Finding the Founding (Part IV): A Diatribe on the Nature of Power and Liberty and the Dilemma of Great and Better

We often hear the phrase “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Scientifically, it has a more specialized meaning than we conventionally give it—it really does mean something. So what does it mean? Where there is emptiness in nature, something will move to fill that void. That’s physics and it seems to be true. But what is the truth, what is the real meaning when most of the universe is made up of emptiness, the void between matter. Is that always being filled? Seems to me that matter is losing that battle to the void, seems emptiness overmatches whatever is trying to fill it.
          But our little phrase, “nature abhors a vacuum,” is safe enough to have real impact when we use it in everyday speech to help justify or explain whatever it is that made us think of vacuums. To be sure, we often just substitute convenient nouns to replace nature because it appears that most everything abhors a vacuum. Take “power” for instance – I recently heard power substituted for nature – and that presented an opportunity to think about one of the main problems pondered by the Founders of the United States.

I know dogs don't like it, but why would
Nature find this offensive?

       The question is whether power abhors a vacuum? (though it seems that every vacuum that I’ve had doesn’t have nearly enough power, badump bump). When it comes to power filling voids it seems to be a valid substitution for nature -- where there is no power, some form of power will move in to establish itself. Though the Founders never talked about vacuums, after all, Hoover would not become President until a century and a half after the Revolution, the Founders were obsessed with the qualities and nature of power, especially in Power’s inherent conflict with Liberty. And the one uniform ideological truth that they seemed to comprehend was that where Liberty is not vigilant, Power will move in and eradicate it. So in other words, putting the 18^th into the 21^st century idiom (adopted from Aristotle 2,500 years ago) the “void” will naturally be filled with Power – Liberty is not greater, it is weaker, but the Founder’s understood that questions of greater and lesser serve very little purpose in civil society and so they sought Liberty because it was better.

Talk about cold dead eyes --
But that goes with being a Philosopher!

           But what is better? What is better for me might not be better for you. Political discourse and philosophy of the Enlightenment Period, of which the Founders were part of that period’s last generation, focused on “better” quite a bit, and just what “better” would mean when it came to the relationship between individuals. Increasingly, Enlightened minds saw Government as an institution which ought to define relationships between individuals in a society. No longer was government merely an instrument of Power. Borrowing from ancient ideas of demos (people) cracy (rule) and res (rule) publica (of the public), Enlightenment writers discarded the previous Middle Age philosophy where government was all about power and a power wielded by those ruthless enough to assert their will over others, and therefore  government was not really a part of the “society of us.” Government for most of human history in Civilization was the ultimate “other” that neither stemmed from the people nor ruled on behalf of the people. Instead government was of power, by power, to protect and serve the powerful. Even ancient Athens, the home of so-called Democracy, was a blood based system bent on expanding the power of those who possessed the ability to be part of government by the accident of their birth – and they even had a word for the powerless “society of us,” the common people, workers, servants, slaves, women and children – we were the “idiots” who were not part of the power of the state. As I have said for nearly a quarter of a century, "French fries came out of grease (Greece) not our idea of democracy!"
               So it is an important historical departure made during the Enlightenment that thinkers and writers and even some of the powerful were reconceptualizing government not as an alien among us (or over us) but rather as a function of us for the betterment of us. And back to the what is better? Better was an off-shoot of that very monster of “Power” that those producing the Enlightenment (including the Founders) were trying to get away from. Power was the ability to control others, but the new formulization was a “what if you had power over yourself?” sort of proposition. Control over your own actions, and even who “you” were, was not really the same as the predatory filling vacuum nature of regular old power – this was something different, something liberating, especially if we all agreed to support each other’s control over our own lives. Liberty!
          Liberty, is it Athena springing from the mind of Zeus? In a way, yes. It is a form of power, but not power, and obviously to mix this metaphor even further, if Zeus had the chance he would do what his father Kronos did and eat Athena – Liberty. The Founders, like other Enlightenment politicos going back to Machiavelli of all people – realized that most of us are more like the vulnerable Athena and less like Zeus. Further they realized that having this personal power realized by more of us, was better than great big Olympian power held by the few. Liberty can only find strength in numbers because it is weak and because power will seek to displace it, not because power is better, but because power is greater.
              As humans we seem be drawn to that which we define as great. Bigger and badder mean better, instead of what better ought to mean as that which serves our common desire to control who and what we are. Phhht. Instead of protecting Liberty we seem to naturally laud Power. We love to, we’re obsessed with, we have a weird need to define things as greater or lesser. We infuse it in our children at the very earliest stages with the “What’s your favorite” games we like to play and it finds a variety of ways to influence our conversational lives. “What’s the best ….?” “Who was the greatest …. ?” And in our little brains we make certain assumptions about “best,” “favorite,” – not that they are tangible qualities to be defined in and of themselves, but mostly as they are tools to teach about the omnipotence of “great.” And we teach a mistaken idea about greatness – that it is good and of the quality of goodness, that it is helpful and of the quality of helpfulness, that it will promote a general welfare and well being that will enable you and I to live by our own design. But we are wrong. Greatness is really just the predatory nature of Power rebranded and therefore always destructive of Liberty and that which is “better.”

