Political authority, or the authority of State, or the authority of Government, is something the average person virtually never questions. Almost everyone goes through their entire life believing that the Government – although it’s almost always composed of provable criminals, cheats and liars – still has a solid basis for its political authority. Many people, whether left, right or anywhere in between on the political spectrum, are Statists: they think that Government has an inherent right to rule, using coercion if necessary. Yet, even a cursory examination shows that if a normal person acted like Government, they would characterized as cunning, secretive and manipulative, and either be diagnosed as insane, or locked up as a danger to society, or both. So why do people allow and consent to such a situation?

David Hume on Government and Political Authority

The 18th century British philosopher David Hume attested to this situation when he wrote that:

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume was clearly one of those rare few who took the time to closely examine the origins and political authority of Government. Interestingly, he was propagating many of these ideas during the mid-1700s, a few decades before the time of the American and French Revolutions.

Hume realized that most Government is formed and is held together by war. History teaches us this over and over again, including politicians’ inventions of fictitious enemies to justify a State’s existence:

Most governments are not formed by contract but rather through conquest and war.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

It is probable, that the first ascendant of one man over multitudes begun during a state of war; where the superiority of courage and of genius discovers itself most visibly, where unanimity and concert are most requisite, and where the pernicious effects of disorder are most sensibly felt. The long continuance of that state, an incident common among savage tribes, enured the people to submission; and if the chieftain possessed as much equity as prudence and valour, he became, even during peace, the arbiter of all differences, and could gradually, by a mixture of force and consent, establish his authority….

Hume warned that authority should never become too uncontrollable over liberty:

In all governments, there is a perpetual intestine struggle, open or secret, between Authority and Liberty; and neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the contest. A great sacrifice of liberty must necessarily be made in every government; yet even the authority, which confines liberty, can never, and perhaps ought never, in any constitution, to become quite entire and uncontrollable.

quote-the-heights-of-popularity-and-patriotism-are-still-the-beaten-road-to-power-and-tyranny-david-hume-52-85-71Lastly, Hume explicitly stated that a State’s supposed political authority could not hold water when investigated closely:

No maxim is more comfortable … than to submit quietly to the government, which we find establish’d in the country where we happen to live, without enquiring too curiously into its origin and first establishment. Few governments will bear being examin’d so rigorously.

It is on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

As we shall see, this last quote rings true, and is especially interesting given that it flatly contradicts the widely held notion put forth by Hume’s fellow British philosopher John Locke, who proposed that their was some kind of social contract from which the State justly derived its powers.

http://patriotrising.com/2016/01/22/getting-the-idea-of-government-and-political-authority-out-of-your-mind/