Government Is Inherently Coercive

I'm reading God's Name in Vain by Stephen Carter. He points to something that I believe is fundamental.

. . . electoral politics has been a difficult and often harmful location for religionists to try to make a stand against the culture. Possessing an honored voice that somtimes prevails is not the same as regularly exercising actual secular power to tell people, at a point of a gun, what they must do. . . . (p. 6)

. . . . Any conversation about politics is also a conversation about coercion. A conversation about politics is either about what people should be forced to do, or forced not to do (law); or about who should do the forcing (elections) . . . . (p. 28)

Government is inherently coercive. Government is about force.

So when I think about my faith and my politics, I believe I have to think about what my faith suggests to me about the legitimate or justified use of force in my daily life.

I'm not sure I really like the idea of asking what would Jesus do, or what would Jesus drive. Still, the idea might be suggestive of what I think I need to confront when I think about my faith and my politics: Who would Jesus coerce and why? I would like to ask for suggestions about answers to these questions that we might find by looking at the Gospels.

I teach the economics of government to college students and I often ask them to note that government is inherently coercive and then to consider in what ways the use of force in their daily lives might be acceptable. In general, it seems the responses suggest that force and coercion is justified in our daily lives in self-defense, or in the defense of ourselves and our property, and even in the defense of the person and property of others. I think this is a widely accepted idea, that force is justified in self-defense. I wonder if we can find scripture in the Gospels that would suggest that force in self-defense is a principle acceptable to Jesus?

Returning to Carter, Chapter 6 in his book is titled "The Separation of Church and Slavery." He writes:

All through the twentieth century, historians searched for ways to explain the Civil War in particular, and the abolitionist struggle in general, without the need for resort to religion. . . .Yet it was slavery, and nothing but slavery, that caused the Southern states to secede; it was slavery, and nothing but slavery, that the war's most ardent Northern supporters addressed. . . .There is good reason to think that without the steady drumbeat of Christian condemnation from the abolitionist preachers, there would never have been sufficient antislavery sentiment--to say nothing of antislavery interest--to enable the nation finally to go to war over the issue. . . .

The suggestion is that without Christian condemnation, force would not have been used to end slavery in the United States. The Civil War that ended slavery would, perhaps, not have been fought, except for the political action of Christians to influence the ways in which government used it's coercive power. I'm not sure the abolitionists were seeking war to end slavery, but, nonetheless, it seems that the war that ended slavery emerged from their actions in politics. Given my Christian faith, was this an acceptable use of force and coercion? And, I wonder, could slavery in the United States ever have been ended without the use of force?

Journalism Today

Here is another commentary, this one by James Q. Wilson, that I think helps us develop an accurate understanding of government and politics:

Most of what I have said here is common knowledge. But it is common knowledge about a new period in American journalistic history. Once, powerful press owners dictated what their papers would print, sometimes irresponsibly. But that era of partisan and circulation-building distortions was not replaced by a commitment to objective journalism; it was replaced by a deep suspicion of the American government. That suspicion, fueled in part by the Vietnam and Watergate controversies, means that the government, especially if it is a conservative one, is surrounded by journalists who doubt almost all it says. One obvious result is that since World War II there have been few reports of military heroes; indeed, there have been scarcely any reports of military victories.

This change in the media is not a transitory one that will give way to a return to the support of our military when it fights. Journalism, like so much scholarship, now dwells in a postmodern age in which truth is hard to find and statements merely serve someone's interests.

The mainstream media's adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines and television programs we enjoy.

I think this is a very important essay by Mr. Wilson. It seems to me important to account for the perspective presented in this essay when a person tries to become informed about political issues. Journalism's basic stance on the country and war is also present in all other areas of politics and public policy. The bottom line, in all matters of reporting and commentary on politics and public policy seems to be: "Journalism, like so much scholarship, now dwells in a postmodern age in which truth is hard to find and statements merely serve someone's interests."

I find it quite a challenge to try to become accurately and well informed about politics and public policy. I think one should always be cautious about what to decide to believe.

Victor Davis Hanson On The Libby Lessons

When I look at politics and government one of the things I try to do is have an accurate understanding of how these things work. With this in mind, I recommend Victor Davis Hanson's take on the lessons to learn from the Libby affair:

1. We now have a new branch of government—a symbiosis between a special prosecutor and the Washington DC judiciary. Given the available jury pool and justices in DC, together with the high-stakes, high-publicity of a special prosecutorship, any prominent conservative is fair game. An innocent or hung verdict spells financial ruin, a guilty one the destruction of a career.

All this is much like the ancient Athenian notion of ostracism, in which the prominent could be exiled and ruined simply by a populist vote on their high-profile stature that was felt to be a danger to an egalitarian Athenian ethos.

2. The Washington DC press corps and high-ranking officials talk, spin, and network 24/7. Trying to sort out anything among any of them is impossible. These are the grunt soldiers with no rules of engagement in a vast ideological battle between the mainststeam media and conservative administrations.

3. There is no sense of proportion or morality involved. One example: Richard Armitage comes off quite negatively. He knew he was the most culpable given the initial directive of the Special Prosecutor, and yet stayed quiet while the searchlight went on to others. This was especially reprehensible given his prior carefully crafted voice of conscious as a luke-warm supporter of the war.

4. We will never know all the power-plays, ego-trips, and vested reputations in all this. But apparently Fitzgerald had a lot on the line by going after Libby, and was willing to apply to him a standard not applied to others in or out of government. This does not mean necessarily that Libby’s testimony was not inconsistent, only that a degree of scrutiny was applied to it in a manner not done elsewhere.

5. All this reminds me again of wisdom from my late mother, a California superior and appellate court justice. She used to remind me that the most powerful people in government are not judges, not juries, not even legislators or executives—but state and federal attorneys, who act as judge and jury of sorts in selecting whom to prosecute. I say that because in the modern age, an indictment ipso facto can spell financial ruin and irrevocable loss of reputation. Our prosecutors must be above any hint of partisanship or grudge-holding, and must not see their offices as platforms for wide-ranging, Les Miserables obsessions.

Hanson also offers a summary of the details of note in the case. It does seem to me that this case is an illustration (and unfortunately it seems there have been others before and will probably be others to follow) where politics became part of our system of criminal justice. It is quite difficult for me to understand that in all of this there was an alleged crime, which upon further review seems never to have been a crime, and there was another person who should have been identified as the person who committed the crime (had there been one), and this person was neither arrested nor tried nor convicted, nor was this person even publicly criticized. Yet, another man who now is known not to have committed the crime (had there been one) that began all of this is convicted and waiting to be sentenced. This doesn't seem to me to be what our system of government is supposed to be about. But it does seem to be one aspect of how our system of government works.