On Sovereignty
And the dangers of democratic power
What is a sovereign?
We must understand that modern theories of sovereignty originate from medieval Christian theories of kingship. Even in the Islamic world and other non-Christian republics, the concept of sovereignty comes not from Islam, Confucianism, Hinduism, or any other tradition, but from Christian political theory. The idea of a sovereign representative in a republic—be it a grand duke, a governor, a doge, or führer, or a president—is essentially an expanded version of the Christian concept of kingship developed by 16th-century political theorists. It shares the same origin.
A kingdom is like a political marriage: the king is the groom, the kingdom is the bride. The coronation ceremony, presided over by the Archbishop of Reims or Canterbury, is a wedding officiated by a priest. The king makes vows during this sacred ceremony, and these vows are made to God, not merely between humans. As the head of the household, the husband is accountable to God for his wife—not just to her. On the side of the wife—that is, the various estates and classes of the kingdom—their loyalty is offered voluntarily out of duty, honor, and faith, not from fear, coercion, or violence. If the king needs to force obedience from his wife—that is, the classes of the kingdom—then the Christian marriage has already broken down, and both parties have broken their covenant with God.
This understanding of marriage stands in stark contrast to the more casual views of marriage in Greco-Roman civilization, other pagan societies, or in Confucianist societies. From the persepctive of this framework, the sinitic concept of the state is akin to a household that cannot distinguish between wife and prostitute. Naturally, such societies also cannot distinguish between children and piglets—both can be roasted and eaten. In this deeply flawed political society, one may argue that the missing element is the recognition of the Sacred, the Divine, and the Absolute.
This concept of sovereignty evolved in the 16th century to include republican forms of government. So what is a sovereign? A sovereign, like a husband commanding his wife, takes responsibility for the choice between justice and injustice. This is deep moral responsibility - and in assuming that responsibility, morality responsibility normally borned by individuals are absolved. For instance, if the King of France decides to ally with the Turks or to wage war on the King of Spain, whether that is a just war or not is a moral burden carried by the King as a sacred monarch. The people of France obey his orders; if those orders are unjust or sinful, the King is the one who shall enter heaven or be damned to hell.
This logic mirrors the orthodox Christian family unit, where the wife is not accountable for her own actions, for she acts on behalf of her husband. You can also see why this doctrine might find it attractive to argue that women do not have souls - the bearer of moral responsibility in the afterlife. Seasoned thinkers will also recognize how this theology has quietly seeped into Common Law in that husband and wife are considered one unit. If the wife does something wrong, she does so as his representative, and the husband, as head of the household, bears responsibility before God. Her sins are his sins. In the same way, sovereigns—including kings and republican heads of state—are the ones most likely to go to hell. Just as doctors are most likely to die of sepsis, because they risk their lives for their patients, sovereigns risk damnation for their subjects. All their glory and splendor are built upon the fact that they must go to hell for their subjects as they make immensely difficult moral decisions—decisions that are perhaps even immoral by personal standards, for the sake of national interest.
For example, if Cardinal Richelieu’s theological reasoning is correct, then the French King, as a pillar of Christendom, must prevent the hypocritical Spanish and English from defeating France—even if it means allying with the Turks. This is for the greater good of Christendom. But if this theory is wrong, then the King of France would go to hell for inviting the Turks. Meanwhile, the French people, killing English and Spanish Christians with Turkish help, carry no guilt. However, if they did so out of personal greed and alliance with Turkish pirates—not under royal orders—then they would surely be damned. But if it is done under royal command, and in the name of national interest, in accordance with their oath of loyalty at the King’s coronation, then if there is guilt, it belongs solely to the King.
Stepping back from the theological game of play and pretend, one can still see the obvious political and organizational advantages of this theory. It centralizes power, and dissolves the competiting conceptions of the Right amongst those who are led.
This theory still lives on in today’s political rituals— including when the American President takes the oath of office on a Bible, or when the Ukrainian President swears on both the Bible and Constitution. In the eyes of atheistic Chinese culture, such rituals seems childish and puerile—emotionally meaningless and far less important than, say, buying a house. As a result, Chinese marriages and society at large are infused with a sense of frivolity. Certain concepts are simply incomprehensible to them for this reason.
