Thoughts of An American Citizen

[This is still being edited]

How often have we heared the so-called debate about "big government" (assumingly referring to some alternative form of "small" government)?  It has become a phrase so overused and overworn that it has little merit these days.  Indeed the Party (one of the two "major" parties - but who actually authorized placing them in charge? Or granting them a monopoly?) that adopts this as its mantra, analyzed from a non-biased perspective, is perhaps responsible for the emergence of the biggest form of "big" goverment imaginable.  There is nothing "bigger" than a government that approaches an Orwellian "Big Brother" state.

The "big government" rhetoric is actually a prime example of the rhetoric of a sophist. (For which I have entitled this segment of my developing site - "Sophistical Refutations".)  During the age of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (the latter two pictured above - on the left) the Sophists were demoniszted as a group (although perhaps that net was cast a little too wide as to who fell into that category) who taught people (primarily young aristocrats) how to make the lesser argument appear the better.  I cannot think of a more appropriate parallel to those actors on today's American political stage (whether it be those running for office, those running those who are running for or holding office, or those on the other side of our television sets babbling the same scripted and continuously repeated "sound bites" (or have they now become mere blips) 24/7, channel for channel, whether it be openly biased Fox News or its pretended adversary of non-faux news, CNN.  Same people, same stories, same sound blips.

It is the din of the babling of this circle of self-appointing (perhaps annointing) and self-promoting "class" that renders them, in my view, the modern day Barbarians. βαρβαρος  being the name given by the Greeks to those non-Greeks whose speach came out as the sound of "ba ba ba" (Ironically bringing up the further imagery of sheep - which is how we could describe the overwhelming majority who simply parrot their memes uncritically having become embedded in their externally shaped world-view.).

Be afraid, my fellow citizens, very afraid, for these are not just barbarians at the gate threatening to enter and turn our system on its head for they have already seated themselves on the thrones and alters of their own construction.  Replacing therewith our constitutional framework while we look in other directions for the source of our nation's ills.  Guided, quite skillfully, by the sleight of hand learned at the hands of their teachers and mentors in their field.

But it is not to expose these master prestidigitators that this column, or its category, is primary aimed.  It is, instead, to the revolution in thought, a revolution in education and scholarship, that has turned from the desire to exile those who practice the "sophistic arts" to to the implementation, in practice, of this very skill of misdirecting our attention from reason to mere rhetoric in order to convince us to self-enslavement rather than the need for the open use of brute force.  It is to the modern day sophists who instruct today's barbarians in the skills of political rhetoric rather than the need for ethical politics that my pen here will turn its focus.

And so now with this opening preface I want to introduce you to the recent essay of Prof. Peter Jones, the co-founder of a British institution known as The Frieds of Classics for I believe he has some valuable lessons and insight to share with us, across the pond, the descendants (politically) of his nation.  For he too laments the idea of a reliance on "big government," a "top-down" approach eliminating the role of the citizen, as well as the essential role that education has played in its emergence.  For if he observes this trend taking root in the England today it but pales in comparison to how entrenched it has already become in our United States of America.

Reflectiong on the clasical world, not as some naive worship of the ancients, but as lessons from history that are bound to be repeated if not leared, Prof. Jones raises some very poignent similarities and dissimilarities between the world of then and that of now.  Cast in the light of a British perspective, perhaps this will enable many of us, who through the blindingy distoritive influence of our local class of sophistically trained barbarians, have often missed the forrest for the trees when clinging to the carefully crafted rhetoric of a "big goverment" spectre haunting our nation since the early part of this century (although with proper insight one can trace its true roots back to the days immediately following the adoption of our ultimate or Highest Law (our Constitution - and with it - our constitution).  When the Cornwallis surrended his British troops at Yorktown it is reported that the band played the tune "The World Turned Upside Down." (another link of interest)  It was less than a decade before that upturned world was begun to be turned back "aright" (from that point of view) by a few with the conscious intent to alter what had been adopted "by the people" to a form of their more "sophisticated" liking.  And as today there was a ready majority willing to head their sophistical inversion taking the worse argument (indeed that rejected in the Revolution) and without critical thought following their unscrupulous lead.  Many among those, indeed likely the most, had been convinced, as if transported through Alice's looking glass, that black was white and up was down.  Their intentions were pure, as our most of ours today, but they were the victims of the very disease that our nation's consious blue-print was sought as a mechanical cure.  But without trained operators, those educated in an "understanding" of both its workings and its ends (its purpose), any machine is bound to malfunction.  And worse - to provide a haven for those who wish to invert its purpose to their own interested ends while maintain the facade that, as you can see, the machine itself hsa not disappeared.  How few have ever had the courage, or naivete, to openly proclaim that an Emperor has actually no clothes.  It sometimes takes the unfiltered vision of a child to see reality for what it is - or at least to admit that what he sees and what he says he sees are the same thing.

