Vulnerability In Numbers -- Or The Danger Of It

“Where the sovereign power is reserved by the collected body, it appears unnecessary to think of additional establishments for securing the rights of the citizen. But it is difficult, if not impossible, for the collective body to exercise this power in a manner that supersedes the necessity of every other political caution.  If popular assemblies assume every function of government; and if, in the same tumultuous manner in which they can, with great propriety, express their feelings, the sense of their rights, and their animosity to foreign or domestic enemies, they pretend to deliberate on points of national conduct, or to decide questions of equity and justice; the public is exposed to manifold inconveniencies; and popular governments would, of all others, be the most subject to errors in administration, and to weakness in the execution of public measures.

“To avoid these disadvantages, the people are always contented to delegate part of their power.  They establish a senate to debate, and to prepare, if not to determine, questions that are brought to the collective body for a final resolution.  They commit the executive power to some council of this sort, or to a magistrate who presides in their meetings.  Under the use of this necessary and common expedient, even while democratical forms are most carefully guarded, there is one party of the few, another of the many.  One attacks, the other defends; and they are both ready to assume in their turns.  But though, in reality, a great danger to liberty arises on the part of the people themselves, who, in times of corruption, are easily made the instruments of usurpation and tyranny; yet, in the ordinary aspect of government, the executive carries an air of superiority, and the rights of the people seem always exposed to encroachment.

“Though, on the day that the Roman people were assembled, the senators mixed with the crowd, and the consul was no more than the servant of the multitude; yet, when this awful meeting was dissolved, the senators met to prescribe business for their sovereign, and the consul went armed with the axe and the rods, to teach every Roman, in his separate capacity, the submission which he owed to the state.  Thus, even where the collective body is sovereign, they are assembled only occasionally; and though, on such occasions, they determine every question relative to their rights and their interests as a people, and can assert their freedom with irresistible force; yet they do not think themselves, nor are they in reality, safe, without a more constant and more uniform power operating in their favour. The multitude is every where strong; but requires, for the safety of its members, when separate as well as when assembled, a head to direct and to employ its strength....”

“In democratical establishments, citizens, feeling themselves possessed of the sovereignty, are not equally anxious, with the subjects of other governments, to have their rights explained, or secured, by actual statute.  They trust to personal vigour, to the support of party, and to the sense of the public.  If the collective body perform the office of judge, as well as of legislator, they seldom think of devising rules for their own direction, and are found still more seldom to follow any determinate rule, after it is made.  They dispense, at one time, with what they enacted at another; and in their judicative, perhaps even more than in their legislative, capacity, are guided by passions and partialities that arise from circumstances of the case before them.”

- Adam Ferguson, from An Essay on the History of Civil Society

Not In Mere Laws

“No magistrate, whether temporary or hereditary, can with safety neglect that reputation for justice and equity, from which his authority, and the respect that is paid to his person, are in a great measure derived.  Nations, however, have been fortunate in the tenor, and in the execution of their laws, in proportion as they have admitted every order of the people, by representation or otherwise, to an actual share of the legislature. Under establishments of this sort, law is literally a treaty, to which the parties concerned have agreed, and have given their opinion in settling its terms.  The interests to be affected by a law, are likewise consulted in making it.  Every class propounds an objection, suggests an addition or an amendment of its own.  They proceed to adjust, by statute, every subject of controversy: and while they continue to enjoy their freedom, they continue to multiply laws, and to accumulate volumes, as if they could remove every possible ground of dispute, and were secure of their rights, merely by having put them in writing.

“Rome and England, under their mixed governments, the one inclining to democracy, and the other to monarchy, have proved the great legislators among nations.  The first has left the foundation, and great part of the superstructure of its civil code to the continent of Europe: the other, in its island, has carried the authority and government of law to a point of perfection, which they never before attained in the history of mankind.  Under such favourable establishments, known customs, the practice and decisions of courts, as well as positive statutes, acquire the authority of laws; and every proceeding is conducted by some fixed and determinate rule.

“The best and most effectual precautions are taken for the impartial application of rules to particular cases; and it is remarkable, that, in the two examples we have mentioned, a surprising coincidence is found in the singular methods of their jurisdiction. The people in both reserved in a manner the office of judgment to themselves, and brought the decision of civil rights, or of criminal questions, to the tribunal of peers, who, in judging of their fellow citizens, prescribed a condition of life for themselves.  It is not in mere laws, after all, that we are to look for the securities to justice, but in the powers by which these laws have been obtained, and without whose constant support they must fall to disuse.  Statutes serve to record the rights of a people, and speak the intention of parties to defend what the letter of the law has expressed; but without the vigour to maintain what is acknowledged as a right, the mere record, or the feeble intention, is of little avail.  A populace roused by oppression, or an order of men possessed of temporary advantage, have obtained many charters, concessions, and stipulations, in favour of their claims; but where no adequate preparation was made to preserve them, the written articles were often forgotten, together with the occasion on which they were framed.