To an atheist, a house in this life is far more important than whether one goes to hell after death—so all values are warped accordingly. The sovereign’s role is this: when something is done for national interest, the moral responsibility of the act falls on the sovereign, not the executor. All sin and innocence are accounted to the sovereign. That’s why François-René de Chateaubriand said: when Napoleon’s army murdered an innocent refugee in Naples or a prisoner of war in Acre, one point was deducted from his score in God’s ledger. Eventually, God withdrew Napoleon’s legitimacy, once blessed by the Pope. All the crimes committed in Napoleon’s name were charged to him alone. That was the price of being Emperor.
Of course, as Matthew Arnold said, every regime will one day face annhilation—judgement, if you’d like—because of this very dynamic. The Bible says, “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Humans die because there is not a single righteous person amongst men . Once evil is full to the brim, you must perish. The same is true for nations. Sovereigns must commit unrighteous acts for the survival of the state.
You can see how a Giradian perspective of kings as scapegoats are baked into the theological political theory.
To try to create a sinless state is like trying to create a sinless person. Confucianism thinks it's possible; Christianity says it’s impossible. Christianity beliveves there is no struggle between good people and bad people, nor between good countries and bad countries. Every country is, to varying degrees, bad—each must do evil to survive, and all those sins fall upon the sovereign. Seasoned statesmen know this is true. As Lee Kwan Yew said on many, many occassions, “sometimes, there’s just no way out”, which is why “whoever runs Singapore, must have that iron in him!”
As Arnold wrote in his poetry: God gave humanity a set of letters, and we arranged them in the sand to spell out Babylon, Rome, England, and France. Everything looked splendid, but something was always amiss. That internal flaw ferments and eventually causes even the grandest towers to collapse. Then humanity must build again in the sand. This is the eternal condition of mankind. It cannot be changed.
A statesman who takes real responsibility— like Richelieu—cannot, like a wayward Christian hermit in the desert, or a Daoist or Confucian scholar drunk on intellectual self-gratification and moral rectitude, say “the world is evil, and I will simply repent in solitude.” No—he is the Prime Minister of France. He is responsible for the interests of the French nation, a temporal, mortal, soulless entity. This is his duty. If one cannot accept this, then one is unqualified to be a sovereign. And if unqualified, one might as well let the Ottoman Sultan rule and live as a slave or hermit. But if you reject that, then you must bear the mantle of sovereignty. “Even on my sickbed, even while you lower me into the grave, and I feel something’s wrong, I’ll get up!”
You must do as Cromwell did before taking office—concentrate the burden of sin on yourself. Know in advance that you will sin, and that you must bear the responsibility for those sins. These things must be done. The only criterion for judgment is national interest. That which serves national interest is permissible; that which exploits national interest for personal gain is impermissible.
This is the sovereign’s code of ethics—distinct from that of ordinary people. Civil servants who serve the sovereign are only responsible for the technical execution. The moral justice or injustice of those actions is borne by the sovereign alone.
This conception of the sovereign, a being charged with the responsibility to bear the sins of others, enables a different code of ethics. This enablement, seems to nicely cohere with a different concept of sovereignty, from Carl Schmidt, the preminent Third Reich jurist, who says “the Sovereign is he who decides the exception of the law.” This is naturally disturbing. But perhaps not as disturbing as it is. There is an line of argument that says the pecuilarity of the twentieth century, which lies in the emergency of neverbeforeseen government-sanctioned systematic and bureaucratised mass murder of entire sub-populations, is the inevitable result of “democracy”.
What is a democracy? If we start from its philosophical roots, whether a polity is a democracy is surely not characterised by whether it is a multiparty parliamentarianism but where sovereignty is placed by the political theory justifying the polity itself. Elections are merely an implementation to deliver the promise of giving sovereign power to the entity that it is promised to. And in a democracy, sovereignty is invested in, or is derived from, or emanates from, or belongs to, etcetera… etcetera… the people. To put it short, the people are sovereign. Not kings, not dukes, not generals or people with guns. And sovereignty is innate to the people, and "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony”. Indeed, elections, are merely one form of implementing and manifesting the investiture of soverienty in the people.
In this sense of sovereignty, the United Kingdom, if you care about only its de jure political theory, is not a democracy. Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China, however, are. Such is the nature of symbols.
