November 12, 2016
Dear Subscriber:
Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of
view. This week’s theme is politics in honor of Election Day (USA), which falls
on November 8.
Today’s poem is a set of proverbs on the nature of the
State.
I welcome comments on my poems at
http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.
Yours,
Nick Gordon
1. The end of the State is security: of property and person;
from conquest, injury, hunger, exposure, and injustice.
2. To obtain security, citizens cede a portion of their
liberty. This "social contract" is agreed to every time a citizen
recognizes the legitimacy of the State.
3. States are legitimate, therefore, to the extent to which
they provide security.
4. States rule through violence, either exercised or
threatened. The degree of violence varies inversely with the degree of
legitimacy; that is, the more security a state provides, the less violence it
needs to rule.
5. States are also, and paradoxically, instruments of
oppression, enforcing laws and practices that transfer wealth to the ruling
class.
6. These contradictory visions of the State--as provider of
security and as oppressor--are and have always been simultaneously true. The
tension between them is played out in every decision, act, and pronouncement of
government.
7. A state that is too oppressive loses legitimacy so
completely that no amount of violence can prevent its overthrow. A state that
is too just loses the support of the ruling class, which engineers a change
either in policy or in government. Thus all states exist somewhere on a
continuum between these two extremes. This is true regardless of their form of
government.
8. The advantage of democracy is that the regular replacement
of government by majority rule mitigates oppression. The disadvantage is that
weak governments may fail to make citizens sufficiently secure.
9. To survive, democracy must provide enough security to
make the relative weakness of a divided and restrained government worth the
increase in liberty and justice. Otherwise, citizens will be willing to cede
additional liberty in return for additional security, and democracy will fail.
© by Nicholas Gordon
Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I
chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/statpr.html
. For more poems about politics, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/politicalpoems.html.
This week’s theme: Politics.
November 7: Elections, as You Know, Are Bought and Sold
November 8: After All, the Market Runs on Greed
November 9: Even When There’s Little Choice, We Choose
November 10: Fifty-Eight
November 11: Proverbs for Legislators
November 12: Proverbs on the State
