Every Society Eventually Fails
The weak link is that societies and the governments they invent are formed by flawed people.
Every form of society has its own unique ending; however, the march to those endings has a commonality – it is that their death typically comes by their own hand.
The same goes with the entities that govern those societies.
Does that mean that societies and the structures that govern them are doomed from the moment they begin?
It is my opinion, backed up by a lot of history, the answer is “yes.”
It is because societies are made up of people and people occupy positions in government and government offers the power to modify both society and government by those within them.
James Madison in Federalist #51 put it out there:
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, two great intellectuals during the age of Enlightenment, held strongly opposing viewpoints. Locke proposed that people are inherently good, possessing morals and the ability to reason. Hobbes believed humans are naturally cruel, greedy, and selfish.
I tend to believe that humans exist on a bell curve. There are people in the very tails of the curve that make up 0.1% each who are purely good and purely evil. The other 99.8% are a mix of both. I believe the base nature of those in that 99.8% are inherently good but are flawed and are therefore subject to the temptations of evil.
For the sake of argument, accept my premise for a moment and see if it makes sense.
If you believe people are a normal distribution, even those sitting on the absolute mean are a 50/50 proposition at best. We are often a little bit good, a little bit bad and most of the time a little of both.
The question is what tempts us to drift to one side or the other.
What we do in the view of the public is one thing, but the most telling aspects of our character are revealed when we think people are not looking. Imagine yourself in a room alone with hundreds of millions of dollars in hundred-dollar bills and you know that money was never going to be counted by an authority. You cannot tell me that most people would not be tempted to take a few C-notes for themselves.
Now imagine you were in a group of people – I am sure the temptation would not be nearly as strong, but what if the group decided to take some of the money?
Is it more or less likely any individual in that group would participate if they saw others doing it?
Of course, it makes it more likely they will.
There are three dimensions to that example – one is the idea that nobody will know, another is that you will not get caught, and the third is the shared agreement of the group that provides a shield to the individuals in the group. This is a pretty common set of inputs and outputs we see in life, the first in society where people seek to hide things from others, the second in society when getting exposed is the fear and lastly in government when hiding among the crowd provides protection against punishment.
The commonality between those two scenarios is whether you will sacrifice your principles to gain some sort of reward.
In an 1816 letter to Samuel Kercheval, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering.”
Jefferson was describing the tendency for bad things to cascade into others until such a time there is nothing left of the principles that existed at the beginning and what makes it worse is when those failures of principle are memorialized into societal traditions, mores and ultimately into law.
People just begin to accept corruption as the norm and through that acceptance, they themselves become corrupt.
That is when societies and their governments fail.
Successful, democratic, fair societies and governments only last if the people under such government allow them to last. This is no secret. It has always been true.
As Edmund Burke wrote:
“Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”
I have my flaws for certain ... not sure however that human nature is destined to follow your example of C-notes. A guiding thought since even before becoming a parent has been to be a person my daughter could admire and respect -- same with my bride -- and now with my grandkids and great grandkids too. I believe there are many like me in that 50/50 part of the bell curve ... more than a little good. Locke impressed me most back when I was younger. Burke was and is dead bang right. I think I always wanted the respect too of the guy in the mirror.
I have to disagree with your premise that "the base nature of those in that 99.8% are inherently good but are flawed and are therefore subject to the temptations of evil." As the apostle Paul wrote, citing a couple of different Psalms:
as it is written,
“THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.” “THEIR THROAT IS AN OPEN GRAVE, WITH THEIR TONGUES THEY KEEP DECEIVING,” “THE POISON OF ASPS IS UNDER THEIR LIPS”; “WHOSE MOUTH IS FULL OF CURSING AND BITTERNESS”; “THEIR FEET ARE SWIFT TO SHED BLOOD, DESTRUCTION AND MISERY ARE IN THEIR PATHS, AND THE PATH OF PEACE THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN.” “THERE IS NO FEAR OF GOD BEFORE THEIR EYES.”
- Romans 3:10-18 (all caps in original)
That we are fallen is at the heart of the problem, though it is a problem God can fix within each of us. This is why the founding fathers also believed it necessary for us to be "moral and religious"; this is why John Adams wrote, "We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other" (John Adams to the Massachusetts Militia, 11 Oct. 1798). Therein lies the rub. America long ago eschewed God from the public square. Thus, the vacuum needed filler and that filler is avarice, ambition, revenge, and things Adams did not foresee like "pride" - so many of the things the apostle Paul wrote of in the preceding verses of Romans:
"And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them." - Romans 1:28-32
Yes, we are flawed people. It was our shared faith (disparate as it was among the founders and those who first inhabited these lands) that kept most of the issues in check. The rejection of that faith has led America to become, as Adams in that same address put it, "the most miserable Habitation in the World."