No matter how much, however, we manage ensure that each branch of government does not infringe upon the others’ powers, we must not forget tradition. We should not allow tradition to be destroyed in the name of the separation of powers. For instance, in Britain, for a long time, high ranking judges were also members of the House of Lords; the Prime Minister Tony Blair removed these ‘Law Lords’ from Parliament and placed them in a separate ‘Supreme Court’, which Britain had no tradition of, away from the legislature. It was a myth, however that these Law Lords had influence over the legislature; all legal appeals that went to the Law Lords were considered in a separate council to the House of Lords and were decided upon by the (legally non-partisan) judges in non-parliamentary sessions. They merely retained the right (in the manner of aristocracy) to sit and vote in the House of Lords as a privilege due to their position as respected judges. It was important to have wise legal minds offering parliamentary advice on legislation, but the Left, as per usual, destroyed this for its own ends, using the excuse of separation of powers to do so. Thus, true political justice dies.
A true democracy must have these three branches of government, which ensures that certain fundamental rights cannot be removed by one in place of the other, and each has its own separate roles, whilst each uses the powers it has to ensure that the other branches are keeping to their duty of maintaining a virtuous society for the people. The composition of government in these three parts may well be considered common knowledge, but if the tripartite system is ever to be taken seriously, any infringement by one upon the other, no matter how much it can be justified by legal technicality, must be addressed and amended as appropriate for future generations’ sake.
Chapter XVI
Parliaments
We have lauded legislature so greatly over the course of our discussion and considered that it should be the most important hub of all government, so it only sits right that we should now turn our attention to the discussion of legislatures themselves, which we shall refer to as ‘parliaments’ but are known by many other names throughout the world, with ‘Congress’ and ‘National Assembly’ perhaps being the most commonly encountered alternatives. When considering the most politically just form of parliament, there are many things to consider: should parliament have one or two chambers? How should power between chambers be balanced? What powers should parliament have as a whole? Perhaps most importantly, who should have the right to vote for representatives, and be a representative in parliament? Since the power to make law, and therefore the power to alter the very spirit of the nation lies with its legislature, the honour of being a legislator is not to be taken lightly. Membership of parliament carries with it respect, but also a heavy burden of duty, and its use today as a mere career path for certain members of society who enter in the interests of certain friends or sponsored parties debases the purpose of parliament. What’s more, the partisanship of modern parliamentary bodies often makes meaningful and varied discourse on political issues near-impossible, and this too is something that must be challenged and reduced if a politically just society is ever to be obtained.
Godwin’s argument against parliaments in general is that they are restrictive to human reason. He accuses them of producing a certain ‘unanimity’ which restricts opinion and causes division within mankind. Of course, since this is derived from Godwin’s theory that all political institutions are an evil, and the individual decisions of man can never be in the interests of community so long as social constraints are in place, we would only expect him to be critical of this age-old institution. Godwin, however, is once again misguided in his criticism. In the anarchist state which he proposes, communities would make their own independent decisions by the deliberation of each man and woman of the community, in a similar vein to Marx’s communism. But anarchy relies on the complete destruction of the nation, and since the nation state is the most logical conclusion of the cultural community, the nation state cannot be governed by local communities alone. If a state is to be unified and if it is to have a unifying political spirit which is embodied in a constitution — an agreement between citizen and government — then the maintenance of that constitution must be conducted by the representatives of those who have agreed to that constitution.
The democracy of ancient Athens was the most direct form of democracy, and its legislative system which permitted every citizen to attend meetings of the assembly worked fairly well for a city of some 30,000 eligible citizens. But even a population of those thousands can be difficult to represent in one space alone. Even in ancient Athens the assembly space could only fit about 6000 people onto its outcrop.27 In nations which are now populated by millions, it is completely impossible for direct democracy to be implemented on national levels, and with populations of individual towns and cities now reaching the millions as well, direct local government is also exclusive. This is the purpose of representative democracy — to amend the problem of overcrowding. It seems practical enough, but representative democracy can only work when representatives are elected on the basis of the intelligence of the electors. If an elector votes for a candidate because he represents a particular party which that elector’s family has always voted for, or because he appears attractive, or any other subconscious psychological criterion, then the purpose of representation, for the dissemination of private opinions for the national benefit, is lost.