“The history of England, and of every free country, abounds with the example of statutes enacted when the people or their representatives assembled, but never executed when the crown or the executive was left to itself.  The most equitable laws on paper are consistent with the utmost despotism in administration.  Even the form of trial by juries in England had its authority in law, while the proceedings of courts were arbitrary and oppressive.  We must admire, as the key stone of civil liberty, the statute which forces the secrets of every prison to be revealed, the cause of every commitment to be declared, and the person of the accused to be produced, that he may claim his enlargement, or his trial, within a limited time.  No wiser form was ever opposed to the abuses of power.  But it requires a fabric no less than the whole political constitution of Great Britain, a spirit no less than the refractory and turbulent zeal of this fortunate people, to secure its effects.  If even the safety of the person, and the tenure of property, which may be so well defined in the words of a statute, depend, for their preservation, on the vigour and jealousy of a free people, and on the degree of consideration which every order of the state maintains for itself; it is still more evident, that what we have called the political freedom, or the right of the individual to act in his station for himself and the public, cannot be made to rest on any other foundation.  The estate may be saved, and the person released, by the forms of a civil procedure; but the rights of the mind cannot be sustained by any other force but its own.”

- Adam Ferguson, from An Essay on the History of Civil Society

Thirty Is Not Thirty-One

 Commentary on this point ought to be unnecessary, so before I bother to try to explain this further, I'll just leave this here and see how it goes.

After Thirty Days Had Passed

1. April 30, 2021.
2. May 31, 2021.
3. August 30, 2021.
4. September 30, 2021.
5. October 31, 2021.
6. December 1, 2021.
7. January 1, 2022.

This is a list of the dates (so far) when the thirty days of the then-latest renewal term of Indiana's State of Disaster Emergency had been exhausted but the pending renewal had yet to take effect.  I have no idea what would lead the Governor's office to schedule these renewals so as to allow the COVID-19 State of Disaster Emergency repeatedly expire.  When I first noticed that dates were being skipped, I felt certain that it was being done inadvertently.  However, it has now happened seven times (so far) since April 2021, including the last four in a row.  The longer this continues, the more difficult it becomes to believe that it is an accident, but it would make no sense to do this on purpose.  By the terms of IC 10-14-3-12(a)(2), a State of Disaster Emergency expires and terminates after thirty days unless a renewal keeps it going for another thirty days.  The renewal must, of course, begin the new thirty day period where the one preceding it ends; if the State of Disaster Emergency is permitted to expire, then there will no longer be anything left to renew.  Unless Governor Holcomb wants the State of Disaster Emergency to end (which he can bring about at will whenever he might choose to do so), it is unwise to repeatedly schedule renewals to take effect a full day after the latest thirty-day term has been exhausted.  If Indiana law were being followed, here, the State of Disaster Emergency should have ended on April 30th, 2021, or, failing that, on any one of the other six of the seven dates above.

I cannot explain why this is being done; I can only call attention to the fact that it is.

(I can also add: If you know anyone who has been dead on seven separate occasions, each time for a full twenty-four hours, then that person has something in common with Indiana's COVID-19 State of Disaster Emergency.)

Property

“VIII. There remain, however, various important questions yet to be answered, and many other titles to property yet to be examined.  Why, it has been asked, should man be allowed to appropriate more than is necessary for his support?  We ask, what support is meant?  The momentary satisfying of his hunger, by shooting a deer, plucking a fruit?  Is he allowed to shoot several deer and dry the meat for the winter?  Is he not allowed to cultivate a tree, which shall give him fruit for certainty, so that he may not be exposed again to hunger, the pain of which he knows already?  May he not cultivate a patch of land to have corn for his children?  If he has slain a buck to satisfy his hunger, is he allowed to appropriate the skin to himself and call it his own?  If the industrious fisherman sails to the bank of Newfoundland to appropriate to himself the unappropriated codfish, has he no right to catch as many as he thinks he and his children shall want for the whole year?  But they cannot live upon codfish alone; may he not take so many codfish as to exchange part of them for other food, for clothing?  Does supporting his family not include the sending of his children to school?  May he not catch some more to save the money he may obtain for it, that, should he perish at sea, his wife and children may not suffer from want or become a burthen to others?  Where does the meaning of support stop?  Why should it apply to the satisfying of physical wants only?  There are wants far higher than these—the wants of civilisation.  We want accumulated property; without it, no ease; without ease, no leisure; without leisure, no earnest and persevering pursuit of knowledge, no high degree of national civilisation.  Aristotle already lays it down as the basis of high civilisation, to be free and have leisure.  Still the question would remain, why have private property?  It is the very ease which we are promised by those who recommend to us a system of common property.

