The purpose of having authority is to preserve creativity in others. When we apply this to governing, the priority is to find the best way to protect a community from upheavals within and being taken over by those outside. Contentment is achieved internally when the people have sufficient wealth and honor. It is hard to equalize these within a country since everyone has varying levels of passions and ambition. Ideally, a country will have a strong middle class; those who have sufficient supply and are well respected. If these are a majority, there is little likelihood for a revolution regardless the type of government they choose. Having good treaties and a strong military make it less likely an invasion will occur from outside. Treaties should be beneficial to both parties for trade and protection. To make any social structure work, the participants must have good character, but our passions can lead us astray. This is where we get the word tyranny. A tyrant is someone who does well at making himself appear to have concern for the public good but uses authority to enrich himself, gain notoriety, and fulfill his own desires. Opposing parties always try to characterize each other as such.

Any time a person or a group is given authority, the potential exists for them to do either good or bad. People can have good success and yet have poor character. Sometimes we associate squandering with successful athletes and successful business people who have lost the ability to control their passions. An unsuccessful person can also have poor character by resigning themselves to failure and giving themselves to vices. Success and failure can be dependent on circumstances as well as performance and outcome isn’t always an indication of character. An ideal leader will have both good performance and good character so they can be stable through success or failure. A person can start out with good motives then later succumb to the lure of vices. Since this commonly happens with normal people, the best way to insure it doesn’t is to limit the scope of powers to those we give authority to. This is why constitutions are written by the people where powers are divided and limited. The goal is to have good leaders and yet limit their powers so they don’t become corrupt.

When we have the best and the brightest in office as with a aristocracy or monarchy, the temptation is for them to become arrogant or focused on securing their own empire. With a democracy, demagogues who seek notoriety use rhetorical skills to impose their will on the whole by inciting the passions of a majority. Most dictators start out as demagogues. Everyone wants a strong lasting democracy where everyone has a say and enjoys freedom. Once corruption takes hold, it is hard to swing things back internally since tyrants do things to preserve what they have and have the power to do so. We will look at some of these things in the next post.