Why Our Overlords are Nasty

          THE day that I first sat down to write this article I was scrolling Twitter and came across a tweet that read, “Why are there so many sexual deviants in Parliament?” I, of course, gave my two cents and went along my merry way. However, soon after, I paused and realized this was a very important question. To those willing to pay attention we can realize that history is littered with immoral, deviant elites, such as the Late Romans (see Miller 2004), the Habsburgs, and the numerous ones since the 20^th century who have operated sex trafficking rings that have involved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children. Why must it be that so frequently the people in charge end up being fiends?

          I, therefore, want to take the time in this article to discuss, as I understand it, why our oligarchs tend towards such backwards behavior. What motivates them? What entices them? While some might have the theory that, “Oh, these people are just so high-profile the oddballs among them get too much attention,” or, “YOU’RE A CRAZY CONSPIRACY THEORIST AAAAAAAAAAAHHH,” I propose something quite different. Handwaving this issue as “just a few oddballs” does nothing but insult the trauma dealt to those that were pawns of the organized rings ran by these elites, and crying wolf similarly does nothing to address a very serious issue. In order to make sense of all this ruling-class depravity we must first understand the rise and development of the oligarchy.

          The main scholar in this area is Hans-Hermann Hoppe who has penned several articles and books examining the development of power, power structures, and power elites. In his book-essay From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy (Hoppe 2014) he does that, examining the evolution of the natural aristocracy from a group of private arbiters who interpreted and enforced a common legal system (as was the case in, say, ancient Ireland [see Peden 1977] and medieval Iceland) to a monopoly on law and order that took two corrupt forms, monarchy and then democracy. He aptly describes this transformation as a “tale of moral and economic folly and decay.” The moral folly and decay of the elites are what we want to explain, so clearly this is a good place to start.

          Hoppe says that the main issue with the monarch, and all monopolistic political authorities, is their law-making ability. As he explains:

“I only claim that this order approached a natural order through (a) the supremacy of and the subordination of everyone under one law, (b) the absence of any law-making power, and (c) the lack of any legal monopoly of judgeship and conflict arbitration. And I would claim that this system could have been perfected and retained virtually unchanged through the inclusion of serfs into the system.” (Hoppe 2014, p. 33)

          By monopolizing the practice of law and placing themselves at the top of the system, the monarch accomplishes two things: the eradication of the rule of law and of accountability. The rule of law is gone because the monarch - or, the State - is now in complete control of the legal system, there is no competitor to it and so there is no recourse (except revolution/secession) in the face of corruption. Accountability is gone for much of the same reasons, since the absence of a competitor means all disputes and cases that afflict society will be handled by the State, and ruled in the State’s favor whenever optimal. Murray Rothbard discussed many of these issues in the section “How the State Transcends Its Limits” of his esteemed essay Anatomy of the State (Rothbard 2009, pp. 30-43). As he, or rather Charles Black (who he quotes) puts it:

“The prime and most necessary function of the Court has been that of validation, not that of invalidation. What a government of limited powers needs, at the beginning and forever, is some means of satisfying the people that it has taken all steps humanly possible to stay within its powers. This is the condition of its legitimacy, and its legitimacy, in the long run, is the condition of its life. And the Court, through its history, has acted as the legitimation of the government.” (Rothbard 2009, p. 34fn23)

          One more quote we need to look at is one of Hoppe’s, wherein he explains the decay of judicial and legal quality in the face of the monopolization of law and order:

“At the same time, the quality of law deteriorated: Instead of upholding pre-existing law and applying universal and immutable principles of justice, the king, as a monopolistic judge who did not have to fear losing clients as a result of being less than impartial in his judgments, did successively alter the existing law to his own advantage.” (Hoppe 2014, p. 35)

          It is my, and others’, contention that the rise of the State equals a great decline in the [legal] equality and morality of a civilization. This logic has been accepted for ages, I dare say. Solomon, in the Book of Ecclesiastes, said, “If you see the extortion of the poor, or the perversion of justice and fairness in the government, do not be astonished by the matter. For the high official is watched by a higher official, and there are higher ones over them!” (5:8) The NET Bible’s footnote on this verse is enlightening, as it says, “This may describe a corrupt system of government in which each level of hierarchy exploits its subordinates, all the way down to the peasants.” This applies to the foregoing understanding of how the State works because it portrays it as an institution full of exploitation and vice, of injustice and insecurity, rather than a well-rounded and altruistic achievement of human civilization.

