And that’s why the people sigh

I do not know whether I am becoming wise these days, or foolish. I hope for the one; I fear the other. Most likely it will be both, each in its own way.

„The problem is the midwits“, I once wrote. It means that the exceptionally sharp and the rather less discerning often arrive at the same, often correct, conclusions. It is the easily manipulated majority in the middle that is led by propaganda, ring through wrinkled nose, around the arena of its time.

The people in the middle are those — the educated and refined, the theorists and wearers of functional clothing — who weigh one form of government against another. Who believe they understand the true intentions of this or that candidate.

I sweep all those debates aside — does that make me look foolish or wise? It is illusion, distraction, occupational therapy. Whoever discusses politics — and even whoever demonstrates occasionally or loudly complains — does not rebel. This is the German rebellion: first the German curses, then he submits, then he curses those who refuse to submit.

The years have given me the courage to resist the „populism of alleged complexity“. I see the dividing lines and trenches where they actually open up — not where authorities claim they are.

I barely distinguish any longer between democracy and theocracy, communism, socialism, fascism, or that new form of government in Great Britain: Islamic-monarchical totalitarianism, with the banking city of the City of London as a state within a state. I do not even trouble myself to dissect near-collapse forms of government like Unsere Demokratie with too much effort.

Not because there are no differences between these forms and conditions — there certainly are. Nor do I refrain from distinguishing because I know that practically nothing of what is performed for us is actually true. (What really happened before Covid? What is really happening in Ukraine? Who really drives the EU Commission?)

I do not distinguish because a theoretically higher-order distinction is sufficient for me conceptually: I distinguish between the just order and the unjust order — and it is largely irrelevant which tailor dressed the one doing the ordering.

Self-Preservation Is Duty

In Europe, we are witnessing, for instance, how governments actively and knowingly destroy the countries in which they live. Politicians, propagandists, and even church functionaries who actively accelerate the downfall of their own country, who accept the erosion of the social system and the prevention of families as acceptable costs for their actual intentions.

The primary task of any system must be its self-preservation. A system that does not regard self-preservation as its first priority — and implement it wisely and effectively — however nobly and virtuously it may otherwise rate itself, will simply be replaced by another that takes self-preservation for granted as a matter of course, however crude and ungainly that replacement may otherwise be.

I call it unjust when a state squanders the labor and hopes of its citizens because politicians subordinate the self-preservation of the state to external or private interests — or even actively pursue the destruction or dissolution of the state and people.

But Survival Is Not Enough

Self-preservation is therefore sine qua non, yet bacteria, snakes, corporations, and even software systems can pursue self-preservation. A society that does not prioritize self-preservation will always become inhuman — yet if it wishes to be human, it must achieve more than „merely“ surviving.

A human society should, in my view, implement a further fundamental dimension in order to be called just — and that dimension must be specifically human.

The human being is equipped with the capacity to find happiness and meaning — that distinguishes him from every other form of life. A society can never be called just if it does not create the conditions within which a human being can become happy.

I am not speaking of the utopian happiness-promise of the socialists, which contradicts human nature. I am not speaking of the shallow happiness-promise of consumer culture.

I am speaking of the happiness that has proven itself across millennia. That is also — but not only — religious.

The happiness of knowing that one’s circles are ordered (see Relevante Strukturen).

The happiness of understanding, through the study of ancient wisdom, the „grand whole“ and one’s own place within it just a little better.

And then, yes, as personal alpha and omega: the happiness of living one’s placement within the entirely grand order — in daily life as well as on Sunday.

First, Last: Justice

The prophet describes justice quite precisely, and it is not first and foremost this or that form of government:

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require
of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly
with your God?

— Micah 6:8

Perhaps it is simple, perhaps it is wise — in any case it seems to me right and true, and sufficiently precise: The one truly important distinction among forms of government and systems is between just and unjust.

But where does a just state begin? How is a state to be constituted so that the people may rejoice?

That too has been told to us:

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice;
but when a wicked man rules, the people sigh.

— Proverbs 29:2

Let us therefore contend — in prayer, in politics, and in personal decisions — to be governed once more by the righteous.

For, as the Word explains clearly enough: We are governed by the wicked, and that is why the people sigh.