              We assume that love will overcome hate, that freedom can defeat tyranny, that the something which will fill the nothing will include ponies and rainbows and lots of chocolate things, after all nature abhors a vacuum… but we’re wrong, and the Founder’s knew that. From all the Enlightenment words they read, from all of the experience with colonization they had, from just simple observation of the human condition and the laws of the universe they knew that power ultimately will fill the void …. And they knew that was not a good thing.
             Colonization in the Caribbean developed power, power in wealth creation, power over an enslaved labor force, power to protect and serve the needs of the powerful. The European invasion of North America did much the same thing, especially as it related to the Paleolithic Asian Immigrant populations now referred to as Native Americans. But North America did not provide as fertile a ground for the growth of power in the same way that the Caribbean did – mostly because the soils and climate of North America were not productive of Sugar. In the next two installments, North American settlement will be viewed to present an opportunity to challenge prevailing social, political and economic systems as established in the Caribbean and to produce something “better” for those who were willing to fight for it.
                But just because something is better does not mean it will readily be adopted by humans …. in part because those adoptions are usually made by those who have power.

Finding the Founding (Part III): Profit, Taxes and Colonial Models

Even when England got it right, England got it wrong …. at least initially, they got it wrong. Eventually, England did get it right, and as it seems so often with that realm, they got it more correct than most ever did.

England realized by the mid-1600s that the road to greatness was going to be through industrial agriculture in New World colonies.  At the same time England embarked on two divergent tasks: developing the world’s first modern democracy, and becoming the dominant power in the slave trade. The English Civil War of the 1640s brought about the notion of rights and votes, a republic (that deteriorated into a dictatorship), religious liberty and shared government. At the same time English maritime power was invading Atlantic trade routes and taking over coastal fortresses in Africa which provided the foundation for the slave trade.

Elmina Castle: A slave fortress off the Coast of modern day Ghana 

This second task of taking over control of the trade in African slaves coming in to New World colonies propelled England from a small time kingdom trying to gain back some semblance of continental power into a global empire. The cost of empire – the cost of wealth, the cost of power, even the cost of democracy – was through the brutal destruction and devastation of millions of lives the likes of which … oh, actually, just the typical d and d of empires, but capitalism provided its own sinister twist.

Capitalism as an economic system was still in its formative practical stage – in Europe, anyway, having been found in its proto form in the aftermath of Muhammad’s Revolution in the Arab Empires from 700-1000 c.e. What was developing in the New World was still a century away from its theoretical underpinnings in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. The privatization of wealth occurring in Europe at this time was as Revolutionary as the steps toward representative government. Being able to retain the produce of investment and labor meant accessing personal autonomy in ways that blood based hierarchies of a Feudal system did not allow – since all wealth remained a function of the system, and was therefore public in nature. Government, the collector of public wealth, gained from private wealth accumulation through taxation on investment and production and therefore gained more as the private accumulator gained more. Under such a system king’s like Henry, but we’ll call him Harry, made off with a fortune. Even though in law taxes had been defined as “gifts” it was more like extortion – pay this or else, but taxes also added to incentive – you want more, you gotta earn more to make up for the government’s cut. And taxes did more important things than add incentive to the incentive based system of capitalistic economies.

