Separation of Politics and Order

Mencius Moldbug wrote a post called Separation of Information and Security in 2007. Not terribly long ago, but then things were a bit different then. Bush was president. The media didn't like Bush, but they were compliant when it mattered. When it came to selling bunk intel to start a war that killed half a million civilians, expanding the security state, doubling the national debt, legislating away civil liberties, and making teaching-to-the-test the new national education strategy, the media was happy to help. But we didn't see the holy reverence which they bestowed upon Obama for eight years, nor the unhinged fury with which they seek the overthrow of the current president. Well, we though we had seen unabashed partisanship in their disdain for Bush, but truly we hadn't seen anything yet.

Moldbug saw separation of church and state as belonging to a more general separation of information and security, but you might also think of it as separation of politics and order. We don't want those tasked with maintaining order to be politically pre-occupied with politics in the execution of their duties. Imagine if the cops ignored calls from Democrats, while the firefighters stood to watch Republicans houses burn to the ground. That is worse for everyone, on both sides. At least in our current system, broken as it is getting, we still enjoy equal protection from firefighters and cops (besides California). Moldbug's logical decomposition of concerns (can you tell he's a programmer?) has possibly an even more general principle, the containment of politics from spilling out into all aspects of life. Anti-communism, you might call it, since the hallmark of communists is they start by politicizing everything. It's quite straightforward, really. First, you politicize everything, then scheme to attain political power. Once achieved, you have power over everything.

The problem with autocracy is that there is no feedback loop. National decisions are whatever the leader decides, and that's final. It's actually great if the leader is superbly competent and sympathetic to his people, but that's rarely the case. Democracy acts as a hedge on decision making. The great ones aren't able to do what they'd like to do, but then neither are the petty tyrants.  People only have two options to express their political will: by voice or by force. Democracy establishes a formal feedback mechanism to ensure that voice has some say in political decision making. That helps ensure that force is a lot harder to justify. The downside is that the nation's decision-making competency becomes roughly equal to that of the average voter.  (Yeah, that bad.) A more balanced approach would be if voting was limited to the smart half of society. Or quarter, even. (Kinda like what the Founders implemented, yes?) With this approach, the decision making stay competent, there is still sufficient feedback from the citizenry, although the lower tiers will feel voiceless. They're pretty distracted by Netflix and social media these days, so maybe that's okay...

The whole feedback mechanism doesn't work by itself. It's not enough just to allow voting. There must be an open and honest transmission of information. It's why the first enshrined right of the first modern democracy was freedom of speech. It's just that important. The government can't bias the public information, because the whole point is political will moves up, not down. And, they can't suppress the flow of public information, because that ensures faulty decision making that will lead to ruin. Moldbug gives the canonical example of a priestly class and a warrior class in a primitive tyranny - the norm throughout most of human history. The priestly class decides what the values are, and who is most holy in accordance with those values. The warrior class is okay to permit the powerful priests, so long as they are singing the praises of the warriors. Yes, the warriors could impose their political will on the people directly, by force. That works, but builds resentments. It's much easier and more stable if the people willingly obey the rulers at the urging of the priests. The warriors then only have to threaten violence against the priests, as opposed to everyone. Moldbug's example isn't really the worst example of politics and order colliding. In the rulers/priests scenario, there becomes a separation, to a degree, of politics and order. The warriors keep order, the priests have some degree of autonomy for the politics. A balance of powers arises. The rulers can kill the priests if they need to. The priests might initiate a revolt against an unpopular ruler.

One thing that should be obvious is that our situation today is closer to the priest-ruler dynamic than a free democracy. The priestly class is the media, who have enormous influence on American's values and information access. They convince the people what is good or evil, and amplify the sins of their enemies while hiding those of their allies. In the classic example, the priests' high status is permitted by the ruler, who might depose any found to be unfavorable. Today, it is the media who control the path to power and dethrones heretics. They are often compared to the Praetorian Guards of late Rome, who were actually a segment of the warrior class. Today the priestly class make similar decisions.

The notion of the separation of politics and security is something this blog stumbled on when exploring the idea of an Energy Backed Currency, which advocated not just a currency backed by energy production, but that the government should nationalize that industry and order itself accordingly as energy-dependent entity. It proposed an outer government, focused on security, diplomacy, and the acquisition of energy resources, and an independent inner government to manage the society. It seems the federalists had a similar idea, but without the focus on energy as a primary driver of national decision making.

With commentators now getting banned just for being conservative, it's clear more than ever that Moldbug was right. The issue at hand is not religion but the transmission of ideas and values. What we have now is a religious cult stifling the free flow of information in a quest to use the government to impose their political will on the populace. This is exactly what the Founders sought to prevent. The American experiment appears to be coming to its conclusion.