Self-Evident Truths and the Theory of Thugocracy

It is summertime, and we annually proclaim that we hold certain "truths" to be "self-evident". In America we say it is a "truth" that all people are equal before the law, that they are born with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We say that we have formed our government for the purpose of protecting those rights, and if the government should no longer sufficiently serve that end then we have either the right or the duty to alter or abolish it.

I have given some thought to whether the "truths" are "truths", whether they are facts at all, determined that they are certainly not "self-evident" and looked around at what might be closer to the "truth".

What Jefferson called the "truths" are not facts, but operating principles, organizational theories proposed for a new society. While rooted in Enlightenment political philosophy and concepts of "Natural Law" the concept that all people are equal in the law was certainly not "self-evident" either to European monarchists who ruled by divine right, to Asian monarchists who believed they constituted divine right, or in fact to any other developed or developing culture.

As operating principles or organizational theories Jefferson’s ideas have worked pretty well for America for 200 years. I would argue that in America the operating principles are a reasonable if imperfect description of how our country actually works. But if the operating principles are empirical principles and not "self-evident" facts then what other operating principles might we see in the real world, and how would they work?

The Theory of Thugocracy is that an alternative to democracy is a government ruled by thugs. Thugocracies share among some common characteristics.

1. A group of armed men take control of a geographic area. The complexity of the target area, its internal defenses, its area and its population may dictate how many thugs are required to take it over or what level of sophistication is required. For example in some African countries control of the presidential palace, the radio station and the airport may be sufficient for a very small number of thugs to claim control of some countries.

2. Thugs motivated purely by greed, who are in effect land based pirates may be more likely to control simpler countries, Central American plantations or African former colonies. Thugs motivated by ideology or religion may be able to recruit more widely and control larger geographic areas such as Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia.

3 Thugs generally attain legitimacy in the world community by adopting the rhetoric, forms and symbols of democracy, if not the substance. The head thug is no longer the "king" but is the "president". His cronies and sycophants are elected as a "parliament" which adopts a constitution, amendable in the discretion of the head thug. The symbols vest the thugs with sufficient credentials to support admission to the United Nations which entitles the thugs to receive various forms of international payments.

4. One defining characteristic of a Thugocracy is that the nation is the same as the head thug. Like Louis XIV’s "L’état, c’est moi", in a thugocracy there are no institutions separate from the head thug, and a particular example is that there is no distinction between the national treasury and the head thug’s bank account. The world seemed mostly amused to learn that perhaps 40% of the international aid given to the Palestinians since Oslo had found its way into Yassir Arafat’s personal bank account, and Mrs. Arafat had no intention of giving it up. Likewise, when Saddam Hussein’s sons backed a truck up to the Iraqi Treasury they were just doing what thugs do to the treasury.

5. It may in fact be a self-evident truth that the consolidation of economic power and political power is a characteristic of a Thugocracy. From corporate banana republics in Central America to aid-based economies in Africa and the Palestinian territories to the government-oil based islamofascist regimes, and backwards in time to the fascists, the Thugocracies need to control the economy as a part of controlling the nation.

6. Thugocracies rule by violence and fear of violence. Communist thugs adopt a populist rhetoric, claiming to rule in the name of the people and for their benefit. It is not necessarily elections they fear, although they fear those that could have multiple candidates, and thugs can call elections "bourgeois". What they fear is countervailing power, and the Communist countries share with the Islamist countries and the greed Thugocracies the control of all institutions.

7. If democracies are instituted by people to secure rights, Thugocracies are instituted by thugs to secure power. While the rhetoric varies from Castro to Arafat to Somalia to the Congo the goal of control is constant. Whether cloaked in false elections, based on the commandments of a false God or in some false ideology, the thugs stay in power for its own sake, and the single common thread separating Thugocracies from democracies is the lack of countervailing powers.

Now, if we look around the globe, do we see self-evident truths that governments are instituted by people to secure the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or do we see people controlled by thugs with various justifications for Thugocracy? I fear that we see mostly the latter, usually cloaked in the language of democracy, frequently paraphrasing Jefferson. I think we would be best off recognizing a good thing when we have it.