism it was no longer permissible, certainly not acceptable to rationalize any thing with sacerdotal arguments; one must provide a rational, read, secular rationalizations.
So why do we need governments? English empiricists gave us answers. The most important of English political philosophers, Thomas Hobbes gave us enduring answers. Let us briefly review his mythology, his story of the origin of governments. Please take this story very seriously for it is what is behind the behavior of governments, at least, those in the Western world.
In the beginning, all stories of origin begin with "in the beginning", don't they? In the beginning, human beings lived in the state of nature. That means that they were like other wild animals. They were predatory, kind of like lions and tigers. They roamed around the Serengeti Veldt. (I am assuming that man began his journey on earth in Africa, as Paleontologists tells us.) These predatory creatures were each concerned with personal survival and could care less for others survival.
As Charles Darwin told us in his seminal book, The Origin of Species, and Herbert Spenser reinforced in his book, Ethics, all we do is struggle for survival. We forage for food in search of survival. (But survive for what? Why do we live? Ah my beloved epistemology is useful after all? But let us not go there; let us concentrate on secular reductionism for a while.)
Animals, human beings included, search for food to enable them survive. At some point they discovered that it made sense to take the food other animals acquired. Why work if you can take the food other animals worked for? Better still, since we must work for our food, why not kidnap some persons and use force to compel them to work for your survival? Why not have slaves and threaten to kill them should they disobey you and since they fear death and they would work for you and make it possible for you to survive and survive in luxury?
If you could get other people to work for you, you could live in pleasure and not have to worry about the drudgery of making a living. You could then have the time to pursue the finer things of life, such as read this treatise? I bet that if you had to earn your living from farming, you would not have the time to read this stuff? Your mind would be stunted from performing the repetitious tasks of planting and harvesting, doing the same things over and over again, to read material on political theory.
As Hobbes sees it (Leviathan), life in the state of nature was nasty, brutish and short. Each of us attacked each of us and the strong prevailed on the weak until shrewd weak persons organized and overcame the strong. If you had food and property others took it from you. The cumulative effect is that we lived a very insecure existence. We lived in total fear, afraid that our fellow human beings could descend on us and kill us.
(Could this be the origin of paranoia? I have always wondered why those who lived in equatorial forests tend to have paranoid traits than those who lived in the savannahs; in the savannas you could see your enemies coming and prepare for his attack, whereas in the forest you could not see far and your enemy could attack and kill you at any time. Seriously, I want to know why many forest Africans have paranoid traits. If you are of the introspective type, could you please put on your thinking/research hat and tell me. I do not want defensive responses to this question.)
Life in the state of nature was characterized by insecurity, Mr. Hobbes tells us in the 1600s, when he wrote his book. (The man lived during the age of Shakespeare, Elizabethan England, that most intellectually productive era, just think of Marlowe.)
To reduce our insecurity, we decided to abridge our natural freedom by organizing ourselves in civil society. We formed a commonwealth (shared wealth) and appointed some of us to become our leaders. We formed a government.
Now get this point into your head. Why did we form governments? We formed governments to protect us, Mr. Hobbes tells us.
Let us ask the question differently? What is the purpose of government? To protect the people. Protect them from whom? Protect them from their fellow human beings. Protect them from those close to them and those far from them.
If that is the function of government, what should we be funding in government, welfare checks or the military?
Think, my friend, think. We should be funding the military, the police, courts, judges, and jails. Do you get it? Governments exist to protect us internally and internationally. We fund domestic protection, via police, courts and penal system and we fund for external security by having strong armies.
The real function of government, Hobbes tell us, and Western conservatives agree, is to prepare for war with all the enemies, real and imagined, surrounding us.
Man is a ferocious savage and if he has the opportunity he would kill other men and or enslave them and put them to working for him. If you want a modicum of freedom from slavery and or being killed by your fellow men, you have to have a government, a military apparatus that protects you from your smiling neighbors attack on you. Ah, people smile in front of you but behind your back scheme to do you in. They cannot help it for it is their nature.
