What Is the Best Form of Government?

The state of society, its values and norms, its weaknesses and lapses, inevitably defines its government to a great extent. Peoples last for millenia while few governments survive more than a few centuries before they're tossed aside for something else. Those that do last are capable of evolving, sometimes to the point of re-inventing themselves, to accommodate changing circumstances and attitudes.

I think the best form of government is that which encourages, perhaps even facilitates the strongest, healthiest society to nurture the symbiosis between citizen and state. Likewise, a sick society is symptomatic of sick government, a problem recently addressed by American contemporary chronicler Chris Hedges:

"...The childish idea that we can always prevail, that reality is never an impediment to what we want, is the central motif of illusion peddled on popular talk shows, by the Christian Right, by Hollywood, in corporate retreats, by the news industry and by self-help gurus. Reality can always be overcome. The future will always be glorious. And held out to keep us amused and entertained are spectacles and celebrities who have become idealized versions of ourselves and who, we are assured, we can all one day become.


"The cultural embrace of illusion, and the celebrity culture that has risen up around it, have accompanied the awful hollowing out of the state. We have shifted from a culture of production to a culture of consumption. We have been sold a system of casino capitalism, with its complicated and unregulated deals of turning debt into magical assets, to create fictional wealth for us and vast wealth for our elite. We have internalized the awful ethic of corporatism -- one built around the cult of the self and consumption as an inner compulsion -- to believe that living is about our own advancement and our own happiness at the expense of others. Corporations, behind the smoke screen, have ruthlessly dismantled and destroyed our manufacturing base and impoverished our working class. The free market became our god and government was taken hostage by corporations, the same corporations that entice us daily with illusions though the mass media, the entertainment industry and popular culture.


"The more we sever ourselves from a literate, print-based world, a world of complexity and nuance, a world of ideas, for one informed by comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans and a celebration of violence the more we implode. We ask, like the wrestling fans or those who confuse love with pornography, to be fed lies. We demand lies. The skillfully manufactured images and slogans that flood the airwaves and infect our political discourse mask reality. And we do not protest. The lonely Cassandras who speak the truth about our misguided imperial wars, the global economic meltdown and the imminent danger of multiple pollutions that are destroying the eco-system that sustains the human species, are drowned out by arenas full of fans chanting "Slut! Slut! Slut!" or television audiences chanting "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!" The worse reality becomes, the less a beleaguered population wants to hear about it and the more it distracts itself with squalid pseudo-events of celebrity breakdowns, gossip and trivia.


"A culture that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion dies. And we are dying now. We will wake from our state of induced childishness, one where trivia and gossip pass for news and information, one where our goal is not justice by an elusive and unattainable happiness, to confront the stark limitations before us or we will continue our headlong retreat into fantasy."

Within a culture so deeply afflicted is there any form of government that could be considered ideal? When the society and government become mutually corruptive, arguments over the fine points of individual versus collective rights and economic models become almost absurd.

For God's sake, man, if you choose to invoke the name of the blessed deity, have the reverance to spell the man's name with a "p" as in the Scottish Thompson.

What means "somewhat democratic"? A constitutional republic headed by an emperor for life would either become a dictatorship or would see the head of state treated along the lines of a constitutional monarch, meaning largely stripped of power. Your model, however, seems to fully empower the emperor. Oh great, bring on the assassins! Et tu Brute? Maybe even a Forum and gladiatorial bloodbaths to distract the Plebs?

Dragon, mon ami, it would do you no harm to learn a bit of the remarkably consistent traits of insurrection and revolution. I think these realities, these powerful and irrepressible forces, render your model unrealisitic, even unviable.

Well SD it sounds like you're living in the wrong country or do you think the sort of government you envision can evolve in the United States?

I fear you may be right. I have been pondering of late the adaptability of classical democracy to the world as it may evolve in the course of this century. I am a convinced believer in global warming. Just this week hundreds of Humboldt squid, denizens of the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, began washing ashore here on Vancouver Island. Last month they created quite a furor when they began littering the beaches in San Diego. We see all sorts of species migration occuring up here.

If the "best and brightest" minds on climate change are right, the worst case scenario - that of runaway global warming - would see the earth's population reduced from the 6,700-millions we currently support to a few hundred millions, say 400-millions. 6,700 down to 400. That's a kill off of 6.3-billion people. If population growth forecasts are right it will be a couple of billion more yet.

Least and last affected will be the Western world, or the northern reaches of it. How will our institutions function under these enormous pressures? Who gets a seat in the lifeboat and who gets chucked overboard that others may live?

Your Pentagon is about to release its Quadrennial Defense Review and it's going to be an eye-opener although I fully expect it to be understated. However I think it's bound to shake up a lot of people and run the denialist community out of town at long last.

East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, South and Central America are in for an exceptionally bad time. It'll be pretty much "Them" and "Us" and I don't think they're going to be particularly happy with US.

We don't have to heat the planet very much at all before the growing freshwater crisis transforms into a catastrophic disruption of the food supply in nations like India and China and throughout Africa and parts of South America as well as Australia. I think they're already buggered whether we like to admit it or not.

Last month Britain's environment secretary, Hilary Benn, released a government report showing the "best case scenario" for climate change in Great Britain to 2070. The report showed most of Britain is likely to receive a 2-degree Celsius temperature increase and parts of the south, including London, as much as 6-degrees. This is Britain, an island nation surrounded by oceans.

We've already concluded that an average, 2-degree Celsius increase over pre-industrial temperatures is the maximum we can possibly tolerate before triggering runaway global warming. If Britain, of all places, expects a minimum of 2-degree Celsius heating, what does that say for the rest of the world, the hot parts, the vast landlocked regions?

What troubles me is that I think it we're going to fashion a democracy and institutions that will serve our grandchildren into the second half of this century we're going to have to have a very serious and extensive discussion and debate that will progress to planning and implementation of measures for adaptation and remediation. That's going to require an enormous degree of central authority and if we don't make provision that we, the people, hold the reins and exercise that authority responsibly, then someone else will grab that power and we will very much be at their mercy.

Enough of my rant.

I'm not sure if I completely buy that global warming is as bad as some people say, simply due to the fact that the Earth has gone through periods of heating up and cooling down in the past. Though either way, I doubt we humans are actually helping the problem. As such, the major governments (the U.S., European Union, Russia and China) should have some sort of disaster readiness program. Also it would be useful to sign some sort of treaty that if one of them should get hit with a big disaster that the others will give aid. It would been in no one's favor to have any of the major powers collapsing due to a natural disaster.

Ah yes, government of the people, by the people, for the people - sounds pretty radical left wing doesn't it?