If the men of the Revolution designed to incorporate in the Constitution the absurd ideas of allegiance and treason, which they had once repudiated, against which they had fought, and by which the world had been enslaved, they thereby established for themselves an indisputable claim to the disgust and detestation of all mankind (Lysander Spooner, No Treason, No. 1).

How can a person, by geographic accident of birth, be subjected to the coercion of a group to whom he has given no consent, whether that group is called a gang, a government, or any other name? How can a government, which came into existence through the denial of the historical ties to another government, in turn force its rule on people who have not given their consent? And how is the crime of treason against a government possible where no consent was ever given to that government? These are some of the questions posed by Lysander Spooner in No Treason, written in 1867, a work which is useful in analyzing a current issue, the plight of the government whistleblower.

Lysander Spooner was a lawyer, a radical pro-Constitution abolitionist (his pro-Constitution arguments persuaded Frederick Douglass to drop his disunionist ideas), and a proponent of natural law theory. Spooner argued for jury nullification in fugitive slave cases, and against the idea that slavery was permissible under the Constitution. Spooner believed that government without consent was a form of slavery which differed only in degree with the legal enslavement of blacks as practiced in the country at the time. Because of this, he opposed the Civil War as a violent denial of the right to self government of the Southern states while concurrently arguing for a revolt of slaves against their oppressors.

Natural Law

Natural law, as the foundation of Spooner’s arguments, must be briefly explained and contrasted with its alternatives, broadly speaking. Natural law ascribes to people inviolable rights with which they are born and cannot be rescinded. These are often, and in Spooner’s case are, defined as the ability to live one’s life as one sees fit, without coercion from or obligations to other people, as long as one does not coerce another person. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are natural law ideas, as is the ability to give or withdraw consent to the rules of any group.

How does a person know that he is born with natural rights under natural law? The very act of defending one’s rights acknowledges their existence. No legal or political sophistry can negate the obviousness of the rights not earned, but defended, by the American colonists against their would-be British oppressors. And no legal or historical theories are necessary to see that the American people today, as most people have done throughout history, through ignorance and laziness, are giving away their natural born rights to a government more oppressive than the British government from which their political forefathers broke.

The Role of the Populace

Governments rarely abstain from expanding their power. Therefore, it is imperative that a people stand for themselves and the maintenance of their own rights against those who wish to take them, who are present in every nation in every time in history. The American people, content with their level of material success, implicitly agree with the government that it is the granter of rights and not the protector. Spooner’s words are true today:

The [government] has thus virtually said to the world: It was all very well to prate of consent, so long as the objects to be accomplished were to liberate ourselves from our connection with England, and also to coax a scattered and jealous people into a great national union; but now that those purposes have been accomplished, and the power of the [government] has become consolidated, it is sufficient for us – as for all governments – simply to say: Our power is our right (No Treason, No. 1).

No constitution, regardless of the legal theories and principles on which it was founded, or the fervor with which it was defended, can withstand the complacency and servility which overtakes a population.

Competing Legal Theories

Utilitarianism, the idea that a law’s worth is measured by the outcome of its implementation, will be, somewhat simplistically, portrayed here as the counter-view to natural law. A common measurement of outcomes is an increase in the aggregate happiness or welfare of a population. A law is said to have positive utility if it increases the welfare of most people, or the total welfare gained is greater than the total welfare lost.

With this brief description it is easy to see that this legal framework is perfectly suited to a government which wishes to increase its power while appearing to act in the people’s interest. In fact, it may actually believe that it is acting for their benefit. The outcome will be the same, since the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So long as people accept the power of a government to legislate their welfare, they are open to having it taken from them, to be dispersed by the government to its favored recipients. The government assumes their consent is given, and uses force to prevent them from withdrawing it. In the government’s view, they were born with their consent handed over.

The Whistleblower and Natural Law

As government power increases, so does the number of people who are willing to expose its actions. Today we have the phenomenon of the whistleblower, the person with inside knowledge of the government’s actions who takes that information and makes it available to the world. In an age of global empire, it is of interest to the people of the world to know what the self-appointed hegemon is doing.

