Urban Tribalism

The headline of a Slashdot article, Can a computer identify your urban tribe?, got me thinking today. I've commented some on tribalism (here and here), but I did go out on a limb to state my belief that tribalism is the most stable form of government.

Granted, my screed here has nothing to do with the notion that an algorithm can deduce your particular social quirk (a.k.a "urban tribe"). It probably can't tell from my social media photos that I am a confused thirty-something who wishes he had been born in Edwardian England, Tsarist Russia, or Teddy Roosevelt's America. With its categorizations of Bikers, Hipsters, Goth, Surfers, or Formal, I find it lacking the"No Sense of Style" category. I also find these material categorizations vapid.

But digress I must.

The main benefits of tribalism is that it is small and exclusive. That doesn't work in our modern, inclusive, multi-culti, everyone-is-right-because-there-is-no-right-or-wrong godless democracy. We are so enlightened that our genius transcends human history, good vs. evil, or the myriad of quaint superstitions practiced in tribalism. We are post-societal man-gods to ourselves. We need need no religion, for it cannot be proven scientifically.

With modern democracy, conflicting groups are often forced to live together, with the majority group running roughshod over the minorities. This leads to strife and conflict. In America, it leads to gerrymandered districts that bob and weave through geographic areas to achieve the desired political outcome. We vote for weak appeasers who are the lesser of two evils. We do not follow the sage advice of President Kennedy and "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.", we hold out our hand to see what we will be given in exchange for our vote. We neither offer nor accept bribes, because that would be unethical, so we lobby politicians by contributing financially to their campaigns. We allow our elected leaders appoint nameless and faceless unelected bureaucrats, whom we loathe. We loathe them because we are jealous of their unfettered power.

Tribalism reveres the elder and the warrior. Tribalism honors the family as its form of survival. The religion of the tribe is maintained and its gods(s) revered. Outsiders are vetted before being allowed to become a part of the tribe. Members who violate norms are punished. As exemplified in the Cherokee Blood Law, actions not in the interest of the tribe were often punished by death. Order was maintained. Honor was maintained.

Historically, democracy is only temporary. They tend to corrupt themselves and collapse into dictatorships. It may take a decade or several hundred years, but they always fail.

However, tribalism can survive, even while enveloped by an overarching form of government. Using the Native American tribes as examples, they maintain their tribal heritage while also being American citizens. They vote in local, state, and national elections outside their tribal structures. They serve in the United States Armed Forces. But at the end of the day, they are Cherokee, Navaho, Delaware, Apache, while at the same time being American. The United States attempted to destroy their tribal identities over a century ago and failed. Granted, many did assimilate, as my purported Cherokee ancestors did, but a great number did keep their heritage. I commend them.

So what has been the point in my incoherent blathering? We should celebrate our differences. We shouldn't force conformance. But at the same time we can't expect unity. We're not all going to get along. We're going to splinter off into factions, into tribes, but let us remember: "If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men." (Romans 12:18 ASV).

A Republic of you can keep it, Part II

In a previous post, I touched on the topic of the instability of democracy. Democracy is an unstable political machine. It requires frequent maintenance and its gears wear out quickly. In America, the gears of the machine (i.e. politicians) must be replaced at two, four, and six year intervals, depending the particular gear being replaced. It is a machine that does not follow a set blueprint, but is in a constant state of flux so that known-good configurations are tossed out for the sake of change. This is the weakness of liberal machinations. While they may run for years, like the American Experiment (as it was called by Benjamin Franklin) has, but it could just as easily fail in a couple generations, like the Soviet Union did. The main problem being the notion of majority rule. If a generation rises, that for whatever reason, wants to radically overhaul the machinery, even if it is working, it is free to do so if it can garner enough votes.

It is interesting to me that a satirist from the late 19th century, Ambrose Bierce, envisioned in his stories a future where democratic systems as we know them did not exist. They had failed and long been replaced with monarchic institutions. In Ashes of the Beacon, An Historical Monograph Written in 4930, Bierce wrote:

"The habit of obedience to written law, inculcated by generations of respect for actual government able to enforce its authority, will persist for a long time, with an ever lessening power upon the imagination of the people; but there comes a time when the tradition is forgotten and the delusion exhausted. When men perceive that nothing is restraining them but their consent to be restrained, then at last there is nothing to obstruct the free play of that selfishness which is the dominant characteristic and fundamental motive of human nature and human action respectively."

"Of the American form of government, although itself the greatest of evils afflicting the victims of those it entailed, but little needs to be said here; it has perished from the earth, a system discredited by an unbroken record of failure in all parts of the world, from the earliest historic times to its final extinction. Of living students of political history not one professes to see in  it anything by a mischievous creation of theorists and visionaries - persons whom our gracious sovereign has deigned to brand for the world's contempt as "dupes of hope purveying to sons of greed." The political philosopher of to-day is spared the trouble of pointing out the fallacies of republican government, as the mathematician is spared that of demonstrating the absurdity of the convergence of parallel lines; yet the ancient Americans not only clung to their error with a blind, unquestioning faith, even when groaning under its most insupportable burdens, but seem to have believed it of divine origin."

Of course this is a fictional work set  a couple millennia in the future, but Bierce's view of the failures of liberal institutions, which in America pass as conservative [1] appear to have some validity in the current state of affairs. The notion, however, that Bierce expresses in his work was not new, even in his time. Benjamin Franklin expressed his own reservations at time the Constitution was written.