 “IX. Each man is a being of himself, an individual his individuality is all-important.  He has a natural aversion to being absorbed in an undefined generality.  From early childhood man feels an anxiety to be a distinct individual, to express it, and consequently to individualise everything around him.  Man must ever represent in the outward world, that which moves his inmost soul, the inmost agents of his mind.  Property is nothing else than the application of man’s individuality to external things, or the realisation and manifestation of man’s individuality in the material world.  Man cannot be, never was, without property, without mine and thine.  If he could he would not be man.  In all stages of civilisation, at all ages of his life, we find him anxious to individualise things, to rescue them as it were from undefined generality—to appropriate.  It is a desire most deeply implanted in man . . . And why should this anxiety have been so deeply implanted in the human breast?  Because, as will be shown, private property is the most powerful agent in the promotion of civilisation; an agent which has this striking peculiarity, that while it originates with man’s individuality, it is at the same time the surest and firmest bond of society.”

-Francis Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics

Reason and Purpose

“XXXIX.  As to the second question: Are politics susceptible of being treated in an ethic point of view? the answer is simply this: Either the state, and all the institutions and laws which have emanated from it, exist for the satisfaction of an ambitious and interested or privileged few, or the state is an institution for a distinct moral end, or politics are the effect of mere chance.  One of the three must necessarily be the case.  The first is so repugnant to every man’s feeling as well as to common sense, that none have ever dared publicly to acknowledge it, however they may have been inclined to act on some such view.  If man is a rational being, the state must have a rational end, i. e. it must be founded in reason, which would not be the case, were it a mere contrivance for the benefit, or rather the satisfaction of the desires and appetites of a few.  For science would then have to single out the few, and establish scientifically their claims.  None can possibly be above reason.”

-Francis Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics

To Make Freedom Work

“The freer a country, that is, the more action is guaranteed to every individual, the more necessary becomes a well-founded and general knowledge of political duty.  Without it, that free action will serve but for evil ends.

“No doubt can be entertained, but that there are at all times, among millions, some individuals endowed with great gifts, with talents equal to those of the eminent and successful men of happier periods, but they cannot make and construct a state, and breathe into it the inspiration of life, nor can they guide it by the noblest principles, if the people do not correspond to their exertions, or if the times do not call upon them.”

-Francis Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics

Even the best laws could not relieve us of our responsibilities....

“Many subjects, however, though useful or necessary to some, are not so to every one.  Political ethics may form a very proper branch for a leading statesman, or the citizen who makes a profession of politics, yet ought they to be well understood by every body?  Is it, in particular, necessary to instruct the young in them?  I believe they are most emphatically so.  It is every man’s business to know his duty, and his duties as citizen are among the most sacred and important, especially so in countries which enjoy civil liberty, and have what is commonly, though inaptly called a free government.  The success of the whole, depends upon the whole; and there is no subject connected with the state, which does not vitally affect the interests of every one.  Laws and institutions are nothing more than dead forms of words, unless they operate.  Constitutions do not create liberty; political welfare cannot be decreed or effected by an edict or statute.  Liberty must grow and live, live in the heart of every one, not only as an ardent desire, or an indefinite though exciting notion, but as a knowledge of our political obligations and a profound reverence for political morality.”

...

“The wisest statesman is in this respect but like the poet.  He cannot delight, elevate or inspire, unless the elements to act upon are in the hearts of the hearers.  He cannot make new truths, and if he could, how could he gain entrance for them into the hearts of the people, who were wanting in the very sense to perceive them?  But he can boldly and strikingly pronounce what until then was but dimly felt in the soul of the hearer, or latent though unperceived in his heart.  So can the statesman clearly pronounce and boldly act out or gradually cultivate what was but vaguely felt by the masses, he can concentrate what was scattered, awaken what was dormant, impel, regulate, restrain, but he cannot create his elements.”

-Francis Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics