Political Activity and Progress

December 6, 2007
by Evans Munyemesha

The daily reports and political opinions in our newspapers on the apparently urgent need for alternative energy sources and an earth-saving solution to the global warming ?crisis' due to the excessive and therefore oversupply of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (a matter for which Al Gore's global activism earned him a Nobel Prize) have led me to reflect on the relation between political activity and social progress. If there is any relationship between political activity and progress, that then must determine for us whether that relationship is positive or negative---it could never be neutral for obvious reasons.

The first point to which I wish to direct the candid reader's attention is that alternative energy sources and the solution to the global warming ?crisis' (assuming it to be a result of human activity only) are matters that can be addressed effectively through scientific means, not political ones.

Political activity is commonly held in high esteem and fairly spoken of, although it occasionally bears a beating in some newspapers for this and that. But its advocates are incapable of crushing the weighty arguments and reprimands of the opposition against it, though they may give the pretension of showing some feeble defense of their own doctrines, as long as they are not pushed far enough to invoke the violence of the State. If we ask how political activity contributes to progress, it is found that the answers given are as varied as they are numerous.

A decided lack of harmony would be perceptible between the choices offered by democrats and republicans, socialists and pseudo-capitalists, monarchists and theocrats. Their only point of agreement is in stating that political activity, ambiguously defined and demanding special interpretation, is essential for social stability and progress. Their attempts to elaborate on such a proposition never fail to drag them into invincible absurdities. For instance, it is held as a sound principle of political theory that government is needful to secure the property of its citizens. But this theory is absurd because the power to secure property and the power to tax vested in the same political agency act antagonistically, where the former is essential in the promotion of liberty and the latter in the promotion of despotism. Another absurdity is found in the ritual of presidential elections by which it is presupposed that the combined wisdom of the voting public would yield the fittest person for the job. The historical record refutes this presupposition.

This drives me to inevitably contemplate that, generally, it is in the nature of the human species not to be bothered with the fact that, of every institution that comes about from the designs of political interests, for people to have an accurate judgment of it in as far as its service to them, it is of great consequence of them to jealously examine its nature and its usefulness, if any at all.

This must be so, that is to say, examination is of necessity, for much that comes out of the busy hands of politicians is little destined for the liberty and progress of all people but calculated to profit a few and delude the many at their own cost. The daily howls about the rich getting richer (with the aid of the political machinery) and the poor getting poorer (due to the negligence from the same political machinery) must serve here as our preliminary evidence to support our assertion.

The view that much that comes out of the busy hands of politicians is little destined for the liberty and progress of all people but calculated to profit a few, as asserted above, is deducible from the now established fact that, political interests having domesticated the minds of the electorate and public opinion through a steady diet of government-approved curricula in the public education system and academic propaganda through an extensive web of pseudo think tanks populated by empty-headed experts and public ?intellectual morons', have found it worthwhile to align their interests with those of the unscrupulous special groups while simultaneously preying on the ever-willing voting public whose lust for political idols is insatiable.

This of course is amply evident in this idea: While it is universally admitted by the disciples of John Locke on his theory in the treatise on government that "The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property;" that is to say, if we admit government to be a "necessary evil" its sphere of jurisdiction need not exceed the boundaries of the administration of justice, yet, the electorate, after having anointed their chosen politician with the holy waters of the vote, they exercise no effective caution or care in checking against his political invasions as he unhesitatingly takes it upon himself to invade every sphere of private activity, regulating intimate relationships here, prohibiting the sale and consumption of certain plants there, interfering with trade in one place, providing formal education (as though the politician is the fountain of necessary knowledge) in another, and interfering in other numberless private affairs everywhere.

Were the electorate who are always entranced by political personalities so watchful and alert in public affairs and in the examination of institutions that are ostensibly erected to meet their needs or protect them against the imaginary Hobbesian predators, they would find themselves less of miserable dupes to the iniquitous follies of the politician of their own choosing. Our friends will perhaps find it alarming if it is brought to their attention that voting is merely a surer means of choosing one's own preferred political devil.

Where you have two evils, and you choose the lesser one, that choice, by having eliminated the greater one, must of necessity become the new greater evil in relation to the prevailing conditions by which it must be judged. I have always held that choosing the lesser of two evils is a political idea calculated to entertain the ear but poison the mind of the human herd for it answers to no general rule other than that of expediency. It's indeed a wise and apt statement that he who distrusts his own judgment sets himself up to the caprices of others.