Out of context, Blackstone seems a real tax hater,
but without them civil society can't survive.
But who has time to read all of his volumes Commentaries on the Laws of England

Taxes, of course, went to the opulent lifestyle of the main collectors of taxes, Kings and Queens. As public income, however, taxes also went to public purposes, mostly in the public expenditure of protecting the system. Navies protected the instruments of investment – navies protected holdings in Africa, protected trade routes, protected colonies -- Investment to protect investment. And in the 1600s invest England did in navies and in the spaces navies could help acquire, colonies. By the 1650s England had begun to acquire Caribbean colonies, most notably Barbados and Jamaica, and these colonies were turned into sources of profit both private and public. But England’s foray into New World Capitalism diverged from the typical Columbian model at first, and was possible effected by the growing ideas of a democratic society brewing at home.

Barbados in itself reveals the two models of colonization followed by the English: settlement colonies and industrial colonies. Barbados started as the former and converted to the latter. When Barbados was first settled it was done so primarily by family groupings who came to work the land and be independent. Being independent meant controlling your own life, having land, producing for yourself and your family – not being dependent on the good graces of your hereditary lord. It was, for all intents and purposes, the middle class ideal that motivated much of the theory and practice of the the English Civil War. But at the time when democracy was growing, and growning and mutating into Cromwell’s dictatorship, colonial ventures were also “growing” because of the potential for profit. So leaving aside political ideas for now, Barbados began a conversion to cash-crop industrial production that was eventually propelled into massive profit through slave labor. After initial experiments in what historians have categorized as family farms, cash crop production in tobacco and other items was underway by the 1650s. And just like in Barbados’ poorer cousin colony, Virginia, the main labor source were English “indentured servants.”

Sign your Life Away document or
The good old days before Unions

I put that in quotes because they may as well be called slaves, but technically in law they were contracted laborers who signed their life over to a “master” for a designated period, so that defines them as only temporary slaves, or “indentured servants.” Since the life expectancy of laborers in the New World was less than the 7 years of most indentures, kind of means you signed over your life. But by the 1680s this labor system, as also happened in Virginia, changed from “temporary” white English servants to “permanent” African slaves – and the crop changed from tobacco to sugar. In so doing the settlement colony of English seeking independence transformed into an industrial colony of English investors seeking sugar profits through African labor – just like the Spanish model before them.

The Spanish Colonial Model, inspired by Columbus, developed systems of mass production through slave labor that created tremendous wealth. Great for wealth creation for investors but a nightmare of brutality for those creating that wealth in the fields. Colonies like Barbados and Jamaica showed a clear contradiction that capitalism can present for the growth and development of democracy. By 1700 England, soon to be “Great” Britain, was growing into the world’s pre-eminent empire on the strength of its industrial colonies. Ironically, at home, political ideas were becoming increasingly focused, not on profit, but on the nature of the community and its obligations to individuals within the realm. This conversation would find a willing home in a set of colonies to the north of the Caribbean, where the contradiction of capitalism created a clear divide with attempts to realize independence.

Finding the Founding (Part II): The North Forgotten

For over 100 years Spain had a virtual monopoly on developing sugar colonies, destroying populations and eradicating cultures. Sweet success, literally and figuratively. During that century other Euro nations were arming themselves and they soon would join the fray. Spain became the “King of the Mountain,” like we used to play when I was a kid. Some kid is on top of a mound of dirt (that’s the King) and the rest try to drag that kid off the mound – the mountain. Not incredibly complicated, but it got you dirty, and that is the goal of being a kid. England, France and the Netherlands wanted to play and they wanted to pull Spain off their mound of dirt. For us in the United States today, England is the one “colonizer” with which we are most familiar, but what became most important to England in the New World wasn’t what we spend most of our time studying at school. Not even close.

