In
The Rights of Man written as a rebuttal of British writings against the French Revolution, American patriot Thomas Paine describes an American Revolutionary England that seems frighteningly familiar. The Federalists, who brought W. to power and who have been stacking the courts claim they want to roll back the clocks to before FDR, but after reading some of Paine's writing, I wonder. Are they really trying to take us back two hundred years and across the Atlantic?
Paine describes monarchies, republics, and then a hybrid of the two which he refers to as "Mixed Government".
In mixed Governments there is no responsibility: the parts cover each other till responsibility is lost; and the corruption which moves the machine, contrives at the same time its own escape. When it is laid down as a maxim, that a King can do no wrong, it places him in a state of similar security with that of idiots and persons insane, and responsibility is out of the question with respect to himself. It then descends upon the Minister, who shelters himself under a majority in Parliament, which, by places, pensions, and corruption, he can always command; and that majority justifies itself by the same authority with which it protects the Minister. In this rotatory motion, responsibility is thrown off from the parts, and from the whole.
When there is a Part in a Government which can do no wrong, it implies that it does nothing; and is only the machine of another power, by whose advice and direction it acts. What is supposed to be the King in the mixed Governments, is the Cabinet; and as the Cabinet is always a part of the Parliament, and the members justifying in one character what they advise and act in another, a mixed Government becomes a continual enigma; entailing upon a country by the quantity of corruption necessary to solder the parts, the expense of supporting all the forms of government at once, and finally resolving itself into a Government by Committee; in which the advisers, the actors, the approvers, the justifiers, the persons responsible, and the persons not responsible, are the same persons.
By this pantomimical contrivance, and change of scene and character, the parts help each other out in matters which neither of them singly would assume to act. When money is to be obtained, the mass of variety apparently dissolves, and a profusion of parliamentary praises passes between the parts. Each admires with astonishment, the wisdom, the liberality, the disinterestedness of the other: and all of them breathe a pitying sigh at the burthens of the Nation.
Oh my god! We've got a Mixed Government, too. Only our guy who can do no wrong is King George II, not King George III.
Ever wonder why King George II is so hell bent upon creating a state religion? Hint: it isn't because he loves religion.
All religions are in their nature kind and benign, and united with principles of morality. They could not have made proselytes at first by professing anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immoral. Like everything else, they had their beginning; and they proceeded by persuasion, exhortation, and example. How then is it that they lose their native mildness, and become morose and intolerant?
It proceeds from the connection which Mr. Burke recommends. By engendering the church with the state, a sort of mule-animal, capable only of destroying, and not of breeding up, is produced, called the Church established by Law. It is a stranger, even from its birth, to any parent mother, on whom it is begotten, and whom in time it kicks out and destroys.
Now, why would a Mixed Government want to create a monstrous state religion? One reason, is to give divine right to its "can do no wrong" leader and military. Another is to make religion so nasty and oppressive that people turn away from the other forms of religion, the life affirming, love thy neighbor as thyself forms that in the past have lead Christians to resist the Nazis and shelter Jews or Buddhists to resist the junta in Burma or Liberation Theologists to champion the cause of the poor. In the 60s and 70s those forms of religion kicked the right wing, war machine's ass.
What does Tom Paine have to say about King George II's wars of choice? Who is empowered to decide whether or not a country should go to war?
The French Constitution says that the right of war and peace is in the nation. Where else should it reside but in those who are to pay the expense?
Not so fast, says King George II. "William the Conqueror, as a conqueror, held this power of war and peace in himself, and his descendants have ever since claimed it under him as a right."
The King is not about to give up his power to lie a nation into war, because war is good for business.
War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditure. In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
A little later, Paine comes back to the subject of war:
Every war terminates with an addition of taxes, and consequently with an addition of revenue; and in any event of war, in the manner they are now commenced and concluded, the power and interest of Governments are increased. War, therefore, from its productiveness, as it easily furnishes the pretence of necessity for taxes and appointments to places and offices, becomes a principal part of the system of old Governments; and to establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches. The frivolous matters upon which war is made, show the disposition and avidity of Governments to uphold the system of war, and betray the motives upon which they act.
If Tom Paine or any of the other American Founders were to meet George W. Bush, they would recognize him for what he is---a self styled monarch--and they would be horrified. If they were to see what the U.S. Congress is putting up with from the White House, they would be disgusted. They might even call them all a bunch of traitors against the Constitution and the principles upon which the United States was founded.
I know that they would remind the members of Congress that impeachment was given to them for a reason, because it is more civilized to remove a dangerous president and vice president peacefully than through a popular revolution such as the one the French had to remove their monarchy.
Maybe Paine is correct. Maybe the whole corrupt Mixed Government machine and all the many businesses and special interests it supports are too happy feeding at the war trough King George II has set up for Congress to spoil their "good thing".