(If you are trained in psychology, may I remind you that Thomas Hobbes had a paranoid personality? He felt that people were out to kill him and fled from England and ran all around Europe, fleeing from his real and imagined enemies. What is the point, you ask? The point is that the person whose political philosophy rules the Western world was a crazy man. If so, could it be that his philosophy is also crazy? Could it be that the world view of the West is insane? Do we need to overhaul the Western wulltenchuung? This is not a philosophical paper, this paper is basic stuff, freshman material, and so let us move on, no critical thinking here; we shall leave that for our graduate seminars.)
As Hobbes sees it, governments exist to protect us from our enemies and from ourselves. Governments are necessary evil. We must have governments to protect us from our neighbor's depredations.
There you have it. This accounts for why the American government spends billions of dollars on military preparedness and refuses to fund medical insurance for all Americans. This accounts why the first order of business of all Western governments is to have a first rate military.
It is assumed, in international relations, that the world out there is a jungle and that you must have military power or you are dead meat, or worse, slave. If you are not prepared for war, your neighbor would attack and defeat you and take over your land and enslave you.
Do you need empirical evidence to support this thesis? Are you living in America? Europeans came here, attacked the unprepared Indians, killed as many of them as they could and took over their land. Worse, they put the surviving Indians in reservations and sell them liquor. The Red man is slowly destroying himself with the Whiteman's "spirits'. At the rate these folks are self destroying, they may very well disappear from the face of this planet. (Please read Chief Seattle's pathetical acceptance of defeat and death in the hands of the white man. A real man ought to be fighting to the last second of his life and never give up on life on earth, as easily as Seattle did.)
In international relations, it is said that power rules the world. Country A will attack country B, if country B is weak and vice versa. Therefore, to avoid attack and conquest, both countries must eternally prepare to match their powers. Thus Balance of Power is said to be the only factor preventing war.
It is not the goodness of human beings that prevent war but matched power. America and Russia did not come to blows because of their mutually assured destruction. Their powers were balanced and should one attack the other, the attacked had the ability to destroy the attacker.
And then poor drunk Boris Yeltsin went soft on us and permitted America to be the sole superpower. Now see what he did, America, the sole superpower, like a cowboy is running around the world attacking and removing governments she does not like. She tells lies why she does so. Who cares, might makes right, "neocons" tell us.
Remove Saddam Hussein because your father did not finish him off when he had the opportunity to do so, and that cost him the presidency and allowed the Arkansas country bumpkin, Bill Clinton, to drive patrician Bush out of office. So go after Mr. pathological narcissist himself, get rid of Hussein. Tell Americans, ignoramuses, that you went to war to destroy Hessian's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Your weapons of mass deception are all you need to accomplish your goal.
The point is that power rules the world and you must be powerful if you desire your liberty. This is view of the English school of thought. This school of thought rules our extant world. Whether you like it or not, you had better know about it and that is why I spend three hours every morning writing this stuff for you and then go to work another ten hours in the office. I am helping educate you about the real world you live in, not the sentimental world you think that you live in.
Governments exist to protect us from ourselves and from our neighbors, do you get that point? Do you agree or do you not? Actually, what you believe is the truth is irrelevant at this point. We are dealing with political reality, real politics, not your idealistic politics.
We set up governments to protect us. We give them the means to protect us. We give them the means of coercion. Governments are those social agents given the power to arrest, jail and even and kill citizens. Do you get that point? Governments exist to attack, jail and or kill people. Government is a negative, not positive force.
Leaders are those human beings who do not have qualms about attacking and killing people. If you squirm at the sight of blood you are not a natural leader of men. It is only if you can kill and not loose sleep over it that you are a leader of men, for after all the first order of business in leadership is war.