So let’s see, so far I have used the word fray, and originally spelled it Frey. I referred to a mountain and a King and made an allusion in the title. The Game of Thrones references are quite fitting as the scramble for the New World, its lands and resources, and likewise control of the African Slave Trade, was much like the competing houses in GOT. Everyone believes in their own cause and discounts the cause of any rival – and the regular people, well, they likewise just get stabbed by Hounds and Needles. England is the ultimate winner, and just like __________ (to be filled in with the name of whoever survives Season 8), will sit on the iron throne of imperial domination in the New World and Africa …. And everywhere else for that matter. But it wasn’t the North American colonies that brought about an empire upon which the sun never set. No, this started in the Caribbean, just where Columbus started it for Spain.

In the 1500s Spain gobbled up the New World and controlled the Atlantic to become Europe’s premier power …. and Europe itself was primed to become the power of the world. England was not such a power, but its monarchs were setting out plans Baelish style to achieve a better place in the sun. After the War of the Roses between the Lancasters and Yorks, which formed the background for George R. R. Martin’s fiction, England was a second rate power in a third rate region. Henry VIII changed all that with a bit of double dealing with his rival Spain.

This is as close to GOT as Henry will ever come

Because of Henry’s girth and wastefulness in managing the resources of the realm, he appears to be the ultimate Robert Baratheon, but really his recklessness is more the style of Tywin of House Lannister – after all Henry is the heir of the line of Lancaster. He spent, borrowed and strong-armed, in a will to power that would have made Nietzsche proud. His main goal appears to have been reclaiming lands in France – if not all of France – for England. To do this he was sometimes ally of France (weird) and the Holy Roman Empire (Germany, sort of) but most of all to his in-laws, Spain. Henry VII who won the War of the Roses and invested England heavily into features of the wool trade seems to have understood that for England to grow great it needed to hitch its wagon to the rising power of Spain – a power emerging not from Dark Ages wealth in land and peasants and European trade goods (like wool) but in colonial investment in New World sugar production. Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to Henry 7’s desire to forge an alliance by blood, the main instrument of diplomacy in pre-modern societies. Henry 7 had his heir married to Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter, Catherine. Originally that heir was Arthur, but Arthur died before consummation and Henry 7 had to finagle a match with his new heir, Henry who would be the 8^th of his name.

But Henry 8 seems not to be satisfied to be tied to Spain’s ship. The importance of all his marriages is not really the intrigue behind trying to produce an heir but rather his wish to make England #1 among the powers of Europe – to win the real game of thrones. Henry 8 got rid of Catherine, not because of their mutual inability to gain a male heir as most historians go on about, but to break with Spain, break with the Catholic world and to break into new sources of revenue in his quest to make England a dominant power. Was he the real world Daenerys? The breaker of chains? The breaker of wheels? There was a dragon on his coat of arms.

Henry's Coat of Arms

But the wheel he wanted to break had nothing to do with slavery or mad kings as with Westeros’ Targaeyon claimant, and not even because of religion, as he was in early life a devout Catholic. Henry’s bad breaking had everything to do with Caesarian ambition – to seize property and resources, in this case from the Roman Catholic Church in England. Henry 8 made his own church for the love of power and a need for money, and to do that he had to get rid of Catherine, and his ties to Spain (and their most “Catholic” monarchs). Therefore, Henry 8 had enough money to pursue military affairs on the continent.

Henry VIII never realized that the true game of thrones was not about land in Europe, however, but would be played in the Atlantic World and in colonies in the New World. He was still thinking as a Middle-Ages warrior king rather than a modern monarch of a new age. In the new age wealth and power was not going to be about land and bread, but about trade, commerce and the mass production of whatever could make more and more wealth. Henry 8 failed to get England into the real game which would take place out at sea, and right where Columbus had left it – the New World. For England that would be left to Henry 8’s daughter and eventual heir, Elizabeth, and to her heirs the Stuarts. England enters the fray!