Let us also look at it this way: In a stateless environment people are most logically going to view themselves as their protectors. If not themselves, then who? Who else exists to defend them in a power vacuum? Even if they believed in household spirits/deities they could appease to defend them they would still be relying on themselves to appease those entities in the first place. The same logic would apply to private defense agencies, as they would have to voluntarily contract those agencies on their own behalf. All their security begins with themselves.

Since it is clear from the histories of multiple nations that the State was a late arrival, with society predating it (as in ancient Sumer [Kramer 1963], medieval Iceland, and ancient Ireland [Peden 1977]; see also Hoppe 2015 and Oppenheimer 1926), and from the previous paragraph, it is also clear that the people in these stateless societies would not have jumped the gun and handed their authority and property over to some faceless bureaucracy. Rothbard argued this, too, in his primer on libertarianism For a New Liberty:

“Someone says: ‘Let’s all give all of our weapons to Joe Jones over there, and to his relatives. And let Jones and his family decide all disputes among us. In that way, the Joneses will be able to protect all of us from any aggression or fraud that anyone else may commit. With all the power and all the ability to make ultimate decisions on disputes in the hands of Jones, we will all be protected from one another. And then let us allow the Joneses to obtain their income from this great service by using their weapons, and by exacting as much revenue by coercion as they shall desire.’ Surely in that sort of situation, no one would treat this proposal with anything but ridicule. For it would be starkly evident that there would be no way, in that case, for any of us to protect ourselves from the aggressions, or the depredations, of the Joneses themselves.” (Rothbard 2006, pp. 84-85).

          What am I trying to argue with all this? Simply, the State originated through an unnatural process that no rational person would agree to, especially if they and their pedigree had lived in statelessness for decades, even centuries, before. From what I know the State arises through warfare (see Oppenheimer 1926 and Porter 1994) and thrives through additional wars and crises (see Higgs 1989), and whenever we look at history, we find that nation-states have been produced through wars: the ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Irish (Peden 1977), and medieval European States (Bean 1973) were all formed in the wake of war. War, itself, originates from an unnatural process, it originates from the inability of one or several men to seek a peaceful resolution to a dispute and instead use the sword. In the Bible, violent conflicts between men began with Cain and Abel, a tragic event that was induced by sin (Gen. 4).

          Boy, I feel like this is becoming way too brainy for what this started off as. No worries, I’m sure you guys have all the time in the world to read my rants in their entirety, right? Anywho, let me honestly try to bring this along as fast as I can: the State originated through something pathological, that’s what my ultimate, most fundamental conviction is. From all that I’ve learned from Rothbard (2009), Hoppe (2014 and 2015), and Oppenheimer (1926) I feel that is the most logical conclusion. Since stateless persons would not accept the logic of the statesman, the statesman needs wars or crises to emotionally exploit the stateless into statehood (fortunately those tend to be in abundance in agrarian, primitive societies; famines, natural disasters, disease, etc.). The force that would originally convince the original statesman, however, to break from tradition, of his kinsmen and neighbors privately working and arbitrating among themselves, would necessarily be an internal one, and this would be greed or arrogance, something pathological (interestingly, the Bible says all nations are controlled by demons, and elsewhere it says that demons can cause mental illnesses [Mark 9:17-27; Matt. 9:32-33; 1 Sam. 16]).

