The Properties of Freedom

Justifiably, the European conquest of the world is no longer seen to be such  a great feat, and the culture they spread bears more in common with disorder than the great order they presumed to bring to the world.

While I am not convinced the Islamic attempt to place a religious monopoly upon others is any more preferable than the Christians likewise attempt, Christianity brought from its earliest days (not necessarily its founding days) an attempt to impose an authority of moral obedience by extinguishing culture and subduing culture to the church-state complex of authority that was meant to replace culture.  The Islamic state, however until of more recent days, was about extending culture through the same church-state complex of authority.  

And the development of Christianity upon Europe as it ascended into the more enlightened age, no matter the creeping spread of disputation with the church part of the complex, remained mired in the thought of the superiority of those who brought themselves out of its more devotional absolutism.. Having convinced a continent to abscond from culture, the enlightenment, and especially the reformation gave total license to believe that rebelling from the church made them even more superior to the church; or it gave devotional license that the blessed were superior and deserved more for their devotion.  

Neither international mercantilism, production of goods, or property rights were new to the world or made Europe great and gave Europe either its freedoms or its superiority as some have proclaimed.  They didn’t even begin the “factory”.  Their superior belief that they did so, was simply because they had no culture beyond its economic culture.

So believing in nothing but “god” and “mammon”  (yes the bible says “or”) but Christians believe, and have since Constantine conjoined the church with the state, that the mammon one possesses is the proof of god’s value that he places upon its inherents. In days of yore it was the mammon the church itself its magnificent buildings and the kings it granted god’s mandate to; but in essence, and again nothing unique to the European church’s rule, the rewards of wealth and possession were the proof of god’s bestowing his favor, and the more ostentatious and lavish the church, the more it proved God’s support of the church.  But during the chaos pursuant to the great drought and the final collapse of Roman order, the Church itself became the state, and the “kings” the vassals. But there is a direct lineage here from the king who invented religion to show he was favored to rule because the god of his religion chose him to rule↣↣the church proving the rightness of its rule by the wealth and power its god bestowed it to prove its rightness to rule↣↣the business owner whose wealth proved he was entitled to what he had because the wealth he had proved he deserved to have the wealth. Superiority is always the proof of one’s superiority.  If one has slaves that is the proof that the slaveowner is superior to the slave; if one is the owner of vast wealth that is the proof he is superior to one who does not; if one is a college professor that is the proof his knowledge is superior to another who does not.  If one is Donald Trump the proof remains in the gaudiness and splendor of his buildings, but his fall from grandeur, that he really didn’t deserve all he had, that he had not been proven superior because he was a fraud—

It’s the entire concept of superiority that is the fraud because the superiority of the one is only proven by the power he exerts which his only possible because of the illusion that his superiority is proven by his displays of superiority that make him superior.

England was a curious example to Europe. England of course became a Roman province, but just as the Chinese emperors needed to build a great wall because they could not completely conquer its territory, the Romans were finally forced to construct a wall as much to keep those under their control from escaping their control.  When Rome began to collapse they finally moved out of England and between the 5th and 7th century the English retreated into their native groups.  But there is little contemporary history beyond that of Gildas Sapiens’ De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae. Gildas despises the return to pagan tribalism.  At this time, primarily through Gildas, the rest of our knowledge comes from authors a century later like the Bede,  Cuthberti, and Bregowine.  But by that time the norse were invading the coast and beginning to move inland. But in the chaotic days as the Romans began to depart,  the natives began to revert and unite and proclaim their native languages and cultures.  This is what Gildas rages viciously against.  Gildas sees nativism as revolting and inferior.  Of course there were also a few attempts to re-establish Roman control, notably Constantine III.  He actually seems to have been born in England and tried to capture his emperorship initially from Britain.  And of course the coasts were being invaded by Germanic tribes.  At this time we find a couple of English candidates for the title of the “real” Arthur.

