Do you think it’s necessary to have a singular president? I wouldn’t mind making the office more of a figurehead if it resulted in more checks on government. Because when it comes down to it, I didn’t vote for Trump, I voted against Biden. If I had my choice for any political seat, it would be a libertarian of some flavor, but they won’t win any major office in the foreseeable future. So I vote for the guy who will probably raise taxes, but probably less than Biden; the guy who will probably continue inflating our fiat currency, but so would Biden; the guy who will expand the power of the office of president, but at least not as much as Biden; the guy who will undermine our freedoms, liberties, and God-given Natural Rights, but probably more slowly than Biden would. A powerless president is more preferable to me than either candidate winning.
The counterpoint, is that the Founding Fathers considered this. They had seen the inability of the Articles of Confederation to enforce any of their acts, or even to collect taxes for the raising of an army. So they created a federal government. They wanted the executive branch, as I understand it, to have a single figurehead so that there would be someone who could represent the government in international affairs, hence the president’s constitutional powers regarding the negotiation of treaties. Did they have a point here? Is having a single leader, whether a Prime Minister, a King, or a President, inevitable?
Or, to take a third option, is all of this immaterial to preventing government encroachment upon freedoms, liberties, and Natural Rights? After all, if everyone, tomorrow, decides to act like the rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion supposedly protected by our 1st Amendment, don’t exist, they will not, for all intents and purposes, exist. “Rational Anarchism”, Heinlein calls it. Our rights are respected because a sufficient ratio of our society acts as though they exist. (This is not to say that our rights are human constructs, but rather that we as moral agents are not necessarily obliged to respect said rights. I could violate someone’s right to life. I could stab someone with a knife. Why don’t I do this (besides not wanting to)? Because I believe they have a right to life, and because others, who also believe they have a right to life, will arrest me if I do that. The right exists regardless of whether or not I or anyone else respects it, the situation of that right being respected, may not always exist.) So if we have arrived today, at a society in which the tax that the average American pays is far in excess of the taxes over which the 13 colonies declared independence from Great Britain, in a society run on fiat and backed by debt, in a society where censorship and cancel culture are real threats to freedom of speech, expression, and assembly, in a society where the right to keep and bear arms is infringed, have we arrived thereto for any reason other than apathy? have we arrived thereto by any decisions not in their insignificance, portents of same cowardice which saw Stalin take power? I have been thinking about the quote from Gulag Archipelago the past few days, and if we are not faithful in little, the censoring of journalists, the demonetization of Youtube videos, the slanted content suggestions of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, how then will we be faithful in much? would it not be pride as of Lucifer to think we would not *burn in the camps later?
*
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?.. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
This is not an endorsement of Trump, Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, or any other president after the first few. The chained lion created in 1787 began working the metal of its manacles from the first, but if this progression is inevitable, should we therefor resign ourselves to it as to a natural disaster: preparing to weather it—accepting it will come or go as of a volition its own? I do not doubt that Summer and Winter, Springtime and Harvest, will endure; I do not doubt that though I may, in the event of a societal collapse die being ill equipped for that environment, enough will not; but is there then anything to be gained in resisting the inexorable force which flattens Olympus Mons? I want there to so be, but perhaps there is not, and I would not be alone in so supposing.
I would be interested in @JethOrensin’s take on this even though we differ politically and religiously, because I think we also have some beliefs in common: we are both Christians and I have seen JethOrensin post some very well reasoned essays on these forums. Is there any choice beyond the slowest decent to either Anarchy or Tyranny? Should we be focusing only on bringing more people to Christ in the hopes that this may indirectly result in a better political system as an ancillary benefit?
(note: the following paragraph should be taken as my beliefs: I am not claiming (nor do I believe) that JethOrensin would agree with everything below, and I do not want to put words into his mouth)
I believe that humans have LFW. I believe that God is saddened when Men rebel in their hearts against Him—when they harm their fellow Man—when they profane His creation. I do not know whether God would be happy with either election result; perhaps it would be neither, perhaps either; but I do believe that He makes all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose: I believe that no matter the election result, God can and will use it to His glory, but what does this mean for our lives? Does it mean we abstain from political processes, or does it mean we do our best as sinful humans to put in office the men we in our limited understanding believe best suited to each office? Does the one bury the talent, or does the other struggle with God? I don’t know.
Strictly speaking, of course, “Yes”, but the natural reading of the question is what is most probable, and to that I do not know the answer.
).
), but it also seems to punish inaction with the same severity as sin (stealing).