(Nigerians run around protesting military leaders in government. Poor idiots. Only military persons are qualified to lead the human polity. Aristotle, Plato and most political philosophers said so. We put wishy-washy, sentimental academics in power and expect these confused children to lead us. Real men ought to lead us. All that we can do is hope that these manly men, leaders, have some intelligence in their heads. Unfortunately, real men, the military type tends to be average in intelligence, IQ lower than 115. Society is condemned to being ruled by average men. May be that is not such a bad thing, after all, for if we were to have the brainy types, IQ over 130 to rule us, there could be disaster? We shall never find out, for all over the world, average men and women manage to end up ruling their countries. Superior minds tend to console themselves writing about what others do or teaching and or doing researches at universities. Who said that life is fair? Why should some be mentally superior, any way?
Governments control the means of coercion in society. Leaders of governments can arrest, try and jail you and or give orders for you to be shot, all legitimately. This just about says it.
This point needs repeating for my countrymen, particularly Igbos who have had no experience with large governments. These sentimental persons tend to see government as opportunity to gratify their childish narcissistic traits. They see being governor as opportunity to be placed on a pedestal and being admired by other people, being seen as the most important person in the country. Thus the idiot called Aguiyi Ironsi was made the head of the Nigerian government and he did not anticipate that his fellow military officers were necessarily looking for opportunity to cut his throat. The drunkard went around thinking that he is a very important person. The man did nothing in government and as Yoruba Gowon said, thank God the idiot was done away with.
If Ironsi was a realistic leader and understood the real world he would have surrounded himself with loyalists and went ahead and implemented whatever political agenda he had, if he had one? But the man apparently saw his leadership position as from which he masqueraded as the biggest general in town. General, indeed, see, a private put a bullet into his idiot head and put him out of his miserable existence.
Political leaders are men at (cold) war; they lead their factions at war with other factions. They must plan their defense and since the best defense is offense, they must sometimes attack their enemies, before they attack them.
Governments exist to protect us from our evil nature. Without governments we kill each other and live in insecurity. Governments use force to create some peace among warring animals called human beings. Peace enables us to devote our lives to our chosen trades. Without governments' protection, we are attacked and killed by our neighbors and therefore would become insecure. We would then be obligated to seek private security. Our energies would be devoted to self defense and less would be left for creative thinking and action.
It is because I live in a well organized society called the United States of America that I take my security for granted hence go about thinking about politics. If I lived where there was no governmental protection of the citizen, I would feel insecure and spend most of my energies seeking ways to stay alive hence would have no time and energy devoted to intellectual pursuits.
Food and security must be available before human beings pursue self actualization, Abraham Maslow tells us. Where food and security is missing, equally intelligent persons devote their attention to seeking survival and are less productive. Thus, in Nigerian, people who are probably the world's most intelligent persons, because there is no food and security, due to their incompetent government, the people are less productive for they spend too much time trying to survive.
Government in Nigeria, did I say government in Nigeria? We do not have government in Nigeria. Our leaders are idiots and do not know a thing about the function of governments. If they did, the first thing that they would have done is beef up the forces of law and order, military, police, courts, jails etc. They would have gone after criminals, arrested and jailed them.
A country the size of Nigeria, 120 million, needs jail space for at least one million people. That is correct, were realistic leaders in Nigeria, many Nigerians would be in prison and would not be running around as thieves. All the corrupt politicians would have their "asses in the slammer", where they belong.
Civil Liberties
Hopefully you have understood the nature and function of governments? Let us return to the task at hand, civil rights and civil liberties. Question: if governments are given the power to arrest, try, jail and kill citizens, what does that mean to your civil liberties? It means that Governments are natural threats to the individual's freedom. I have told you that the very existence of government means that your freedom is reduced, right there. You cannot have natural license to do as you wished in organized, civil society. In civil society you live under the law and that, in effect, means that you cannot always do as you pleased. Your rights, ipso facto, are reduced in civil society. Do you get that point? Then let us move on.
Governments are two edged swords. They exist to protect us. That which can protect us can also harm us. Governments have the ability to take away our civil liberties. Governments have the ability to intimidate citizens and cow them into doing whatever they want them to do.
Let us see what we know about human beings. They talk boldly but point a gun at them and most of them would pee in their pants and beg for their lives. The average person is ruled by fear. Any one with power and who does not hesitate using violence to get his way will enslave 90% of humanity at any time.
