Three Millenia, Three Standards the US Government Isn’t Meeting

In order to understand the failings of the current American government system, it is necessary to understand where it violates ideological principles of good government. Great thinkers throughout time have all put forward visions of effective rule that have been continuously violated by our current regime for years. Ancient philosophers and modern skeptics have extremely varied views of the goals of governance, yet they can all provide different yet equally damning accounts of our current system’s crony tyranny. Aristotle provided a primarily communal account of government as an institution oriented towards moral flourishing. John Locke saw it as a binding of liberty that always came second to the utility of the people within it. Wendell Berry spoke of the virtue of small government to guard against the impersonal “solutions” promoted by Federal control.

Aristotle wrote that the highest end of government is to create the conditions for virtue and flourishing. The government took part in the responsibility of creating virtuous citizens because failure to do so would undermine the main purpose of the state. Aristotle’s vision for government was necessarily small and personal, as only at that scale could virtue be reliably taught. With a government as large as America or other world powers, this vision becomes essentially impossible. Aristotle believed that virtuous citizens and virtuous rulers would maintain the rich community and noble pursuit of the nation, but it is almost impossible to secure consensus with a small group, let alone millions of people. His vision for government could work in a small town or religious community, but it would be either tyrannical or impractical when attempted in any modern country. Nonetheless, the founders echoed many of his sentiments when they spoke about the necessity of an informed and virtuous people behind any good government. …