Safety of the People..

Safety of the People or War of All Against All

“Salus populi suprema lex esto”  (“the safety of the people should be the supreme law”) wrote Cicero in the last days of the Roman Republic, before civil wars and dictators fatally threatened the salus.

This principle has been a cornerstone of Western political theory since at least the C17.

In that century, Thomas Hobbes theorised an absolute state power (of whatever constitutional composition), to which potential citizens surrendered the larger part of their freedoms – in order to escape from an anarchic “state of nature”, that involves a war of all against all, and where life is nasty, brutish and short.

The state would have a monopoly on coercive power and citizens would dwell in peace. And so on, to the present, through variants of the principle laid out by many thinkers, including, in near modern times, John Stuart Mill. His Harm principle is that coercive power may be exercised against a citizen to prevent “harm” to others – “harm” being a debatable concept. Mill’s thinking informs political and social policy to this day.

Philosophers, politicians and citizens may dispute bitterly about the reach of the state. Hobbes envisioned a pretty absolutist “sovereign”, controlling most aspects of citizens’ lives. At the other end of the theoretical spectrum is the minimalist “night watchman” state, supported by conservative libertarians. They see the state as only necessary to provide law enforcement (civil and criminal) and external defence. The rest can be left to market interactions.

But all theories have in common Cicero’s injunction – the state must keep the people safe. Even (most) libertarians on the right have usually agreed.

Yet, in the USA, everything is a bit Alice in Wonderland, theory-wise. (Or should that be Hobbes in Wonderland?). The gun lobby and libertarian right seem to advocate a regress to a state of nature where there is indeed a war of all against all: or at least a war of all good guys against all bad guys. As the NRA slogan has it: “to stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun”. And the President wants to usher schoolteachers into the front line of this war: a derringer in the chalk box. The state? Not getting involved in stopping the root cause of shootings.

There are (perhaps unique) historical reasons for the circumstances in which the US finds itself. To greatly oversimplify a complex analysis: the Framers of the Constitution never intended to go the full Hobbes. there was too much suspicion (especially as a result of the erstwhile Colony's own experience) of the potential for tyranny in government. This is manifested in the debates the Federalists who sought central government and those that argued for near autonomous individual States (see blog 9 June 2017); and in the stress put upon the citizens' natural rights in a "state of nature" to self-defence against "tyranny". The latter principle is perhaps now the main cornerstone of the opposition to gun control. But would the Framers have welcomed where the these arguments and principles have now lead?

The Second Amendment, as currently interpreted, and contended for by conservative libertarians, means that in the US, salus populi non est suprema lex , by a factor of some 300 million guns (I’m sure mostly owned by the good guys..).

February 2018