We Are No Longer A Government Of Laws – How To Buy Your Own Laws In An Illegitimate Government Of Men

You know, there was once a dissident in the Soviet Union who wrote a thesis that everyone in the United States laughed at.  Including EVERY single supposed Soviet expert.   A timeless lesson for bureaucrats.     The bureaucrats in Moscow also discounted this dissident’s thesis.  Of course they would.  He was an enemy of the state and its authority in his search for truth and reason.   Dissent, free speech and free thought will not be tolerated by the state unlike democratic governance which must have all of these elements to survive and flourish.

Unlike the religious ideology embraced by bureaucrats in Washington who worship other bureaucrats, the idea that the U.S. spent the Soviet Union into submission and collapse is nonsense.  We wrote years ago what drove the Soviet Union over a cliff.   I don’t have the link handy but you can search the blog for that post.  There are many dynamics surrounding that event and the world today.  Not just the United States either.  Maybe even more importantly, how it applies to BRIC countries and emerging markets.  

Ultimately bureaucracies rot from the inside out.  And societies rot from the head first.  The larger the bureaucracy, the larger the rot be it in a massive corporation, a government, an agency of a government or even religious bureaucracies. 

There is an illegitimacy in most bureaucracies and it is only a matter of time until illegitimacy takes its toll.  A handful of bureaucrats cannot maintain control over an entire society forever.  That is, unless society seeks to submit its sovereignty because of the legitimacy of the bureaucracy such as the democratic rule of law.  It was the corrupt bureaucracy which was the end of Rome and the Soviet Union, both of which we have talked about on here. 

I think it was 1969 or 1970 that Andrei Amalrik wrote “Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?”.  One of his major suppositions was that the Soviet Union failed to build a society based on the rule of law.    And along with a few other dynamics, it would be the lack of a society based on laws that be the ultimate demise of the Soviet bureaucracy.  Amalrik was only off by a year.  The chain of events leading to Soviet collapse started in 1985.       

Link on how to buy your own laws in a government of men. 

Ironically, I suppose there is little difference in this case compared to countless cases in the former Soviet Union where there was no uniform rule of law and where there was, there was often little political will to enforce it.  Just like the massive financial corruption in our country and the endless bribery of our politicians. 

We are no longer a government of laws.  As Adams so eloquently wrote, we are now a government of men and with that comes the whims of man and the endless bribery, treason and corruption that goes with it.