There is one apparently radical solution to the problem of false representation that plagues many modern ‘democracies’, and that is the end of partisanship. On one hand, it may seem contradictory that those who believe in liberty should seek to eliminate political associations such as political parties, but we may contend that political parties actually damage the very concept of parliament, and as such damage the concept of liberty altogether. If the purpose of legislation is the preservation of ancestral tradition and order, only to be changed when moral virtue absolutely demands it, then the opinions of representatives must not be shackled by the whips of party agents and forced into the legislation of agendas which do not reflect the interests of society as a whole. To go to a representative of constituents and to say ‘vote on this issue in this way, else we will not endorse you at the next election’ not only forces the representative into a corner, whereby he cannot express his own conscientious opinion on a particular issue, and also denies him the chance of representing his constituents again, no matter how good a representative he might be, since the electors are influenced by time and inertia to vote for a party label rather than an individual name. It is through partisanship that legislatures are controlled by interest groups, and that fundamental rights can be removed by metaphorically beating parliamentarians into line. It was this desire to enforce partisanship that killed the British House of Lords — many of whose members before the 1999 Reform Act did not belong to any party, and consistently rejected the incumbent ‘New Left’ Labour Party government’s bills. The incumbent Prime Minister Tony Blair therefore removed the right of hereditary peers to sit in the Lords and replaced them with ‘life peers’, many of whom were former leading members of his party and other sympathetic establishment organisations, thus allowing him to push his agenda through parliament unchecked.
Here then arises the argument in favour of a bicameral parliamentary system. Even with the removal of political parties, the popularly elected chamber of parliament will always naturally be more reckless than an appointed one. After all, as we have previously seen in our study of democracy, the whim of the people is subject to volatile caprice and can change with the winds from a love of liberty to a hatred of it overnight. The power to legislate itself is a dangerous power, since often when the law changes it does not take too long for the public to change its opinion in line with the law. For sake of example, take the legality of homosexuality, which before 1967 was a criminal offence; for a long time after the passage of the Sexual Offences Act which decriminalised such acts public opinion retained an unfavourable attitude towards homos
exuals, but as a result of that decriminalisation, attitudes towards homosexuality and LGBT rights have gradually liberalised. Today (according to YouGov polls) 90% of British citizens believe that homosexuals should not be discriminated against for their sexuality, whilst 61% believe they should have the right to marry. In 1965, a government poll found that 95% of the British public considered homosexuality to be an illness. Laws, no matter how badly they are received at the time, change minds as certain attitudes and customs are enforced and become normalised. Law is therefore a powerful social tool, but also a dangerous risk to a virtuous society. The whims of the people therefore must be checked by the sort of people we considered worthy of elevation to the peerage in Chapter IX of this division, and the upper chamber must be just that — it must be superior to the lower house in terms of its powers. There will be those who will accuse us of allowing a form of tyranny to be perpetuated by permitting the upper house of parliament this sort of power over the lower house, but truly this is not the case. It cannot be tyranny when the people in a chamber of parliament are citizens of the nation, with an interest in that nation and have been afforded their honours for service to that nation.
We have stated before that there must be sacrosanct rights which may not even be removed by a 99% vote — the purpose of the upper chamber is to oversee that these rights are protected within the agenda of a government which is naturally dominated by the lower house, being the democratically elected chamber of parliament. This is why traditionally the upper house has been appointed, and in a just society would have to remain so, since it retains interests separate from the more capricious house of the people and embodies a ‘small-c conservative’ attitude to legislation. In the United States, where aristocracy did not exist, until the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 the members of the Senate were not elected, but appointed by the legislatures of the constituent states, which makes much more sense in a federal system, where each state government has a right to send its elder statesmen to represent it at a federal level (since such men and women are effectively a republican form of aristocracy), whilst the people of the whole nation elect their representatives separately and popularly. The popular election of senators allowed the Senate to be controlled completely by the bipartisan system which remains in complete command of the United States’ Government today. It goes without saying also, that member of the upper house, if they are to have a duty of care over the constitution and the regulation of the will of the commons, then they must be of an elder age. The United States prescribes that senators should be 30 years old; ideally, an elder statesman in an upper chamber should be about 40 years old, which places him in a much wiser position than the members of the commons who may be elected from the age of majority, which should be appropriately set varyingly between 18 and 21 years old depending on jurisdiction, but certainly after the stage of puberty is at least for the most part complete. It is people of this age who are able to vote, and therefore should be able to stand.
The only disqualifications for voting or standing in a parliamentary election should be if the potential elector has no fixed address, is not a citizen of the country for which he is electing representatives, or if he is or has been a member of a political party. If political parties are to be meaningfully abolished, the penalty for forming and belonging to one must be severe — it must carry a jail sentence or hefty fine, along with being debarred from standing for or electing to public offices in order to properly deter the formation of such associations and allow for the free dissemination of individual opinions. Those who agree on certain issues need not regulate each other’s opinions on other issues, and loose coalitions of friends who agree on certain aspects of policy are perfectly acceptable. Once a party is established which forces its members to accept a single ‘manifesto’ with which not all party members may agree, yet are forced to conform to, democracy itself is mocked by the very concept.
An upper chamber is absolutely necessary for the protection of politically just constitutions, and parliaments must be wholly non-partisan if they are to serve the people in the capacity of a national debating chamber. Affectatious theatrics and party scheming have no place in democracy, and the sooner we may be rid of such political horrors, the better.
