Nobody Who Even Wants the Power Bush Claims to Have is Fit to be President

I cannot express the outrage I feel over the Bush Crime Family’s unwarranted domestic surveillance and their brazen claims to authority far beyond that granted in the Constitution. I am waiting to see whether Republicans in Congress will rise to the occasion and start impeachment proceedings. If impeachment was ever called for, this is the occasion. I doubt that there are enough principled Republicans to do it, however.

If the Republic were governed by men of principle, by statesmen rather than grasping politicians, no person of Bush’s character could ever become President. The men and women called upon to execute the illegal and unconstitutional surveillance would have resigned in droves rather than participate in it. How is it that a man of such low character and utter lack of commitment to the founding principles of the Republic as Gonzalez can become Attorney General? Where are the cabinet ministers with the chops to resign in protest over this malfeasance? Is Congress so debased that a would-be dictator feels free to admit openly to impeachable tyranny and promise to continue in it?

The governance of the Republic requires men and women of the best character and commitment to liberty and the rule of law. The forms of the Republic are vulnerable to subversion and perversion, and officeholders of low character and lacking in the proper motivations will seize on this vulnerability. Unfortunately, our society is not organized to produce enough such people, and the mechanisms for placing people in office seem designed to insure that properly motivated and qualified candidates will not be put forward.

I keep coming back to the infernal idea of the meritocracy and the lack of an involved and properly trained aristocracy as the underlying flaws in the system. The meritocrat is a self-interested striver who believes that he deserves his position and status on the basis of his personal “merit”. The aristocrat, properly understood, knows that his position and status are undeserved and that he is obligated to serve society in recompense for the prestige and privilege he enjoys.

The meritocrat makes his living or generates his fortune from his office. He depends on his salary or the connections that come with the office, and he cannot easily resign these on principle. He is ever ready to abandon principles, if he had any to begin with, in favor of his own comfort and security. The meritocrat’s whole self worth is tied up with his position, and to lose it is to lose the prestige and privileges that he thinks he has earned.

In contrast, the aristocrat is independently wealthy and does not need his position. Indeed, it is a sacrifice for him to undertake the office in the first place when he could be pursuing any interest he likes. He is not likely, therefore, to remain over long in office or to hesitate to resign it on principle. Moreover, he has his own dignity, independent of his office, to consider and will be checked in excesses or abuses out of solicitude for his reputation.

The meritocrat will be a parasite on the taxpayers and often unhesitant to enrich himself by violating the property rights of others. The aristocrat, being supported from his private property, will be a jealous guardian of property.

We are not likely to see the development of a viable aristocracy brought up in the concepts of noblesse oblige any time soon; therefore, we must reorganize government, to the extent that we even need it, with ever more checks and controls. We must devise a Constitution that assumes as its fundamental guiding principle that every office-holder is a would-be tyrant and that every politician and bureaucrat is a thief. We must avoid any reliance on good character and right motives or adherence to oaths.