Mouse on Tyranny

Some Mousers were having trouble linking to Spinoza's Treatise on Theology and Poltics so I'm gonna extract a few lines from the first paragraph and make a few pertinent squeaks to illumminate Mr. Spinoza's thoughts.

"No man's mind can possibly lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgment, or be compelled so to do. For this reason government which attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical, and it is considered an abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects, to seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men in their worship of God."

The first phrase of the excerpt is doubtless true, but Spinoza held no illusions about how the minds of men operate. "Reason and judgment," while nouns, are the verb-forms of the mind function. We reason, we judge. But in reasoning we derive our conclusions -- we judge-- on the basis of what we had previously believed to be true, or false. Reason would thus, it seems, reveal nothing to us other than a restatement of what we previously believed was true. To use a common example, If all men are mortal, and if Socrates is a man, then it follows that Socrates is mortal. But if we understand all the words in the premises, the conclusion tells us nothing we did not already know.

But reason -- when operating at ideal levels -- does not deal only with what is already believed. Our senses expose us to some things -- ideas and theories -- that contradict our beliefs. We and everyone we know may believe that God is one thing and his creation another, but then we hear that an excommunicate Jew thinks God and the universe are essentially the same thing (though to speak of God as a "thing" is fraught with difficulty). We may react to that "news" in two different ways. We may passively react by doing nothing, the same as we might when we encounter a strange word in an otherwise easily flowing story. We may infer a meaning for the word from the context in which it is used, a kind of action, but we may simply skip the word. We may similarly contextualize contrary ideas. We may infer, semi-actively, that the new ideas fall within the category of "philosophical rambling" and leave the problem to specialists, as if the ideas were unimportant to us personally. That would also represent "a kind of action," just as we might have assumed the unknown word was not vital to the story we were reading.

But to the word and to the strange new idea we may also react in a decisively active manner. For the word, we can go to a dictionary, and learning the definition, may -- in a well-written story -- come to a deeper appreciation of the author's intentions. In taking that action we will, for a reason that cannot be explained by reference to physical law, have overcome one of the most fundamental facts of the physical world, inertia. We will have supplied the force that moved a "body at rest."

In the instance of our reaction to a new idea, if we take deliberate action, we will have acted in a way similar to counter natural inertia. But because our beliefs determine the way we act in the world, by moving to determine the truth of the matter, we will have acted to change the course of "a body in motion." This is still an action that cannot be explained by physical law. We did not seek understanding because we were physically compelled to do so. We moved for reasons that are more properly referred to as spiritual. Because we are human, we desire to know.

But what has this to do with tyranny?

Governments function to create a safe environment so that citizens may seek to fulfill their desires, one of which is to learn the truth.

But governments have a problem. People are existentially free, and the people, on many important matters, disagree with their fellow citizens. Modern governments, seeking to ingratiate themselves or their party with the people, have found it advantageous to shape laws and regulations to suit this or that of one or more contending groups of citizens. This results in the government's adopting measures that fly in the face of its primary function. Rather than creating a safe environment within which people can reason upon their disagreements, it has introduced a cause of strife. And because the government, by definition, is authorized the use of force to enforce its laws and regulations, the citizens not favored by the government's conscious choice of "sides" will be the subjects of tyranny.

These effects become most noticeable in economic matters. The vast majority of the people are enrolled in one group or the other of the nation's economic players, and because the groups often see themselves as adversaries, almost anything government does in the economic arena is bound to seem tryannical to at least one of the groups. Consequently, only when the ends of public safety are involved should the government involve itself in the economy. Food and drug laws can be justified, but selective tariffs designed to protect certain products cannot. Taxes designed to redistribute wealth are fraudulent, but a progressive tax scale necessitated by the need to finance government's legitimate expenses is not -- though in this case, the difference in intent will be difficult to see.

Government is not tyrannical when it performs its normal functions, always doing its best to serve public needs, and doing more than its best to keep the people honestly informed. But when government identifies itself with an ideology other than that prescribed in its constitution, when it interprets its function in terms other than as guarantor of public safety and protector of the people's rights, it ventures into areas that almost assuredly lead to tyranny.

It may seem that government can, by gradual encroachment of the people's rights achieve a state of tyranny without the people becoming aware of it, but in history, even in the case of monarchies, when the sovereign has strayed too far beyond the natural desire of people to be free, and their natural ability to reason that they are not, the sovereign has been deposed. Those governments fool themselves who believe they can with impunity deceive their subjects into believing they are free. True, the screw does not turn without significant disruption of the status quo, often by war and revolution, but it turns nonetheless toward an historical expression of innate freedom.

Upon that fact doth the true faith of God reside.