I don’t buy it.  First of all Malory’s Morte d'Arthur  (Le Morte Darthur, originally)  was adapted from several French legends, and at the end of book four Malory (Thomas Malleore)tells us this.  He wrote the work while imprisoned for seduction (or possibly rape) of his leige’s spouse.  The tales of chivalry and the seduction of Guinevere I do not think to be coincidental to his personal history).  But most of the chivalrous valor of the knights is more or less absurd—there is no indication I’ve ever discovered that either the behavior of lords and knights in Malory’s own time, or prior to it was anything but power struggles and deception and completely dishonorable behavior according to Malory’s depictions of proper behavior.  But there is one thing I wish to explore.  It’s kind of weird because there is little actual discoverable information to validate this argument.

What we do know from the time of the Roman conquest, and again when the Saxons and then the Danes began to invade, is that the great kings that seemed to arise to battle against being invaded, seem to have not really been “kings” but a consensus builder capable of allying tribes together to wage battle, such as Red Cloud attempted to do that led to Little Big Horn.  

Now Malory lived in the late 1400’s, England had long been under Norman rule and we are closer to Henry VII than Henry II.  But Malory is still much more Norman, still writes in Norman French , not English, and we are half a century prior to modern English as a language formulating.  But Mallory writes about the round table and that's peculiar in that it does not seem that it would have been an element in any of his French sources.  (I haven’t read any and don’t even know what they are).  

The Saxons, when taking control did establish various little kingdoms, but these kingdoms were subdivided into smaller organizations and there appears these smaller units needed to be consulted.  The Danes came, the Normans came, the small unit organizations remained.  

Was England destined to be the nation where the Magna Carta would arise?  Did even the powerful lords take note of this and did the idea they could actually challenge the king come from that?  Did even the chaos occur because the English had had and could only be subdued by a type of “roundtable”?  Did Parliaments originate in England and not elsewhere in Europe because the smaller units that needed to be governed demanded consultation that led to the lords demanding to be participants in the king’s consultations?  I can’t say that it is so, but it does give me cause to reflect that it might have been so.  

Until of course England set forth to colonize the world by sponsoring corporate power that really became the engine for the so-called industrial revolution.  The actual revolution though was the reinforcement and final end of the tribal effect in England.  Having gained prestige for itself through empowering the concentration of wealth into the few hands of the wealthy and shortly thereafter the merchants of industry replaced the king and accomplished what no conqueror of England could ever quite muster the power to do.  As it was able to bankrupt the land barons and subdue the king to the sidelines, the power the communities had always wielded to establish the English individualism within the local community was finally and totally abolished by the subjugation of the individuals’ complete dependence on “jobs” and all resources were placed into the hands of the merchants who now proved their superiority and destroyed the freedom of the individual cultures to the necessity of complete submission.  The proof was in the possessing of the pudding, not the pudding itself because exceptionalism and superiority are borne by possessing the means of superiority that itself prove the superiority. 

And all claims of superiority, proven by actions of superiority over others, is the root of all denial of freedom.  Donald Trump appeals to those who do not feel superior by offering to make them superior (make America great again.)  Joe Biden counters “This is the United States of America” (we are already greater than the rest.)  Sorry Joe, you don’t make people who feel inferior by being the United States of America already the exceptional best, feel better than the rest if the United States of America has made them feel inferior within the United States and want to Make America Great Again.

And unfortunately, my fear is that American exceptionalism will lead to its collapse, because freedom does not lie in government.  Freedom lies in governments truly controlled by people and lack all notions of the exceptional and superior. If the nation is more exceptional than the citizens of the nation then the properties of freedom are denied because exceptionalism only proves itself by its exceptionalism and to be exceptional or superior demands the unexceptional or inferior; and those who are considered the unexceptional will want to make America great again.

And it is my proposal that only by denying all rights to exceptionalism and superiority, or by having no exceptional persons, or no exceptional governments, or no exceptional business kings, can the properties of freedom truly exist.  And it is my belief we cannot return to Mr. Biden’s American greatness, we need to approach the future more in a Rooseveltian or Johnsonian overhaul.. But this time we must rethink and overhaul the entire governmental philosophy of exceptionalism and develop a philosophy that redirects the exceptionalism to the individuals who are currently feeling very unexceptional.  That is the promise  of American words, the theology of individual equality.  It has not been the practice of the American government.  It is not the government that needs to be great, or ever should have been–it is the individuals within America that have equal greatness in authority and power.  And I personally don’t give a damn about wealth if it is not used as proof of superiority, and therefore controller of authority and power.