And so on to Jones and his commentary for the British public published this May 24th in The Spectator, entitled "Vote for Caesar" (an evocative title in the midst of the utter choas and complete disenfranchisement of the citizen in our current "Presidental cycle" (No not just the Florida or Michigan Democratic delegates - but the American voter in general - the citizen qua citizen with little more influence in any major party, in any national election, than as a mere "approval" mechanism for choices determined without their initial input and limited in scope from the start.)) Our presidential office, and all those who have recently occupied it, have far more in common with a Caesar (and how the first was actually the final end of the Republic of Rome although it retained its "form" without its legitimating "substance" for centuries to follow - but relying upon the regalia, the "honor" of the office, the pomp and circustances - indeed the "Dignifified Constitution" of the Victorian Liberal-Conservative Walter Bagehot, the facade meant to keep the people "believing" they had an actual part to play, while the actual but mostly unmentioned and unseen "efficient constitution" which allowed the political elite to do their work without the nuisance of their "public" interfering)  than with the Constitutionally established executive branch of government.

So now, finally, to what Prof. Jones has to say.  As quoted in the title of this column:

"Because we have the means to be complex, it does not follow that we should be complex"

I will mention a few other quotes from Jones' article below.  I encourage you to read and reflect upon them as well as to read his column itself (linked above).  And reflect upon it not as it applies particularly to Britian nor even ot the U.S. - but as it applies in general.  As its reasonings make sense.  Remember the "Common Sense" that enabled us to start a Revolution.  (And whose author was later reviled for his "Rights of Man" by many among those turning our Constitutional world upon its head in the decades folowing its ratification)?

As Jones states further, "At almost every point these ancient societies provide us with a parallel universe that can shine a stimulating light on the priorities and practices of our own."  Jones could not be further from the truth - and the wisdom - contained in that statement.  And we ignore his advice only to our own peril.

Jones turns to what he refers to the untested "hypotheses" upon which so much theory and practice has been based from ancient times.  And how when such a hypothese is nothing but rubbis, the conclusions drawn from it, however "logically sound," will likely (except by accident) be no more than rubbish themselves.

But then he asks, going directly to the issue of education's role in all of this:

"But are we any better? Modern schooling is based on the hypothesis that it is best controlled top-down by government, in schools, in every aspect from curriculum to examinations, for children between the ages of 5 and 18. Is it? The results strongly suggest it isn’t. I should guess that half of all school pupils would be better served by a different hypothesis."

With this statement in general I wholeheartedly agree.  As for Jones' particulars and mine (or yours) they can only come from actually reading, and thinking about your reading, what he or I have to say. Reading must be transformed into an active process not a merely passive reception of the views of another.  Perhaps you will become motivated to chime in with you own "two cents worth" (or into today's oil economy ("twenty bucks worth")).

One more quote to whet your appetite as an enticement to read further (I will have to post the final part of this later this evening as I am currently on the road). Referring to the enormous growth of Roman Law from its original simplicity contained in the XII Tables (originally X according to Jones' article - a point I never picked up, or remember, from my studies in Roman Law) Jones makes the following comment:

"The later historian Tacitus traces the history of this monstrous growth (which Julius Caesar had tried to trim back), adding with his usual pithy brilliance corruptissimâ rêpûblicâ, plûrimae lêgês ‘when the state was at its most corrupt, laws were most numerous’. Any comment, Mr Straw?"

Mr. Straw, of course, is a long time time politico of the Labour Party of England. You may recall his days as Foreign Secretary, during the controversial lead up to the war in Iraq, under Tony Blair's government. Today, under the leadership of the new government of Gordon Brown, he has been elevated to the position of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and Secretary of State for Justice. I think putting the question to him is quite apropos. The same should be asked of our President (or the next), our Justices of the Supreme Court, and our members of Congress not to mention their counterparts from the State down to the local level.