People fear harm and death. If you have credible power to harm and kill them they would please you. (I have seen how fearful human beings are. As the CEO of an agency, I had the power to hire and fire people. People practically did every thing I asked them to do to keep their jobs. Did they do so because they loved me? Of course not. They were afraid of being fired. Indeed, many of them actively hated me and worked to oust me from my job, but being a realist, I ousted them before they could do real harm.)
People are cowards and fear harm and death. Governments can kill and people therefore fear governments.
(There is an Igbo chap on Naija-politics forum. This chap's self assigned function is to put Igbos down. He never sees anything good in Igbos. It is as if he waits for Igbos to make mistakes and he takes them as opportunity to harp on how bad they are. But he is always seeing Hausas in positive light. He never says anything negative about Hausas. Why do you think he does so? He is aware that Hausas rule Nigeria and have the power to harm him. Hausas can kill him. So the coward, to stay alive, desists from criticizing Hausas. He knows that Igbos do not have military power and therefore could not harm or kill him. Igbos are weak and the weak can be easily criticized and the criticizer gets away with it. This man is beyond contempt. He is the quintessential paranoid personality, a frightened chicken pretending to be courageous. He is so fearful that he hides and does not even participate in the forum with his real name. He is a despicable creature; he is what a human being ought not to be. This man would sing the praises of Igbos were they in power, that is how chameleon like he is. He makes one want to vomit.)
Governments have the power and ability to take away our civil liberties. Therefore, society must struggle to make sure that those in power do not take away people's civil liberties. To bring this about, written constitutions make provision for what's now called the Bill of rights.
In 1787, Americans wrote a spanking new constitution. This constitution gave enormous power to the central government. The former Articles of Confederation did not even make provision for a president of the United States; in effect, there was no central government. Folks just had a tussle with King George the Third and knew from experience what the Leviathan could do to them, take away their liberties. Therefore, when clear headed men saw the new constitution they went ballistic. Their antennas went up for they sensed that the new executive president, required by the constitution, could become a king and subject them to slavery, as King George did.
Rational Americans recognized the need for a strong national government but sought realistic ways to guarantee individuals' civil liberties. They asked that a Bill of Rights be added to the constitution, as a condition for their supporting it.
Hamilton, Madison and Jay (see The Federalist papers), those selling the constitution to the American people, agreed to have Congress make an amendment to the constitution and add a Bill of rights to it. Satisfied, these people voted for the new constriction, so that it got the two thirds states approval before it went into effect.
Congress immediately amended the constitution and added the Bill of rights. If it had not done so, since the states had the right to secede, they would have seceded and the United States would have died before it even began.
The Bill of rights in the United States constitution states that the government does not have the right to abridge the individual's right to pursue religion of their choice, speech to lawfully assemble, the right to privacy and that the government doesn't have the right to arrest citizens without due cause and if arrested must tell them why they were arrested and offer them opportunity to be tried by a jury of their peers. In effect, the Bill of rights recognized that governments are a threat to the individual's civil liberties and tried to protect him.
Does this then mean that the government of the United States respects the individual's civil rights?
As I write, I see a scene on my television where four white police offices are beating a black man in New Orleans, Louisiana. His crime? Suspected Drunkenness (but that could be a pretext to beat him, couldn't it?). They beat the man so bad that it is a wonder that he, Mr. Davis, is still alive. What is going on here?
The police are part of the government. As such, the police, government have the right to beat up citizens, when legal. Perhaps, it is not legal to beat up Mr. Davis, but the police did so anyway. What does that mean? It means that the police, the government had stepped on Mr. Davis civil liberties.
If the government is given the opportunity it would be stepping on citizens' civil liberties. Those in power have available to them the means to arrest, beat up, jail and kill citizens; they can destroy our civil liberties. Therefore, we must always struggle with the powers that be to make sure that our civil liberties are protected.
This is an on going struggle. There is no end to it. In the nature of reality, government must have power to defend us from ourselves but it can use that power to harm us. Therefore, while not weakening government, we must struggle to make it abide by the law and protect our civil liberties.