If I were asked to enumerate the beneficial effects of the member of the church of organized hypocrisy called the politician on society, I would answer that there are none. But I am always prepared to estimate the blight which has fallen upon society from political activity, its false doctrines and mismanagement of resources. (At this writing, an obscure think tank going by the name of The Center for Science in the Public Interest is pushing for tighter regulation by the federal government through the FDA of the use of salt in foods, arguing that doing so would save lives).

The hidden assumption in here is that the federal government is both beneficent and all-knowing. But who can describe the anguish of parents who have needlessly lost their offspring to the Child Protective Services, and the military, of friends whom it has estranged, one against another, of husbands and wives between whom it has sown divisions, of parents whom it has filled with the dread that their children were doomed to perdition if they could not memorize formulae and other useless trivia passing for instruction in its public schools?

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In Washington, political activity has proved to be an incubator of corruption, the agitator of cruel oppression, the instigator of religious discrimination, the fuel for a powerful regulatory machinery, a commodity for sale, a superstitious enterprise to overawe the political fundamentalists, and in all other places a tolerable nightmare. This variety as to the character of political activity in various places appears immediately.

It has found room for all temperaments; the ascetic and luxurious enjoyer of life, the man of misguided action and the man of vain contemplation; the busybody and the lobbyist, the philanthropist with more money than mental faculties, the destroyer of his race, and the lover of all ceremonies. All these have found refuge within the pale of the politician's creation. But this heterogeneous family is by no means the result of an all embracing comprehensiveness in the system of the politician's handiwork, but rather the effects of a political faith characterized similarly by its indefinite, incomplete, and indecisive principles.

To put the matter mildly, all the talk about the need for a political redeemer to stimulate progress is pure nonsense. The politician by virtue of his personal elements, immoral and criminal, could not conduce to that which we call progress, for this, progress, as we understand it, is the result of influences and agencies antagonistic to the business of political activity.

What we call progress means a condition of society where movements are in operation that will banish barbarism, and in its place establish individual sovereignty, which is the only true government answerable only to the higher laws not made by man but pre-existing and subject to discovery. Now, in what nation has the politician accomplished this result? If it is argued that political activity introduces mental darkness through the State Department of Education and serfdom through its armed forces, the point will not be contested.

Many able expounders on the matters of political activity (or the essential duties of public institutions), failing to recognize the true causes of progress and wealth, urge that they have produced what they term "public good and safety" and that this change has a more beneficial effect upon the general conditions of society than capitalistic, entrepreneurial and other private agencies have. Now, we fail to discover any incontrovertible proof of this claim from their reliable sources. Progress everywhere has been, and continues to be, the result of intellectual development which leads to invention and innovation.

In transforming society from what it was to what it is, scientific inquiry has proved more valuable than the misinformation of political activity. The improvements we observe around us are not the outcome of putting into practice the ceremonial sermons of the politician, but rather the consequence of following scientific truths. But scientific truth emanates not from public offices, parliaments, or public policy think tanks such as The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI); no, it emanates from highly evolved intellects committed to the study of Natural phenomena.

Contrary to an almost universal belief, the progress of all societies is to be attributed to the division of labor and the industry of investors, sagacious savers, capitalists and entrepreneurs. Political activity and the institutions emerging from there hinder progress. For instance, it is not in the invention and multiplication of ordinances and statutes but for the scientific inventions and discoveries that we are better off now.

There is no question that many of the most contemporary able thinkers entertain different views from those contained in this article with regard to political activity and progress, but that upon which I insist in here is supported by historical facts and empirical evidence. If the causes of progress are contained in the volumes of statute books and other writings about public institution reform or in the proceedings of parliaments, how is it that we find no useful inventions, innovations, or discoveries associated with many a politician or many a public institution but only the most absurd creations?

It is not in parliaments and government-funded think tanks but in private laboratories, garages, and backyards that real progress to any great extent is accomplished. To accept the promises of the politician and his empire of public institutions is to reject such civilizing forces as valuable general knowledge and science, and to attempt to subvert the operation of social laws which are the true guides in our progress from the naked, ignorant and wretched brute that we once were to one of cultivated intellect and higher morals.

