There is no such thing as a government for, of, and by the people, and there never has been. That claim is a convenient lie to placate the masses and enable the dominance of the many by the few. Through all history, mankind has been ruled by an entitled establishment that claims dominance over humanity through the “right” of blood. Whether a soft blood-right through lineage, or a hard blood-right through a willingness to perform overwhelming violence against any resistance, there has never been a just government for, of, and by the people.
The United States was founded by a small number of slave-owning landlords. The Constitution only provided the right to vote to white male landowners of age. Only through the constant battling of the violence and inhumanity of the elitist establishment by the people has this ever changed for the better. The United States of America were not built for the people of America, but for the wealthy landowners. The landowners marshalled the militias to battle Britain – not fighting to free the people, or provide a representative government, but to assert the Americas independent right to dominate its land and people through a separate government, while Britain fought to maintain its right to dominate the land and people with the British government. The people referred to in the phrase “For, of, and By the People” was only ever the People who were rich, white landowners – nobility, the upper class, the entitlement class, the capital class, however you may wish to refer to them.
Abolitionists had to engage in the sacrifice of their lives and persons through long trial to force an end to slavery in the north. The South explicitly fought the Civil War to continue slavery, as is readily seen in the secession documents by each state. Many of the secessionist states overtly explain their pro-slavery position. When someone says that the Civil War was over states’ rights, the proper question is, states’ rights to what? Enforce slavery. Police in the south were organized as slave catcher, and encroached on the northern states to reclaim human bodies for their violence and domination.
The idea that the north fought to end slavery is, however, a lie. In Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greely, Lincoln specifically explains that he doesn’t care if slavery is ended or not, just that the Union is preserved. The South fought to continue slavery, but the North fought to preserve the Union – the establishment’s dominance over the land in the South. “For, of, and by the People” is a lie, and always has been. There was one Civil War, but two different reasons for fighting it. This is common to any exchange – when I buy a cup of coffee, the person selling it to me has a different motivation than I have for buying it, but there’s still only one exchange that occurs. Every story has two sides, and pretending like the North fought the Civil War to end slavery doesn’t actually help anyone.
Besides, slavery didn’t end, it was just transferred to the penal state (14th Amendment), and later reorganized into financial slavery (instead of chattel slavery) through the monopolization of the production of currency by the Central Banks in 1913.
Going back further, to the British origins, the islands are still ruled to this day by the blood-right claims of a monarchy. The establishment of Civil Law following the Magna Carta was not to establish the right of the people to exist, but the right of the Nobility – the entitled elites – to influence the Monarch. This can continue to be seen today through the House of Lords.
Prior still, through the various iterations of the Roman Empire, whether the original or its Holy Roman version, the intent of the nation-state, the empire, the monarchy, or any other form of government has never been for, of, and by the people. All nation-states, empires, and other formations of government have always been organized to entrench the dominance of a small number of blood-right entitled elites to dominate the majority of the population, through various lies or usurpations such as outlandish tales of Godhood (such as in ancient Egyptian empires, or the European monarchies that have long claimed “God-given” rights to rule), or the capacity to use violence through armies and militaries. The Romans ruled by the elite, even in the Republic days. The Greeks ruled by the elite.
Even the rule by violence has not been of willful armies, but by the exercise of dominance over ones “own” people to force them into service of the ruler’s dominance, and then exert that dominance over another group. When another ruler’s armies would fail in battle, the survivors would be claimed by the winner and pressed into service. This pattern of lies and violence to justify the elites’ “right” to rule, and the organization of government and other systems of violence to support and enable that dominance, traces a long and bloody streak all throughout human history.
Only when we travel so far back into history as to reduce ourselves into tribes of families, do we find leadership from the people, but even back that long ago, it was almost always a patriarchal leadership established by the dominance of men over women, strong men over weak men, and the indoctrination of children too young to understand what was happening into rites of violence in support of the old.
“War is bitter old rich men sending stupid young poor men to die.” And it always has been. And it always will be. Because government for, of, and by the people is a lie, and it always has been. It’s a calming lie to placate the public and give them some false sense that they have influence over the government, but that influence is as profound as a diner’s influence over a restaurant by presuming that ordering from a menu provided to them is equivalent to deciding what food they will be served. Yes, the diner chose the meal, but the restaurant chose what meals would be available. Government is the same illusion of choice, where a menu is handed to the public, while those who are truly in charge understand that they control what choices are presented on that menu.
Even returning back closer to the present, Women’s Suffrage wasn’t some blessing of a benevolent government seeing the error of its ways, it was the product of decades of demands and protest for, of, and by the people, to force the government against its will to recognize the rights of more humans. And the Civil Rights movement again, was not because of government representation and respect for the public, but a hard-fought and hard-won battle over 100 years to gain equal representation for the people who had been “freed” generations prior, from the self-same government which enslaved them originally.
Every single right that humanity has was not a blessing or gift from a loving government, but a long and painfully demanded concession from a violently resisting entitled establishment class who controls, and has always controlled, government. People talk about how the government “gives” mankind rights, when in reality, the government is what prevents mankind from expressing their rights, unless a sufficient number of people actively battle against the establishment to the point that the establishment begrudgingly relents (for a time, until they can figure out an underhanded means to steal it back again). At which point the establishment returns to its history of dirty deeds and trickery, lies and violence, and slowly begins drawing back those rights again – the persistence of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the constant deterioration of Women’s Rights following suffrage, the continued demands of the poor and plentiful to battle the government at every stage, step, size, and location. One step forward, two steps back.
We are taught to believe that it’s impossible that the people could rule themselves, but who asserts that other than the elite establishment that controls the government? And who claims the responsibility to educate, and then does so poorly, while thoroughly indoctrinating the people to believe it’s for their own good? Again, the government. The people are forced into a system of education which provides them nothing but the ability to be sufficiently useful as labor to profit the rich, and to pay taxes to maintain the government. If someone desires to improve themselves beyond the bare and ever-deteriorating (but also ever-increasing) minimum, they are burdened by a life-long obligation of indentured servitude to the government and wealthy that has the beautiful euphemism of “student loans” – in fact, life-debt and eternal obligation to the power structures in exchange for a meager and ever-more vanishing improvement in their lifestyle, without any reduction in their dominance by the wealthy elite, or their unending obligations to the power structures of government.
There is no such thing as “good government”. There is no such thing as a government for, of, and by the people. There is only the lies, the propaganda, and the indoctrination to make people believe that their subservience to the entitled elite, and their domination by the government and wealthy, is some noble, God-blessed cause.
Only when we see through the lies can we admit to the truth and begin to take steps to overthrow the shackles that have bound mankind for countless generations.
That said, it’s possible for government to be reformed to actually represent the will of the people, and I believe that the increased complexity of our society demands that we take this next step to unshackle humanity from its intergenerational enslavement by the rich few, overthrowing these structures of control and entitlement, and realizing a grand new future of humankind.
But that’s a topic for another essay.