The Blood Of Innocents

     Yesterday, after I read Haretina Kukuri’s most recent essay, I commented thus:

     "Money, borders, presidents and states exist because enough people agree that they do."
     Those things are not "metaphysically given," as the Earth is. A widespread recognition of their insubstantiality, and a sober consideration of the alternatives to them, could transform the whole world.

     Haretina replied:

     I agree that none of these things is given by nature, and I would only add a caution to the recognition you describe. Something that exists by agreement is not easy to replace, because the agreement is the whole of its strength. John Searle called these institutional facts, real in their effects while resting on shared belief, and a currency or a border works precisely because most people do not examine it each morning. Seeing through them can be liberating, but any alternative will need a shared faith of its own, built slowly, and the old one will not wait politely while it is assembled.

     …which is unimpeachably correct. But I had something in mind on which others of intelligence and insight have also discoursed:

     “[N]othing is forever. No matter how carefully you design a system, it will go bad and die.” – Poul Anderson, Tau Zero

     States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude and their decay. – Walter S. Landor

     If we stipulate, for extrapolation only, that the State is “a necessary evil,” consideration of the insights of the men cited above becomes imperative:

1. How are we to judge that a given State has outlived its usefulness and must be replaced by something else?
2. When the time for that judgment has arrived, what must follow?
3. Given that the existing, unsatisfactory State will resist replacement, what are we morally permitted to do?

     A State that has decayed will either be incapable of discharging its assigned responsibilities, or will be focused on oppressing and mulcting its subjects, or both (i.e., anarcho-tyranny.). That State will be inarguably a detriment to its subjects and to Mankind itself. But what, then, shall we do?

     Those who wield the powers of the State never surrender their powers voluntarily. Neither do they submit meekly to those who would uproot them. They’re aware ab initio of the fates of deposed masters. Aware that death would surely follow surrender, they would fight to the death. There would be a river of blood, some of it the blood of innocents.

     How great a price, not only in our blood, sweat, and tears but in that of innocent others, is it worth to depose a decayed, corrupt State?

* * *

     Haretina was exactly, painfully correct: that which was upheld by the “old shared faith” will not wait politely to be replaced. That makes pondering the price we and others would be required to pay morally obligatory.

     The greatest American surely had that in mind when he wrote:

     Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

     When are the “light and transient causes” displaced by “a long train of abuses and usurpations?” When do they evince “a design to reduce [us] to absolute Despotism?” How much are we prepared “to suffer, while evils are sufferable?” And when we’ve decided that those evils are no longer sufferable, how do we deal with the inevitability of collateral damage: the loss of innocents’ lives, the destruction of innocents’ property, and the ruination of innocents’ futures?

     Please give it some thought.