Progress, I repeat, does not derive its nourishment from political activity, as it is generally implied, understood, or taught. On the contrary, it has its roots in self-interest: That is to say, the pursuit and preservation of the right to life (which is the only original right from which all other rights must be deduced), private ownership of property and of the means of production, economic freedom (including free markets), economic inequality and free competition, and division of labor (as distinguished from all the farcical notions about central planning, boards and committees).

This, therefore, means that progress follows from the process of moral, intellectual, and material growth. This process must free us from the lower conditions produced and maintained by collectivism and deliver us to higher conditions of individualism that furnish personal comforts, conveniences, and happiness. As already indicated above, the conditions necessary for progress are neither entertained nor promoted by the politician for he has not the time to educate himself on the requisite social sciences necessary for this task as he is busy trying to consolidate his power by multiplying his destructive laws.

Whoever demands proof of this, proof of my assertions on the true causes of progress, I suggest to that inquirer to take a cursory survey of the globe, and his eye will be supplied with that proof, unmistakably; in every corner of the globe, progress is held hostage by the heavy hand of the politician where human beings are reduced to drones and beggars. If this self-evident proof is missed by our cursory inquirer, it is only because he has chosen to sufficiently blind himself to the true causes of that sorry and tragic sight, not of progress, but of poverty of the mind and of the body, that his wandering eye is met with.

Our inquirer, like his like-minded professors of public institutions, would attribute what he sees, not to its true causes, no, he would attribute it to something that his overheated imagination impresses upon his mind. We will find him attributing the sorry state of the world to the rich or the capitalist. He could not be more wrong!

Now that the object of this brief analysis is to see whether political activity is an appropriate means to social progress, it is needful that we examine, however briefly (for fear that we may bore our readers with a lengthy one) whether the politician ought to be in business of stimulating progress. This is an important question to ask, and indeed seek answers to, for it is universally acknowledged through observation and rational analysis that of the range of undertakings with which the politician occupies himself, not one can be pointed to in demonstrating that progress is a product of political activity.

As the politician engages himself in countless affairs, conducting functions outside of his defined political sphere, busily wasting away his energies in activities with which he should have no concern at all, he must certainly become over tasked and eventually ill-suited to perform his fundamental duties. The Englishman Herbert Spencer addressed this issue in this manner: "It is in the very nature of things that an agency employed for two purposes must fulfill both imperfectly; partly because while fulfilling the one it cannot be fulfilling the other, and partly because its adaptation to both ends implies incomplete fitness to either." Consequently, it is undoubtful that when the politician compels himself to do those things which he need not to do, he does them badly, leaving a trail of degradation (as in collapsing levees and bridges), waste, and inefficiency.

In this brief denunciation of the common idea that the business of a politician is not needful as an aid in the progress of society, I have as well implied that political activity is incompatible with social progress on account that, not only will the private advantage of the politician frequently override the welfare of the electorate but, too, that the subordination of a whole population to one politician in the shape of the president is a vicious state of things permitted by an indifferent voting mass that is in the grip of superstitious awe and blind fear.

Those who have never had the confidence to examine political activity closely and its effects; those who feel persuaded that their welfare spring out of this abstruse public creature need to look for that equity, that voluntary combination of interest, which leads us to individual progress. And it is only individual progress that must give birth to social progress, a view much-maligned by a larger number of the population.

Hence, it is only by leaving individuals to guide themselves in pursuit of that which makes them happy and progressive, including in the pursuit of matters that may be offensive to others, that general progress may be attained. It must become plain from this supposition then, that, to institute political activity and institutions is, firstly, contrary to the general progress of society for political activity and institutions presuppose that the diverse individual ends could be attained by uniform means determined by a central figure; secondly, that these institutions hinder the course of progress by misdirecting resources. If political activity is the means to general progress, we should surely see less misery in our midst, but do we?

Observe with me that it is less risky and preferable for savages of whatever age and race to plunder and prey on others than to engage in honest and productive labor. Consequently, the notion that the discovery of alternative energy sources and the solution to the global warming ?crisis' need the inducement of vigorous political activity is a notion to amuse the ear---but never to instruct the mind!

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