I am a conservative, law and order man. I believe in strong governments. I believe in strong militaries. I want my government to do whatever it could to defend me internally and internationally. I have no sentimental illusions about my fellow human beings. As a boy, during the Nigerian civil war, I saw what evil human beings are capable of inflicting on one another. I saw Nigerian jet bomber/fighter planes scoop low and spread bombs/bullets on innocent women at our market, Umuohiagu. Evil is not restricted to one side. I saw Biafrans kill Nigerians.
Simply stated, human beings are capable of evil. As I see it, we live as egos and, as such, can do all sorts of incredibly hurtful things to one another. As long as we identify with the ego, we are a danger to one another. So I agree with Thomas Hobbes.
On the other hand, I am unlike my name sake because I know that there is another part to us, the God in us, the Christ self in us. That self loves. But very few persons are in touch with that real self. On earth, we are mostly only in touch with our egos and from its stand point do harm one another. The purpose of life on earth is to eventually relinquish attachment to the separated self, the ego, and become attached to the real self, the unified self, the God in us. But until we do so, we are egos and had better deal with ourselves realistically. These lectures is not on metaphysics, my other love, so let us exit from all this talk about God and talk about man, real man, man the predator, man the killer needing government to corral him and make sure that he does not harm his neighbors.
Constitutions around the world build into them provisions for protecting individuals' civil liberties from governmental encroachment. Nigeria's 1999 constitution went out of its way to state that individuals' civil liberties are protected. A special situation exists in America. In America, the majority of the people are white. There are non-whites, such as blacks, Indians and mixed races. Whites, who are about 75% of the population, can choose to clobber non-whites and historically have done so. Whites killed Indians and enslaved blacks. What they did in the past they can do in the present and future.
A special type of civil liberties provision has come into being in the United States called civil rights. These are laws protecting the rights of minority persons.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 finally extended the Bill of Rights to black Americans. The Fair Housing Act of 1965 prohibited discrimination in housing. Hitherto de jure laws prevented blacks from living in white neighborhoods. Such crude discrimination has been banned. Now what we have in God's own country is sophistic discrimination, de facto discrimination. Try buying a house in white neighborhoods and suddenly such houses are no longer for sale.
Let us not go there, I mean the peculiar institution, racism, it is alive. Jim Crow laws may have been removed but America is as racist as ever. But that is not our present concern.
Nigeria is a multi ethnic country. We have three main tribes: Hausas, Yorubas and Igbos. Conceptually, we can imagine these three big boys ganging up on the many small ethnic groups in Nigeria. Therefore, efforts are made, or should be made to protect minority rights in Nigeria. Law must protect the Ijaws, Edos, Efiks, Uhrobos, Ishikiris, Tivis and other minority groups in Nigeria.
Laws that address the special civil liberties issues of minorities in Nigeria can be construed as civil rights law.
Civil Liberties In Nigeria
So far, we have talked in a general manner over civil liberties, now let us limit ourselves to Nigeria and see how the individual is protected, or not protected from governmental abuse. What do you think? That is not a useful way of putting it, a better way of putting it is to ask: what do you know about the government's respect of individual rights in Nigeria.
Let us not delude ourselves. I am a serious social observer and call it as I see it. I have no time to tell lies or pretend that what I see with my own eyes does not exist. In the Nigeria that I see, the various governments have no respect for individual Nigerians. To start with, the police can rough you up for no good reason, perhaps for not giving them tolls (bribes).
The government for no good reason can have you arrested and placed in jail for however long it wants. When it is time to try you, its corrupt judges rule in the governments favor and you are jailed some more.
What is your crime? May be the political big fish in your community does not feel that you respect him. It is as simple as that. Nigerians are so proud, so vain, and so narcissistic that not saying sir to a big man is enough reason for him to put you away. Indeed, not respecting the big man's fat wife is enough reason to harass you. Not offering to carry the hand bag of a shuffling mass of protoplasm called a rich man's wife in Nigeria can land you in jail, no kidding.
Let us face it, there is no such thing as civil liberties in Nigeria. Nigeria, like most African countries, is a dictatorship. Whatever strong man rules the country does as he pleases and that is all there is to it.
