This is the beginning of a (hopefully) weekly series about the importance of voting rights, and the need for a constitutional amendment protecting them.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” -John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902)
Why?
We are facing the most corrupt United States administration in living memory (or longer). Everyone has heard the above quote, or a version of it. But have you ever wondered why? Is it really true? Are all rulers really just bad people? And if so, what do we do about it?
The answer is that it’s wrong. Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely — because there is no such thing as absolute power. Power in the political sense is defined as: “The ability to compel others to act on your behalf.” A King, you see, cannot rule alone. It’s not physically possible. No King can build his own roads; collect his own taxes, enforce his own laws, be his own army (since Stallone is too old for that now, anyway). He needs other people to do these things for him. If he can convince the right people to follow his orders, then he has power. If he cannot convince them, he is a King in name only.
Power is never absolute, but fragile and dependent. Keeping power requires keeping these key people — these Keys To Power — happy. No matter how power was gained, by revolution or by birthright or by election, the Keys To Power must be appeased. If they are on the King’s side, he may rule with an iron fist. If they are not, the King will not be one for much longer. Perhaps the army will stand aside while a revolution foments, or maybe the Supreme Lawyer Of The Realm declines to defend him from an accusation of treason, or the Party cuts off his re-election funding. By means fair or foul, a King without his Keys will not be one for long.
So does this mean that power corrupts?
More accurately, power requires corruption. There are no exceptions to this rule. It is the currency that, sometimes literally, buys power. To be fair, there are degrees of corruption ranging from distasteful to murderous, but it will always exist. Corruption is the oil of the political engine; the file that cuts the Keys To Power. Without it, there is no power, no ruler, and no nation to rule. Politics devolves to it’s primal state — lethal force between regional tribes.
The ins and outs of how power is traded and Keys are bought (or convinced) is called the Structures Of Power. We will talk about some of these structures later. The thing to remember for now is that corrupt government is not an issue of bad men (people) becoming rulers; it’s that becoming rulers requires bad behavior. There are no exceptions. This is what power is.
There is hope, however. The most important thing is not eliminating corruption, but learning how to harness it in your (The People’s) favor. In other words, how to design a democracy we can be proud to live in. That is what this series will be about.
This article relies heavily on CGP Grey’s excellent video, “Rules For Rulers”. If you are familiar with it, or the book “The Dictator’s Handbook” that it’s based on, the first few posts in this series will seem very familiar to you. Please bear with.
Image credit: Open Door Comics