Prior to the enlightenment, the question of “who should be the sovereign” was answered by the dogmatic answer “he who is anointed by God”. The enlightenment has introduced a question of “who should wield sovereignty?”, and has answered this by invoking the magical political substance of “legitimacy”. “Legitimacy” is justification. Justification makes an action just. Justification, is reason exercised. And reason, is undeniable, and all encompassing. There is nothing outside of reason. If the sovereign is sovereign because the sovereign is legitimate, and his legitimacy is derived from justification based on reason, the sovereign must be just. Reasoned actions are justified, and therefore legitimate, and therefore belong to the sovereign.
Unlike in the medieval Christian theory of sovereignty, where sovereignty is NOT justified a priori, the exercise of sovereignty is fundamentally recognized to be overlapping with the unjust. Therefore, such a sovereign must be constrained. Indeed, in a medieval Christian political theory of sovereignty, it is justifiable to restrain a sovereign, as it is possible for the sovereign to be lacking in legitimacy. The sovereign can be unjust and illegitimate.
However, a democratic government, by its very nature legitimate and justified, is justified in acquiring as many powers found to be legitimate. A government born from the people possesses far more power than one formed through compromise between the aristocracy and the bourgeois elite. But this greater power results in greater harm to the people themselves. Under aristocratic rule, a war involving a few thousand was already significant. Under bourgeois rule, a war involving tens of thousands was considered major.
But wars involving millions, the destruction of entire nations and peoples, the systematic industralised delivery of entire classes to concentration camps designed, constructed, and operated by the full administrative force of state-sanctioned bureaucracy, and the deaths of millions or tens of millions without legal justification—only political reasons—are all hallmarks of the “Short Twentieth Century.” These are not anomalies; they are intrinsic to the very nature of popular democratic power.
Power itself is toxic. Those who benefit from it are also inevitably poisoned by it. In eras when the people were excluded from politics—just as children are excluded from household management—there was an implicit assumption that neither children nor the people would be harmed by politics. Politics was the privilege of a small ruling class, and thus the harm inflicted on the people was limited. But once the people come to hold political power, what was once the exclusive fate of emperors, kings, senators, dukes—having their entire clans executed 滿門抄斬—became something far more universal. Power became democratised, and so did the price of power. What Americans now call "genocide" becomes the daily reality of the democratic age.
The common thread to the three isms of the twentieth century, Liberalism, Fascism, and Communism, is that they all find it necessary to justify the state with something other than God. With God out of the picture and theoretically unavailable to justify anything, the three isms justify the state with pontifications and assertions about the characteristics and qualities of legitimacy. And they all argue that legitiamcy comes from the “people”. In that sense, they are all democracies, worthy descendents of the Enlightenment. The physical process of implementing democracy matters very little, and the implementation inevitably is determined by the political metaphysics of the theory in question. In the most extreme form of skepticism, elections can be viewed as a “farcical aquatic ceremony” that somehow extract this magical political substance called “legitimacy” from the masses and then deliver it to the winner. The modern liberal democrat’s complaint of “that’s not real democracy” to the USSR, to the Third Reich, to the PRC, to tiny Singapore, or even against First Past the Post, misses the point entirely.
Liberal democratic theorists are unwilling to admit that this is an inherent feature of democracy. They insist that it was the unique evil of Nazism and Hitler. Then Stalin came along, and people said, “Ah, this too isn’t a problem of democracy—it’s because the Soviet Union was undemocratic. This is a unique evil of communism, and non-communist countries wouldn’t act this way.” And then came Rwanda, Burundi, and Sarajevo during the Clinton era. You could still try to argue that Sarajevo was the remnant of communism, but it’s hard to link those African genocides to communism at all. And now, you have the People’s Republic of China. It is no meme that if China were to introduce multiparty elections, the CCP would not only come up on top but that it will become an irrefutable fact that it is the express and genuine wish of the entire Chinese people to reduce Taiwan to a pile of twisted rubble tomorrow morning.
These are all inevitable phenomena in the process of the people seizing power. When the people hold power, the people themselves become the enemy. When the people rule in the form of the nation-state, the task of eliminating the enemy is no longer about executing a defeated royal family—it becomes the question of annihilating entire nations. Therefore, totalitarianism is inherent in modernity, and the essence of modernity is popular sovereignty.