Non Sequitur?
Posted by Charles Featherstone on May 1, 2010 09:00 PM
Okay, I’m confused. In the Mahatma’s speech before the students at the University of Michigan (thanks Lew), The Enlightened One speaks of government as being us. The people. “We” are the government and “we” are sovereign. It is bad to hate government because that only means hating ourselves.
And yet he also says this:
- But the other strand is the belief that there are some things we can
only do together, as one nation and that our government must keep pace
with the times. …This notion hasn’t always been partisan. It was the
first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who said that the role of
government is to do for the people what they cannot do better for
themselves.
At best, what could be said here is that government (funny how American political discourse almost never speaks of the state) represents the greatest _expression_ of the people as a whole, and that as a national whole, the people can do things through government that they are incapable of doing as smaller collectives, voluntary collectives, or even individuals. But that isn’t what he says here when he quotes The Great Annihilator, “the role of government is to do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.” In this construction, the government exists outside or better, atop the people, and does for them. Not with them, or they through the government, but the government doing for the people. Or to the people.
So which is it Your Sublime Sereness? Are we the government? Or merely objects for it you to manipulate?
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