It is also interesting to note how quickly the Roman Republic fell. Rome did not grant universal suffrage to all it's citizens[2], but it did conduct its affairs "democratically". This came to an abrupt end with the ascension of Imperator Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Divi Filius Augustus as Emperor of Rome. A BBC article documents the fall of the Republic, tracing its demise to the rise of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in 133 B.C.. The Republic had stood since 509 B.C when Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was overthrown, and remained stable as long as the politicians kept power separated and followed the established checks and balances. As with all republics, this was a precarious balancing act, which was knocked off kilter when Gracchus brought the matter before Plebeian Council (the assembly of the Commons) and circumvented the Senate (the Aristocracy) in a bid to take parcels of state-owned lands being occupied by the rich and redistribute them to the poor. By bringing the vote directly to the masses, Graccus uncorked the genie that shook the tenuous foundations of the Republic. This led to chaos, the dictatorships of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Gaius Julius Caesar, and ultimately the declaration of establishment of Octavian as Emperor in 27 B.C.. 

So an Republic that had lasted ±400 years prior to Gracchus fell in a little over one hundred years following his actions. If history is to be a guide, The United States of America would apear to be on track for its collapse into a dictatorship in the near future. Looking at America's timeline, the Republic was born in 1776. It did not face a civil war until the 1860s, and faced its next major civil (rights) disturbance approximately one hundred years later. The current progression toward socialism and redistribution is taking place about fifty years after that. The timeline seems to be nearly halved that of the Roman Republic, so if President Obama is our Gracchus, then we should expect our Octavian in the next twenty to forty years. That would however, give us our Sulla at the end of President Obama's term. 

Is that a bad thing? It's not for me to say. The average well-to-do Roman probably stayed fairly well-to-do under both the Republic and the Empire, but we have other governments to pull experience from where that was not the outcome. Wealthy, or even financially comfortable Russians probably noticed quite a difference in their lives following the October Revolution. They were coming out of a monarchy into a "democratic" form of government. That government collapsed in the 1990s into Russia's current government, which currently has its own Caesar-esque figure in Vladimir Putin[3]. 

Each scenario is different, but to ignore history is to ignore an opportunity to affect, or if nothing else, plan for one's own outcome.

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[1] American conservatism is built on the notion of conserving the institutions established by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in the Constitution. One must remember, however, that these concepts were very liberal in their time with their opposition to the ancien régime of Great Britain.

[2] Most of the inhabitants of the Roman Republic were not Roman citizens, and there were different classes of citizenship. There were:

• Cives Romani - full Roman citizens divided into
• non optimo jure with rights of jus commercii (property) and jus connubii (marriage)
• optimo jure, those rights plus jus suffragiorum (vote) and jus honorum (hold office)
• Latini - not full citizens but held the Latin Rights of jus commercii and jus migrationis (move within the Republic), but not jus connubii
• Socii/Foederati - citizens of states with treaty obligations to Rome. Certain legal rights were exchanged for military service.
• Provinciales - fell under Roman control or influence but weren't even socii. The only appreciable right they had was jus gentium (natural law, that which is common to all people)

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship

[3] A study of Vladimir Putin would be an interesting one in and of itself. Loved by many in his country, hated by others, and an enigma to the West, Putin has the makings of a Tsar-in-waiting. Not having a male heir, though, there's not much to work with in the realm of dynasty building.

American Revolution fought over having a monarch?

Violating to an extent my ban of current political topics from this blog, I want to address a comment by Senator Rand Paul:

”I’m against having a king,” said the Senator. ”I think having a monarch is what we fought the American Revolution over, and someone who wants to bypass the Constitution, bypass Congress, that’s someone who wants to act like a king or monarch.”

In my most amateur of observations, I think he is absolutely wrong in this statement. What the Revolution was fought over was the right to either be represented in Parliament or allowed free course of political action. I've noted the hyperbole in the Declaration of Independence in another post, so I'll not rehash it here, other than to caveat that I do think that the Declaration is a magnificent document when you get past the political bombast.

The majority of American Colonists didn't have a problem with HM King George III, but as king, he was the easiest target for political darts. Nevermind that the true source of the problem was the Parliament, with its evolving view of democratic representation. It was akin to the way foreign nations attribute the opinions of the current (or any past) President or Congress with the general will of the American people.

The real rub in the matter is that the President of the United States has had increasingly more power at his disposal in the last century than near any monarch still reigning. The President has much more power than HM Queen Elizabeth II of England and the Commonwealth or HM Juan Carlos of Spain, and it is debatable whether any of the six absolute monarchs[1] left in the world have more power of their nations than the President of the United States of America does. Maybe that is Senator Paul's point, but the truth is that Congress, with it's bipartisan inability to do anything, is the greater culprit if an Executive power grab has occurred.

In light of that, there might be some positives to a monarch. For one, he or she would have been trained their entire life to accept the role, unless they started out as the spare heir. There are still examples of successful monarchs who rose from that state, HM King George VI being a prime example. As such, monarchs don't have to concern themselves as much with the political cycles of a nation. They don't have to worry about losing their jobs every four (or however many) years. Since a monarch generally keeps it in the family, the successor has the opportunity to learn from his or her predecessor  There is a certain stability to that. In fractious democratic societies, presidents and their ilk disavow the acts of their predecessors, often to the detriment to the people.

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[1] HM Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei, HM Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, CTHM King Abdullah bin Abdul‘aziz of Saudi Arabia, HM King Mswati III of Swaziland, HH Pope Benedict XVI, and HH Emir Hamad bin Khalifa of Qatar.