On paper, of course, there is provision for civil liberties. As observed somewhere, the constitution of 1999 made provisions for civil liberties and civil rights. These laws are however, mostly respected in the breech. We do not need to waste our time and energy talking as if what is not real is real.
Nigeria is primitive situation; in such situations, strong men feel that they have the right to do with citizens as they pleased. This is the situation in most African countries.
Until recently, Africans were selling each other into slavery and essentially living in Hobbes state of nature. One, therefore, does not expect them to be angels. It would probably take another 500 years before Africans are civilized enough to live under the rule of law and respect each others civil rights. People who were kidnapping and selling each other into slavery only a hundred years ago cannot be expected to be respectful of each others humanity.
The African, much as one is ashamed to say it, is still a savage. He needs the civilizing influence of universal religions like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism to nudge him up somewhat.
It took Christianity over two thousand years to civilize Europeans. Actually, Europeans are still savages for their traditional sport is killing each other. Were it not because of the nuclear weapons that could kill all of them should they go to war, they would have been at war with each other. What is European history but documentation of predatory animals killing each other in wars?
Are Asians different? What did the Chinese and Japanese do? They warred and used killing to expand their empires. Even the seeming passive East Indians and their Hinduism justified the existence of outcasts. Indians can enjoy their dinner while their fellow Indians are starving on the streets of Calcutta. Man is a depraved creature, so let us not delude ourselves with how good he is.
The various minority groups in Nigeria have been subjected to unfair treatment. As I write, the national government of Nigeria takes the oil money that comes from the Niger delta and distributes it among other Nigerians. In America each state has control over its natural resources, except for those on Federal lands. Citizens and corporations pay taxes to the Federal government, as they should for government needs venues to function, but it is doubtful whether the national's government has a right to take resources in states. I believe that each state in Nigeria ought to have control of its resources
One is not being sentimental over this issue, for one knows that the leaders of those minority groups are not really looking after the interests of their people. The governor of Bayelsa state makes noises about how his people are shafted by the central government and is given 13% resource control instead of 100%. What does he do with the little money he gets from Abuja?
He takes it to European banks. The criminal was recently arrested in London for money laundering; he steals his people's money and talks nonsense of how the federal government is not helping his people.
This criminal gets his people to focus on the injustice done to them by the federal government and not the injustice he does to them.
That Nigeria does not respect people's civil rights is not questioned by any one with eyes to see. The real question is what are we going to do about it? These lectures are part of my own contribution to solving Nigeria's problems. By teaching people about the nature of politics, one hopes to get the militant type to enter political action and do something to correct the awful situation that is Nigeria. One is the intellectual type, not the action type. One does what intellectuals do, talk about issues and hope that the action type takes it from there?
Conclusion
We need governments to protect us from ourselves and from each other. To protect us we must give our governments' sufficient power to do so. Government is organized use of power.
The government we set up to protect us often turns against us and destroys our civil liberties. Governments all over the world threaten the people's liberties. It does not matter what form of governments we are talking about; they could be capitalist governments or socialist governments, all of them are capable of threatening our civil liberties and have been known to do so.
As John Stuart Mill said in On Liberty and Thomas Paine said in Common Sense, the citizens of a democracy must, at all times, strive to protect themselves from governmental encroachment on their civil liberties.
As Thomas Jefferson observed, we need governments, but in as much as governments are composed of men, and men are capable of tyranny, we must be ready to form posses and chase out of power tyrannical and or corrupt leaders.
Liberty is watered with the blood of tyrants. This is the reality of human history. Real politics, not idealistic politics, require all citizens to have guns and other weapons that could enable them to chase out tyrannical leaders. That is the only way to have our civil liberties protected.
Any man who is afraid of dying for his liberties does not deserve to be free. Only those who look tyrants in the eyes and say: go to hell, shoot me if you like, but I will not kowtow to your tyranny, are freemen; as free as the necessary restrictions of civil society permit.
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Posted by Robot| 25.04.2008 13:15