Mises
For religions throughout the world, established rules, studies, and practices are instrumental for their legitimacy. Established religious institutions throughout the world train theologians to study the nature of God and their belief system. For the Sunni Muslims, theologians in the Hanafi school consist of legal studies in line with Islam, while others like the Murji’ah sect focus on moral teachings of work and faith. Catholics too prescribe specialized areas of study to theologians, whether that be social teachings on leading a moral life or supernatural studies of God.
Whatever the case, each of these studies offers legitimacy to the faith and to the clergy, so the state, in all its omnipotence, follows suit. The late German jurist Carl Schmitt held that the “omnipotent state” practices its legitimacy similarly. Writing in his book, Political Theology, that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.” As the age of monarchs came to a close in the early 20th century and the age of massive ideological states came into play, new concepts and ideas had to be developed, as they did not have a “mandate of heaven” to legitimize their power.
The United States government, for instance, has had an army of academics, experts, and celebrities to legitimize its actions. Their political theology consists of some of the following: economics, law, and the hard sciences. Analyzing these concepts, we can see how the state and its clergy weaponize them in order to maintain their power.
Economics
In 1994, Charlie Rose interviewed the British businessman James Goldsmith. Sir Goldsmith was campaigning in the European Union against the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a component of the WTO agreement. In 1995, 125 countries had signed onto the agreement, which included agricultural subsidies. Goldsmith warned in the interview that this would lead to massive emigration from third-world countries and that people in western society had come to serve an economic index that harms them. He claimed that, if the GATT were adopted, we would be:
Creating mass immigration, which none of us could control. We would be destroying the towns, which are already largely destroyed. Look at Mexico; look at our own towns, and we’re doing this for economic dogma because we’ve got to get it done by the end of December. We can’t wait another year or two to see the results. Otherwise some political gimmick like Fast Track will go out of the way. What is this nonsense? Everything is based in our modern society on improving an economic index. How do we get greater economic growth? How do we grow the GNP? The result is, we are destroying the stability of our societies because we are worshiping the wrong god, economic index.
It is economic orthodoxy today that GDP must grow and that financial stimulus is one way of doing this. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States government issued stimulus checks from the low of $600 to a high of $1,400 per person. Assistant professor Christina Patterson of the University of Chicago suggested that when Congress pumped the money into the economy during COVID, the highest growth came from the individual household. Her suggestion: “Lawmakers should give the money to people who will spend most of it, rather than sock it away in savings.”
To suggest that the COVID stimulus grew the economy is preposterous. Some of the real effects of the “stimulus” are as follows: nearly 7,000 firms are considered “zombie firms” that are laden with debt, an increase of 30 percent over the last ten years; the average price inflation rate in 2022 was 8 percent, with a high of 9.1 percent in June 2022; grocery prices increased by 20 percent. The inflationary expansion of the money supply and adjustment of interest rates by the Federal Reserve during this time caused the increase in prices. The Federal Reserve propping up the stock market led to the rise of zombie firms because of malinvestment, but mainstream economists refuse to believe their orthodoxy is wrong.
Law
The United States has prided itself on being a land of law, where the rule of law reigns supreme and all its subjects, even the president, cannot usurp it. This is an illusion in our current political theology. America’s “supreme law of the land,” the Constitution, has been nothing more than a suggestion for much of its history. Whether that be censorship against the freedom of speech and press, as seen with the Espionage Act of 1917, or with the illegal mass surveillance by the NSA as exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013. Each case violated amendments in the Constitution, the 1st and 4th respectfully. Despite the controversy, the Espionage Act is still in effect and Edward Snowden is in exile in Russia.
Despite this, the establishment is still unwavering in their claims of being defenders of American law and democracy. What they’re really defending is their so-called mandate of heaven. Just as the Chinese Emperors had this supernatural mandate, the president, the Congress, and the bureaucrats each have the supernatural concept of “law” on their side. Hugo Krabbe, a Dutch political scientist, developed an explanation for the legitimacy of constitutional law in his book The Modern Idea of the State, saying:
We no longer live under the dominion of persons, either natural or fictitious legal persons, but under the dominion of norms [laws], of spiritual forces. In this is revealed the modern idea of the state…. These forces rule in the strictest sense of the word. Obedience can be freely rendered to these forces, for the very reason that they do proceed from the spiritual nature of mankind. (italics in original)
The entire constitutional legal order is, therefore, based on man’s sense of right and wrong. Just as Moses took down the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai to the Israelites, so do we receive the law from the politicians on Capitol Hill and in the halls of bureaucratic departments. This is how the American establishment is able to maintain its power, by linking their positions of authority to American “morality” that they claim is linked to the law. Any attack against them or to the law is a threat to the American way of life and the regime will use all the means at its disposal to silence you. The former British PM, Tony Blair, had described himself and all who govern as a Moses-like figure in his book, On Leadership. He had stated:
I liken governing to leading people on a journey. You don’t just start by stepping out. You begin with a description of the destination—the house on the hill you might call it…. Think of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt. You might have thought that since he was leading his people out slavery and oppression, they would have been perpetually grateful. But they weren’t. They complained bitterly much of the time. They dissented. They rebelled. They frequently averred that they would have been better off if he had just left them where they were.
Many of the bureaucrats that rule, whether from places such as London, Brussels, or Washington DC, have a Messiah complex. All they do is for the benefit of the democratic system and, therefore, the whole Western world. From here, the regime can continue to manage its economy and wars without interference, as James Burnham said in his book The Managerial Revolution:
They proclaim the rules, make the law, issue the decrees. The shift from parliament to the bureaus occurs on a world scale. The actual directing and administrative work of the bureaus is carried on by new men, a new type of men. It is, specifically, the MANAGERIAL type. The active heads of the bureaus are the managers-in-government, the same, or nearly the same, in training, functions, skills, habits of thought as the managers-in-industry.
Because of the form the law has taken, we’re no longer ruled; we’re administered. The term “law and order” becomes merely a tool to contain what Carl Schmitt has called the “exception.” When the current regime finds the state of things abnormal, they can declare war on it. Whether they be abstract concepts such as “disinformation,” against populists like Donald Trump, or against ideologies like “fascism” and white supremacy.
Conclusion
In the past, kings could legitimize their power through alliances with a church or spiritual leader to show that their rule was established by a higher authority, an alliance of the throne and altar. Today, politicians and bureaucrats use the “sciences” and their experts to establish their authority. Economists at the Federal Reserve and IMF fund the government’s schemes, judges support laws via theories that violate the Constitution, and you, while dissenting, will follow the “new Moses” to the house on the hill.
Originally Posted at https://mises.org/
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