This is an expansion of a comment I made a John C. Wright's journal; I thank him for the opportunity to comment. It is incomplete and poorly organized; I plan to add to it rather than make new posts at present.
It will be at the top of the list for awhile since I raely make new posts; if you have any interest at all you might check back.
I have been thinking, even brooding, on the whole topic of authority, power and legitimacy. I hope you don't mind my commenting on LJ; I just find it looks prettier than whatever it is that scifiwrirters uses. I havent read the FirstThings article but I did read everything below the cut.
“The Most Improper Job of Any Man is Bossing Other Men”
Like Dr. Hart. I deeply sympathize with Tolkien's attitude, and of course I agree that not one man in a million is fit for it. Unfortunately that doesn't dispose of the problem. Not one man in a million is fit to be a brain surgeon, a hard rock driller, or an Air and Sea rescue frogman either.But these tasks must be done and in the case of rule, or governance, they are nessescitated by theFall.
I've been attracted to anarchism since my teens when first I read the history of the Spanish Civil War. It was a considerable shock, years later, to discover that the worst atrocities of the war were committed not by the "fascisits", or the Condor Legion, or (everyone's favorite villians) the Spanish Communists. These last were bad indeed, but the most savage crimes had to to be laid at the door of my beloved anarchists.
But the seed had been planted, and over the years I read and thought a great deal about anarchism, both in its left (mutual aid) and right (free contract) incarnations. I tried to incorporate mutual aid principles into my personal relations and into my political and social activities, and it worked, surprisingly often. But it works largely on the level of those who can see and speak with other as a regular matter, and I'm afraid it breaks down beyond that point.
I've come to believe that anarchism, in both its variants, is largely an attempt to evade this problem - to banish the specter of "politics" - the intrigue and wire-pulling which must accompany any exercise of power - from the sphere of human action. The left says "we shall cooperate on the basis of mutual aid, and replace the rule of men with the administration of things." The right says, "we shall indeed replace rule, but rather by the exercise of free contract on the basis of rational self-interest."
Note: often we speak of "government" and the "State" as though they were simply synomyms. Is it so? I remember in Nock's Memoirs of a Superfluous Man that he drew a distinction between the two. Any conceivable society, even a libertarian utopia, requires government, but the State is an entity that imposes itself on society through conquest and maintains itself by fraud. This is not original with Nock; IIRC he mentions German thinkers - Gumpelwicz and Oppenheimer - as his source. I wonder how useful the distinction really is.
I have seen a typology of leadership that distinguishes "traditional" from "charismatic" leaders. Traditional - one salutes the man, not the uniform. One obeys the CEO because the Board has selected him on behalf of the shareholders; the General Secretary is the voice of the Party. Charismatic - the gang leader, the cult leader, the cheerleader whose girls follow her because of her personal magnetism and skill. The types can of course be combined in one person.
Tolkien's great captains are all such ideal combinations. Aragorn, Eomer, Boromir, Faramir, Imrahil bear both the mystique of traditional authority and great personal ability; Gondor and Rohan get the best of both types. And this is as it should for Tolkien is writing heroic fantasy.
But still we don't see the dark side of the exercise of even legimate power. We never see Faramir executing a deserting Ranger of Ithlien, or Aragorn sentencing a sleeping sentry to drag a heavy log around on his next watch. Eomer does not apprehend his sister posing as Dernhelm and confine her to quarters under close arrest, which is what should happen to a recalcitrant junior officer. I do not say Tolkien should have have shown these things, but they are necessary actions of authority if it is to maintain itself and perform its proper role.
I remember Mary Renault's great quasi-mythical novel The King Must Die. Theseus wins his first victory, and finds that a warrior, who he rather likes, has fled the line of battle. With great reluctance he has the fellow chained to his chariot axle, and beheads him with his own sword, for he must show his following the consequences of cowardice. I felt a chill when I read that, and began to to understand my father when he spoke of the grim responsibilties of combat command in the Phillipines.
Dr Hart tells us:
But a king—a king without any real power, that is—is such an ennoblingly arbitrary, such a tender and organically human institution. It is easy to give our loyalty to someone whose only claim on it is an accident of heredity, because then it is a free gesture of spontaneous affection that requires no element of self-deception, and that does not involve the humiliation of having to ask to be ruled.
The ideal king would be rather like the king in chess: the most useless piece on the board, which occupies its square simply to prevent any other piece from doing so, but which is somehow still the whole game….
Reminds me of Isabel Paterson: The King does not act, for he is the center of the cyclone, the point at which all forces meet and cancel each other. When Charles I failed to perceive this insight, it was imparted to him with the edge of the ax.
Now I have a problem with Dr Hart, and I suppose with Miss Paterson as well. Hart in particular seems to indulge in what, in my tender years we called "happy-crappy". To be fair, it is not all crap, but Hart, like a child, wants to lick off the sugar and not swallow the pill; to feel the caress of the velvet glove and ignore the iron fist. He craves the romance and ceremony of hereditary monarchy, but - note the words in boldface - he shies from the reality that must support it.
Elizabeth II today reigns but does not rule. But she reigns at all only because her predecessors - the Alfreds, the Henrys, the Edwards, and that other Elizabeth - did rule. They sat in judgement, led armies in battle, issued decrees that swayed nations. Their ministers, generals, and people were at best advisors, if they were heeded at all. The peacetime soldier obeys his officer who may well be a timeserver or a martinent at least in part because he knows that once upon a time there were Lees and Pattons and Saladins- and they will come once more if they are needed. Charles Stuart again: A subject and a soverign are clean different things.
Seriously, what happens to kings who reign but do not rule, in the long run : the Rois fainéants, the Chou Emperors, the archons basileus of Athens, the Holy Roman Emperors(German by nation)? The tinsel wears off, as time goes on, even amongst the common people. (15 % of the UK opoulation, I've have read, identify themselves as "republicans"). Imagine an America in which 15% wanted to revoke the Declaration of Independence and tear up the Constitution). At last the holders of real power themselves crave the mystery which surrounds the old kings, or simply tire of the cost of their upkeep, and the office is abolished.
I propose nothing here, certainly no return to hereditary monarchy, which depends on loyalties that simply have ceased to exist in today's world. But I do suspect we'll see a return of personal rule in some form, for one of the great delusions of modernity is that we can build a workable social order simply by picking the right theory and following it.
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