***
Now let us turn our attention to the powers of parliaments. The obvious purpose of parliament is legislation, but what else, if anything should it be permitted to conduct in political society? We have already dismissed the idea of parliament judging its own members — the role of prosecution of any member of society, politician or not, should fall to the judiciary. Parliament should be open for the voting public to watch, either by means of a gallery or televised coverage, since unlike a courtroom, parliament does not deal with sensitive criminal cases but the affairs of state with which every elector has the right to be concerned. Some congresses and parliaments reserve the right to sit in secret, such as the British House of Commons did in December 2001 when debating the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill. The right of houses of parliament to sit in private, suspending broadcast and expelling the public from the gallery should not exist in a true democracy. No matter how ‘sensitive’ information is deemed to be, if it is sensitive enough to be the concern of a representative, it should also be the concern of the elector; since he or she has had a say in electing that representative, thus it concerns the nation and not only parliament. The European Union has been exposed several times in using the excuse of ‘security’ to deny the European public access to certain documents and discussions in its Parliament. In the discussions regarding the TTIP in 2015, MEPs were forced to sign a gagging clause which prevented them from disclosing the details of the treaty to their electors.28 We need not elaborate too much on this, but it goes without saying that when virtue is being openly destroyed, good men must be prevented from speaking out against it. Such actions are not seen in societies which value liberty and morality, but only in tyrannies where coercion and punishment are used to pursue the agendas of specific groups rather than the whole community. The words of Benjamin Franklin resound down the ages:
Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.29
We have said before that Parliament should keep regular scrutiny of the executive, but it should have far more sweeping powers of scrutiny. Ministries, public enquiries and debates concerning the nuanced issues of local communities may all be considered by parliament, and with it being the political meeting place both physically and spiritually of the whole nation, it deserves the power to consider issues from across the whole of that nation. Now of course this may not amount to criminal prosecution, but it may well be possible for a parliamentary body to uncover evidence which may require handing over to legal authorities. The purpose of parliament should not simply be debate and legislation, but also the protection of citizens themselves, especially in matters of political corruption. As a body which represents the entire nation, corruption in parliament surely leads to the corruption of the whole of society, as toxic laws and dangerous ideas become perpetuated in a system which exists solely for the keeping up of appearances rather than genuine political discourse. Let it be said then that a parliament is the most important institution in the whole of political society, and that legislative power, whilst it should carry the most respect, should also be reserved for the most virtuous. If the voting public can be genuinely educated in the importance of virtuous representatives and the need for separate chambers with balanced powers, then the hope for political justice and fixed libertarian rights may not be in vain.
Appendix to Book IV.
Further Remarks on Political Society
Chapter XVII
Freedom of Religion
Before we conclude this division, there are a few final matters to consider concerning the exercise of political power and society as a whole. The first topic for consideration is the question of tolerance — the freedom of religion, which
in Western Europe at least has become one of the most challenging issues of the age. The mass migration of an alien culture by the displacement of thousands of citizens of Islamic countries poses a real threat to the values of traditionally libertarian civilisations in Europe. The freedom of religion is on the one hand a staple civil liberty, but on the other hand has the potential to create a great deal of societal division. We may criticise religions as freely as we like (or should be able to at least), and whilst we must accept the criticism that the nature of religious adherents depends a great deal on individual interpretation of the tenets of a particular religion, the cultural and societal traditions which have grown up around particular religions must be taken into account. In nations where law is based on strict religious teaching, and which when faced with the powers of reason do not come up to the sum of virtue, it is only natural that the law, which is the spirit of the nation and defines the eventual behaviour of its citizens, will reinforce certain behaviours which may be incompatible with or damaging to other nations which place reason and truth as their ultimate goals, rather than destructive and warped interpretations of morality.
A state which values freedom of opinion must also value freedom of religion, this much is given. If it is the variety of opinions which allows a democracy to consider both truth and falsehood, both the most outrageous and the most conventional in order to find the most virtuous path for its own self-improvement, then religions, which are ultimately theological expressions of individual opinion, must be permitted the freedom to express their doctrines in the same way that political opinions are. However, we cannot avoid the fact that adherence to certain religions carries with it certain consequences. Throughout most of the medieval period Jews were banned from many European countries due to their association with exploitative money-lending and usurious financial practices, something which traditionally arose from Christianity’s ban on the faithful’s lending at usury, whilst Judaism has no such restriction. Islam was for a long time the sole and most dangerous enemy to Christendom, with Arab invasions of the Byzantine Empire and Moorish incursions into Spain being checked by various Christian Holy Wars. By the time of the Enlightenment, free thinkers such as Voltaire openly attacked Christianity itself, naming the religion which had dominated Europe since the age of Constantine the most dangerous threat to intellectual progression. What this teaches us of course is that whenever a particular dogma is favoured over another, we can never truly say that this dogma is ‘perfect’ compared to the alternatives. When it comes to religion, nation states are faced with a dilemma: to be religious, or to be secular, and if to be religious then to what extent?
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