Essays in Idleness

My banterings on contemporary politics have been misunderstood. Several readers are under the impression that I champion “theocracy,” and long for a state like that in Iran. But of course, it would be a Christian theocracy, with perhaps the pope replacing the High Mullah.

Let me explain why this is heresy, and why a Shia-style theocrat was never in our cards.

Christ confirmed “the separation of Church and State” (as we paraphrase in modernist language). “Give unto Caesar,” as Christians are told in the synoptic gospels; and unto God, the things that are God’s. The display of divine contempt for the things of this world is part of every Christian’s “identity.” Government, and power, are just secular, material matters.

Whereas in Islam, which is intrinsically fanatical, there is no distinction. Allah is to be consulted on everything, however trivial, and his agents become tyrants, naturally. Those not Muslim were born to be damned, as in Calvinist Protestantism. There is no escape.

“But Otiosus is against democracy, like the imams!” …

There have been others against democracy — Plato and Socrates, after and before — but Islamists are not among them. They are in the totalitarian democratic tradition, along with Communists and Fascists. All claim power from a vote, which may not have been counted honestly. Our Western democracies parody this, when they pretend that there are “group rights.”

Instead, we should cling to the rule of law. We should accept boring, secular, predictable law, without revolutionary flourishes. And, governments, whether republican or monarchist, should be at least tolerable, not seizing things; with the police and military under them, by tradition. The law is required to vindicate our freedom.

Theft is bad; it is sin. It doesn’t become right when “the people” vote for it. “Tax the rich” is essentially obscene. The idea of a welfare state, depending upon involuntary taxes, isn’t merely economically inefficient. It is dark, wicked, stinkingly evil. A government that impounds and transfers arbitrarily from one social group to another, is guilty of this enormity. Democracy has made the welfare state possible, and for that reason it must end.

I long to live in a voluntary order.