Summary:
TH White's "Once and Future King" and various other shorter readings indicate inherent problems with government. People blame the government they are part of when it is they who are rotting the system out from the inside.
Imperfection of Government
"We cannot build the future by avenging the past. Let us sit down as brothers, and accept the Peace of God. Unfortunately men did say this, in each successive war... They were always to build such a new world as never was seen. When the time came, however, they were too stupid." (White 631-632)
Each human being is unique in his or her own way; each one hard-wired differently than the next. Everyone has their view on what is right or wrong and, although their approaches may be similar, there is always a difference between one person's views and another's. Whether it be small or extreme differences in personality, moral, or political association, each person has different judgment. It is because of this dissimilarity in thinking that all human forms of government will inevitably fail due to the fact that there will never be uniformity.
Humans will always become discontent with the present style of living; therefore, we will always be inclined to break away from the system containing us. For example, Arthur began a system of government in which he attempted to use Might for Right. However, the system came to a halt after there was no more use for the system; as Arthur put it, "We have achieved what we were fighting for, and now we still have the fighters on our hands." (White 433) The knights of Arthur's world seemed to have had no more purpose in life once they had rooted out the evil, and had later decided upon opposing Arthur's system because it became dissatisfying to them. In the world of Harrison Bergeron, everyone is equally handicapped to the point where even their IQ is the same. The people are not allowed to think about the system; they are not even allowed to resist it. Yet, even in a world of total control, Harrison Bergeron breaks free to create his own system of government. Harrison was unhappy with being synonymous to the rest of humanity. He was driven, as all humans are, to strive towards a better life. As shown to us in "Obedience to the Unenforceable," the three domains of human action are those of law, free will, and the obedience to the unenforceable. "Obedience is the obedience of a man to that which he cannot be forced to obey. He is the enforcer of the law upon himself." (Silber 1, Moulton) Because man is given the opportunity to choose his own laws, he is able to bend them towards whatever situation is most beneficial to himself. In all three situations, the men involved with the systems rebelled against the system for the sole reason that they believed that there was a better system out there.
The problem that keeps people from staying within a system does not lie within a government itself, but in the people composing the organization. As presented to us in "Obedience to the Unenforceable," "Authority and civil order depend in a significant measure on the consent of the governed... The rule of law depends on the morality of the people- and that, regrettably, is in precipitous decline." (Silber 2) This is a recipe for the eventual crash of every system. All the different views of a community or even a nation are thrown together as a base and civil law is built on top. That base is susceptible to "earthquakes" caused by the different thinking of the people: if a chunk of the base rebels and leaves, the order of the system will invariably collapse. As Frederic Bastiat most aptly put it, "People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them." People blame the government they are part of when it is they who are rotting the system out from the inside.
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