The whistleblower is often accused of breaking the law, and he usually is guilty. He might be guilty of breaking a legitimate contract he has made with his employer, and a penalty could be just. He might also be guilty of committing the act of treason, as defined by the government which has assumed his consent for itself. But that crime does not exist under natural law, which says that consent may be freely given and freely withdrawn. The only real treason is against the truth, and in bowing down to illegitimate authority. Treason is giving consent not to one’s own enslavement, but to the enslavement of his neighbor. There is no treason but that which is against the natural rights of others. The whistleblower may awake these feelings and ignite a re-assertion of natural law.

“Our attachment to no nation upon earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.”
-Thomas Jefferson

Much of what market participants try to understand are the potential consequences of governments’ legal and economic manipulations and how to profit from them. It would be nice, however, to start over, to take part in the development of a free society unhindered by government. In fact, whatever would be called the government would exist for the most part to facilitate free interaction between individuals in the way of a legal structure and courts.

This would of course eventually become a competitor to the government in whose territory this free market zone would exist. Here is a case where a promising idea is being fought by a failed government:

http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/13/the-blank-slate-state

Plato described the makeup of the ideal polis, with its division of labor broadly into rulers, protectors, and workers, and said it could never exist on the earth, but was instead a study of the individual.  Regardless of the form of government, the nation would only be as good as its citizens.  No form of government, contrary to today’s believers in the religion of democracy, will lead a corrupt people to a just society and prosperity.

What does this type of analysis tell us about modern America?  Our earlier rulers have been displaced to a large extent by a new ruling caste with a different world view.  Noblesse oblige, once common among American elites who considered themselves custodians of something larger than themselves, is less common today.  This may also have something to do with the change in the occupations of the elite; largely in manufacturing in the past, and hence connected more closely with the people of all social classes through contact with their managers and workers, the old elite were actual custodians and guardians of large numbers of people, abuses notwithstanding.

Today’s elites are often to be found in finance, a field which is conducive to short term profit making and allows its participants to be disconnected and aloof from the population at large.  One does not feel oneself a custodian of something larger than oneself when structuring an interest rate hedge for a client or engaging in statistical arbitrage between the yen and euro.

The dominance of finance has led to a government designed to cater to its needs, and in so doing has looted the middle class, the class necessary for its ability to put checks on the power of government, of much of its wealth and earning power through currency debasement regulation.  Ideally, from the government’s point of view, the middle class would be transformed into a middle management technocracy wholly employed by large corporations and thus politically neutered, their work siphoned off by their employers into political donations to favored politicians.

The military, the guardians of American liberty, now largely consist of semi-employable enlisted men, and now women, drawn to the military because it’s a steady job, led by a fairly talented officer class, with a large number of Southern men whose ancestors were the victims of the organization they now so proudly serve and who visit upon the current political enemies of their politicians or the possessors of resources coveted by their oligarchs and “geostrategists” the crimes which were once visited upon their forebears.  They are economic hit men to a degree that even Smedley Butler would not believe.  The nationalistic symbols, slogans, and myths have replaced the old patriotism to an extent that debate can no longer take place in the mainstream.

The ruling class, disdainful of a self-sufficient middle class, is using the poor, both working and not working, and both native born and imported, against them, a tactic as old as societies and an inversion of the principles of the Magna Carta.

The political and economic system is now more fragile than ever as the partnership of finance, industry, and government bails each other out with looted money.  This leads to an unsustainable and volatile situation both dangerous and potentially profitable to those who understand the game as the debt incurred in the name of the people, to give the people undeliverable promises, cannot be paid and leads to a reordering of society.

The popular reading of The Republic is that it describes the best form of government that man can attain.  Voegelin considers this to be a vulgar reading of the book which completely misses the point, which he explains in Order and History, Volume III in the section called  “The Foundation Play”,  where Voegelin describes the paradigm of the good polis (city-state) and its politeia (government).

Instead of involving himself with the hands-on business of running a government, as most have interpreted, Plato instead tells of how the just polis cannot be formed on earth.  Instead, the philosopher must remain clear of the impious acts inherent in politics (Plato often uses such words as pious in the world of politics since he considers the polis to be merely an extension of the souls of its inhabitants, and participation in an unjust politeia will corrupt a just soul).  Unfortunately for the philosopher, his true fullness can only be reached in participation in a just politeia, which leads to the paradox that human public stature decreases as the soul’s justice increases.