Good Texas Common Sense
A series of articles concerning what the new government of the Republic of Texas should be and do, what the Constitution for the Republic of Texas should be and say, and the philosophical (common sense) reasons behind these statements.
Copyright at Common Law 1996, Donald Dale Henson, sui juris. This article may be reproduced and distributed using any media as long as the article, the author's name, and this copyright notice remain together and unchanged.
Article 1
Why Government?
by Donald Dale Henson, sui
juris
Since we are about to start discussing what the new government of the Republic of Texas should be and do, perhaps we should first examine exactly why we need government at all. After all, we are about to expend a tremendous amount of time, money, and effort on designing this new government so we should at least know that we are doing something useful.
It should be obvious to the most casual observer that governments did not always exist. If you are a religious person, then you should know that Adam and Eve answered only to God and there was no government, other than God's, in the Garden of Eden. If you are a non-religious person, then you should know that governments do not exist in the societal structures of the lower animals and thus could not have been carried forward thru the evolutionary process. From either of these viewpoints, it can only be concluded that governments were invented by man. We can further conclude that since governments are creations of men, that men must be sovereign over it. In other words, men (and women) are by nature sovereign individuals. We will discuss the implications of this sovereignty in a later article in this series.
But why were governments invented? No one knows the answer for sure, of course, but here are my thoughts on the subject.
First, let's examine some basic human nature. From your own personal experience and ignoring what you may have seen on TV or in combat situations, how many times have you personally been involved in a violent situation where some individual was using or threatening to use violence on other individuals? Most of you can probably answer that question with zero or one. Those of you that have been involved in more than one violent situation probably live in an inner-city neighborhood in or near a 'Drug War' zone. If that is the case, consider that most of the violence you see there could be ended merely by legalizing drugs and even in this situation, most of your contacts with other people are peaceful and cooperative. The point is that the vast majority of your contacts with other human beings, even total strangers, are peaceful ones. This leads us to strongly suspect that most human beings are basically peaceful and cooperative in nature.
So, if we are all peaceful and cooperative, how do violent situations get started? In order to answer that question, we must examine the nature of force.
Force is direct physical violence applied, or threatened to be applied, to an individual or his property. Force, and we can include fraud as a special non-violent type of force, can be one of only three kinds: initial force; defensive force; and retaliatory force.
In order for force to be applied in a specific situation, someone must have initiated it. Force cannot apply itself. If there is no force being applied but someone decides to initiate force, then that force is of the type known as 'initial force'.
Once force has been initiated in a specific situation and if the individual toward whom that force is being directed decides to use force in defense, then that force is of the type known as 'defensive force'.
If force is used in a specific situation and no defensive force is used at the time, but later the individual toward whom that force was directed decides to 'get revenge' by using force, then that force is of the type known as 'retaliatory force'.
Consider that if we are all peaceful and cooperative, then no one would ever initiate force. Since we know that force gets initiated, this must mean that there are those among us who are not peaceful and cooperative but feel that they must use force in order to get what they want. If we want to live in a peaceful and cooperative society, these individuals must be dealt with. It would seem logical, then, that individuals who want to live in a peaceful and cooperative society would consider the initiation of force (or fraud) to be a crime and these actions are, in fact, considered to be crimes under Common Law.
If, in this peaceful and cooperative society, every initiation of force was immediately met with defensive force sufficient to terminate the violent situation, then the society could continue to be peaceful and cooperative even with some violence-prone individuals as a part of it. Unfortunately, not every situation can be met with appropriate defensive force. How are these situations to be dealt with? With retaliatory force. Retaliatory force can 'get revenge' for the initial use of force and at the same time serve as a warning to other potentially violent individuals that such actions will not be tolerated.
In a society with no government, either the individual that suffered the initial violence or the friends and family of that individual have to use retaliatory force. Unfortunately, due to another basic human trait, they will probably use excessive retaliatory force and thus be guilty of initiating force themselves. This means that the friends and family of the first person will now have to use retaliatory force. This situation can escalate into quite a lot of violence before it terminates itself. The famous, or infamous, McCoy/Hatfield Blood Feud continued for years resulting in several deaths before it finally terminated itself.
The solution to the use of retaliatory force is to have a neutral third party be the only party authorized to use it. In order for this solution to work, the third party must be truly neutral regardless of who is involved and must be 'fair', i.e., everyone involved must agree that retaliatory force is appropriate and must agree on the amount of retaliatory force to be used. We can call this third party anything we want but, today, we call this third party 'government' and we call the methods used to ensure that only appropriate retaliatory force is used 'due process'.
So now we know why governments are instituted among men (and women). It is to ensure that the use of retaliatory force is appropriate and fair. And it should be noted that everyone involved, with the possible exception of the individual toward whom retaliatory force is directed, must agree on the process. This is called a 'contract' and under Common Law, contracts must be explicit and knowingly entered into by all participants. The constitution that we are working on will become such a contract.
There is a secondary reason for having a government in today's world. The entire planet is ruled by governments. Agents of these governments cannot conceive of a society without a government and have no idea how to relate to a nation of sovereign individuals. In fact, with no government at all, one or more existing governments would probably decide to take over the 'ungoverned' territory to 'protect' the individuals that live there. One of the functions of our new government will then be to relate to other governments in a way they can understand.
But what about all the other 'functions of government' such as post offices, common defense, public education, regulation of the airwaves, issuing certificates of competency in the interests of public safety, etc? If we are a peaceful and cooperative people, then there is no reason for government to do any of these things and, in fact, there are many reasons why they should not. In general, private organizations can do all these jobs more efficiently and with greater attention to customer needs than can government. We will be discussing all these items and more in future articles.
Does this make sense? Good Texas Common Sense?
Copyright at Common Law, West El Paso Information Network, 1996