          Ok, so, the original politicians had to have been mentally ill to come up with the sickening idea of expropriating money (taxes), children (military conscription), and property (public utilities) from their neighbors for completely arbitrary reasons. This is very, very important to note, because it means we can begin answering the question that started this whole article, “Why are there so many sexual deviants in [government]?” The reason why, drum-roll please, is because the very foundations of the State are depraved! All we need to do now is refer to two timeless aphorisms before this all clicks: “Bad company ruins good morals,” and, “If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

          Ah, my God, it all makes sense! Of course a system based on theft and violence is going to attract all sorts of bad people to it, duh! It is also a system that ensures whoever gets in gets to live at the expense of everyone else for as long as they stay in, incentivizing all sorts of deceptions and self-gratifying legislation that maximize the plunder and longevity of public service. As Hoppe explains:

“Nor is it an advantage of democracy that free entry into every state position exists (whereas under monarchy entry is restricted to the king’s discretion). To the contrary, only competition in the production of goods is a good thing. Competition in the production of bads, such as taxation and legislation, is not good. In fact, it is worse than bad. It is sheer evil. … In sharp contrast, the selection of state rulers by means of popular elections makes it essentially impossible for a harmless or decent person to ever rise to the top. Presidents and prime ministers come into their position not owing to their status as natural aristocrats, as feudal kings once did, i.e., based on the recognition of their economic independence, outstanding professional achievement, morally impeccable personal life, wisdom and superior judgment and taste, but as a result of their capacity as morally uninhibited demagogues. Hence, democracy virtually assures that only dangerous men will rise to the top of state government.” (Hoppe 2014, pp. 45-46)

          While Hoppe’s critique is, rightfully, directed towards democracy here, and his career has been spent defending monarchy, it does not defeat my point. Hoppe is no true fan of monarchy, and the core of his anti-democratic arguments is that monarchy is preferable while anarchy is ideal. He does not let monarchy off easy, acknowledging the possibility for abuse under it and the fact it, like any other government, is built on, as he puts it, “bads, such as taxation and legislation.”

          In any case, the moral of the story is that the State, being a bad actor, attracts bad actors. What else should we expect? The fact that bureaucrats and statesmen live at the expense of everyone else is also important to note. Being a public servant essentially means being on welfare, which is a system of forcible wealth distribution directed to a specific constituency for political purposes (as I discussed in another article). What we need to note about welfare, however, is the cultural and moral impact of it. As shown in John Calhoun’s “mouse utopia” experiments, when you give social creatures all their necessities without the need of personal exertion they become complacent and antipathic, resulting in the following symptoms:

• Females abandoning their young.
• Males no longer defending their territory.
• Both sexes becoming more violent and aggressive.
• Deviant social and sexual behavior.

          All of these are interesting behaviors, and we can find them among public servants and the elite. Celebrities get divorced constantly, policemen are chronic domestic abusers, in the United States alone political sex scandals go back to its founding, politicians are always promoting war, etc. etc. Also note “deviant social and sexual behavior”. My God, that’s exactly what we’re looking for! We noted a number of examples throughout time of that at the beginning of this article. Now we might know very well why, which is, and I repeat, “[T]he State, being a bad actor, attracts bad actors.”

          In conclusion, the answer to the original question, “Why are there so many sexual deviants in Parliament?” is that “Parliament,” or rather the State in general, “attracts bad actors by virtue of its origin in bad actions.” We do not expect the red-light district to attract itinerant preachers and hygienic family men. I mean, the very origin of the term red-light district comes from Dutch prostitutes’ use of red lanterns to camouflage their boils, zits, rashes, and other signs of venereal disease. It is the very nature of the State in the corruption of peaceful, voluntary relations between men that has led to its timeless, unsurprising association with malfeasants.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Bean, Richard, “War and the Birth of the Nation State,” The Journal of Economic History (Cambridge University Press, 1973): 203-221.
• Higgs, Robert, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (Oakland, CA: Independent Institute, 1989).
• Hoppe, Hans-Hermann, From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy: A Tale of Moral and Economic Folly and Decay (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2014).
• A Short History of Man (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2015).
• Kramer, Samuel N., The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 73 ff.
• Miller, Nicole, “Tacitus’ Germania as a Commentary on Moral Decay in Roman Society,” Ephemeris 5 (Denison University, 2004): 20-30.
• Oppenheimer, Franz, The State (New York, NY: Vanguard Press, 1926).
• Peden, Joseph R., “Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 1, no. 2 (Pergamon Press, 1977): 81-95.
• Porter, Bruce D., War and the Rise of the State (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1994).
• Rothbard, Murray N., Anatomy of the State (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009).