Now we will return to Sir Robert's Patriarcha, and cast aside the involvement of religion (God) in doctrine of Divine Right. When we have removed religion, we are left with the raw embodiment of Statism, which decrees that the State is Sovereign over the people, and that the people exist at the mercy and grace of the State, thus these people are Subjects, and their rulers are Kings.
People living under this doctrine, willingly or unwillingly, possess no rights, for the State is sovereign over all things, and thus the State has unlimited rights, infinite in its power. The State will usually delegate most of its powers to the Subjects, as it would be both inconvenient and impractical to administer the entirety of its infinite power in finite Time. Thus the State must prioritize which powers it exercises, because it only has limited Time and resources to execute its authority.
The first among these priorities will be to exercise the powers required to preserve its authority. Any time the Subjects of the State use their delegated privileges to challenge the State, the State will hastily disparage that privilege among those who are resisting them, and sometimes deny the privilege completely. In times of great peril to the Kings who administer the State, they will revoke the privilege entirely among all their Subjects. Once revoked, it will never be regained by the Subjects; the State does not forgive, it does not forget, it will never relinquish that privilege again.
In order to make sure that the people no longer continue to exercise that privilege, it will perpetually police its Subjects, for the failure to police the Subjects will result in a challenge to the authority of the State, which must not be questioned. Herein is the guiding principle behind the Police State. A government founded on the doctrine of Statism cannot guarantee its infinite sovereignty by doctrine alone, it must rely upon a compliant police or military, a Privileged class of Subjects, granted innumerable benefits and privileges that no ordinary Subject may possess (in short, a Nobility).
Recalling that the State must prioritize which powers to invoke, because the State is limited by Time, we must pay heed to the innovations of modern technology. Technology is a neutral entity; it can be used for both good and ill. The most important feature of technology, is that it allows a person or party (government) to use its Time more efficiently, allowing the person or party to accomplish more tasks in a given measure of time than previously before. As a consequence, as technology improves, the State is able to exercise additional powers, because it can use its Time more efficiently, and thus can Police its citizens even more than ever before, further reducing any perceived threats. Remember, that any government operating under the Doctrine of Statism only delegates those privileges to its Subjects that it cannot reasonable exercise in respect to its other priorities. However, once the Government has the ability to Police that right without diminishing other priorities, it will immediately revoke that privilege among its Subjects and reserve that right exclusively to itself.
So if we had to define Statism in a nutshell, it would be this: All rights are reserved to the State, and people within the State are Subjects to its Supreme Sovereignty, thus any rights that the Subjects exercise are but mere privileges, either granted by the State directly, or graced upon the Subjects by silent acquiescence. The State, being the Supreme Sovereign, may deny, disparage or revoke those privileges among any or all of its Subjects, for any or no cause. Therefore, the Subjects have no rights, but legal privileges only.
However, Statism is founded upon a series of contradictory axioms, and we will explore these contradictions in the essays to follow! One of the largest contradictions in Statist philosophy is that Statists require a compliant police or military force (notice that compliant was put in bold print earlier). If the Kings must rely upon the Consent of individual Subjects in order to enforce their Will, then the Kings are not truly sovereign, they must derive their power, as a privilege, from the rights of some other Sovereign entity (or entities) who Consented to delegate those privileges to the Kings. And if this Sovereign Entity decides that the Kings have become tyrannical, they may withdraw their Consent by ceasing to enforce its laws, in other words, make the edicts of the King void, without force, null.
This is only the beginning of the logical fallacies in the Statist philosophy. As such, Statism leads to Chaos, because it is founded on flawed axioms, expelling the system back into the void; whereas Anarchy is Chaos, because it is not founded on any axiom, being totally devoid of Order. Consequentially, Societies, being a different entity from Government altogether, will quickly find themselves in despair whilst existing within a Statist or Anarchistic form of Government, because the societies themselves will fall victim to Chaos. On the theme of Order and Chaos, we shall conclude Part 2 with two excerpts from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense:
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer!
Here Thomas Paine writes that both despotism and anarchy result in the same miseries!
