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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The Threat And The State: Avoiding Devil Theories
The most important need, in analyzing something as perverse as the alliance of a government with those forces against which it's supposed to protect us, is to avoid attributing the perversion to the deliberate maneuvers of a specific group of individuals. Historians and sociologists call such a hypothesis a devil theory.
The phrase is apt, for a devil theory implies wildly disproportionate power to shape the course of history in a relatively small and compact group. But such theories are appealing, because one of their other implications is that, once that group can be identified, it can be eliminated, and the problems for which it's responsible will be eliminated with them.
Political discourse has always been susceptible to devil theories. In recent years, their importance has been divided between attack campaign tactics -- the challenger accusing the incumbent of being personally responsible for whatever ills he claims to see in society -- and exculpation -- a partisan blaming the failures of his party's espoused policies on a particular officeholder or set of officeholders, to avert scrutiny from the policies and their logical foundation.
As attractive as they are, devil theories usually contain their own refutations. The proof is by contradiction: if there were a powerful devil, or devil-group, its actions and their consequences would distinguish it from the persons around it. Thus, it could be found and done away with, and the institution it had afflicted would thereafter return to health. Yet this almost never happens.
Grappling with the persistent characteristics of an institution, whose membership changes over time, requires attention to the incentives that act on those members by reason of their affiliation with it.
The incentives that act upon a private institution -- that is, one that has no extralegal privileges -- arise from its goals, its design, and its environment. To remain viable, it must profit, but whatever it seeks, others are likely to value about equally. It will be liable for any violations of the law. It's unlikely to be unique; competition will constrain its actions in several ways. Those pressures will cause it to filter out persons inclined to acting illegally, or in a fashion its competitors could use against it. Not perfectly, but well enough to keep it level with its competitors and, in the most common cases, out of trouble with the law.
The incentives that act upon a government are, of course, rather different. Governments make, interpret, and enforce the law, usually without much concern for the possibility of serious resistance. A government has no competition within its "jurisdiction," except for the possibility of insurrection or civil war. It need not be profitable in the usual sense. Worst of all, under the prevailing doctrine of sovereign immunity, there's no way to bring a government or its agents to book for whatever wrongs it might commit. Armed agents of the State are very seldom held liable for deeds that would cost private parties a decade or more in prison; witness the conclusion of the recent "Sean Bell" trials.
The consequences of allowing these incentives to operate are easily foreseen. Except in the rarest cases, they don't result in the elevation of a single devil-figure, or a compact devil-group, to an unassailable height of power. Far more often, they give rise to a pyramidal structure, customary in hierarchical bureaucracies, where altitude in the pyramid is proportional to one's ambition and inversely proportional to one's moral scruples. The man or men at the top will be incrementally more grasping and ruthless than those immediately below them, but not so much so as to differ in kind. Should that topmost figure or group be ejected from its place, the one imediately below will rise smoothly into the open positions.
Compare this to the premise that a devil-group responsible for the corruption of the State awaits discovery and ejection, after which right and justice will prevail. That's a far more attractive notion, for two reasons. First, it allows us to "put a face on the enemy," at least in prospect, which gives us someone to hate. Second, it promises an end to our labors, after which no further purgative effort will be required of us.
In America's current situation of besiegement, we are tempted to blame our troubles on the inadequate responses of the administration elected to power. But were Saint Michael to replace the president and Saint George to replace the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, our circumstances would not be materially improved. Single individuals are incapable of steering a government by force of will. The bureaucracies beneath them would neuter them almost effortlessly, in obedience to the institutional incentives that raised them to where they sit. Conversely, installing Adolf Hitler in the Oval Office and General Tojo as Secretary of Defense would not make a great deal of difference. Shifting a bureaucracy of tens or hundreds of thousands requires more than amorality and determination.
Clearly, the avoidance of devil theories is critical to successfully countering those forces that give rise to tyranny, corruption, and social strife. Less obviously, denying the defenders of a regime the privilege of invoking a devil theory to explain the failure of their preferred policies is critical to constructive discourse on political principles and the soundness of policies based on them. The Soviet regime did not kill millions because of Josef Stalin, but because the premises of Communism, pursued to their logical conclusion, demanded it. America's "permanent government," founded on Civil Service rules and sovereign immunity, fails to act effectively against the major threats to our nation not because of evil will, but in obedience to the incentives that arise from those foundation stones.
More anon.
Comments
The harm Adolf Hitler and General Tojo could and would do in those positions far surpasses the good that Saint Michael and Saint George could ever do. One mark of a really good, which also means effective, President would be an unapologetic firing of certain members of the bureaucracies.
Posted by on 04/30/2008 at 09:14 PMDon’t mistake a situation in which villains are “spontaneously” installed in high posts for one in which they’ve risen to those posts through conventional political dynamics, More. The bureaucrats whom Hitler would like to fire, to be replaced by Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, etc. would be protected by the same Civil Service rules that protected them from Ronald Reagan. A president can fire political appointees; Civil Service hirelings, the real “permanent government” of these United States, are another matter.
“What would Mao Tse-tung be without a billion Chinese to back him up? Just another cranky old man.”—Norman Spinrad.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 05/01/2008 at 04:34 AM
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