The Long Clasp (Post 6)

Part II
The Threat

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UNION

§ Politics

How shall we understand “power”?  Without waxing prolix and philosophical, I offer the following thoughts by limiting its use to the everyday world of human beings.  “Power” refers to the wherewithal to direct and control desired outcomes.  The strength of that power may emanate from the character, the will, the spirit of an individual; or lie with the resources of personnel and material to carry through to completion; or reside in the intellectual or managerial skills to accomplish the outcome.
            In sum, at least in human affairs, “power” (the term) can be understood as the possession of force sufficient to effectuate an outcome.  Hearkening back to that catalogue of ideas about Liberty and Freedom, we might posit this answer: Liberty is the Freedom to control (exercise power over) one’s own actions and thoughts.

            Politics is about power.  Power can be exerted in private matters, in commercial matters, in public affairs at local, regional, or national levels, or in international affairs.  Political power as a phrase refers to the dynamic force within human relationships.  Power is the force, politics is the dynamic.  In its most generalized sense, politics describes the working out, the resolution, of differences among people.^[4] Differences abound, between parents and children, between spouses, between neighbors, between groups, between nations.  Nations in certain contexts are metonymically described as sovereign powers.  That bit of political speech serves to acknowledge an equality of status.
            The dynamics of politics may be benign, even loving, as within fortunate family units.  It may be neutral, as one hopes for in most daily interactions.  It may be malign, corrupt, even brutal.  Power may be of a superintending nature, a legislative nature, a coercive nature, or of numerous other sorts.  Power may be authorized or not, legitimate, legal, or not.  Judgement as to the legitimacy or authority of its exercise depends upon a complex of generally accepted norms, customs, moral maxims, and foundational documents; upon a society’s cultural and political history.  In the more narrow and usual use of the term, politics relates to governmental decisions and actions, the relationships between the governed and the governors, including the selection of individuals to be entrusted with the authority of office.  In that context, what is generally accepted as normal, customary, or axiomatic understandably differs from one society to another, one era to another
            In this country elements of that generally accepted complex include the political authority of “the People” to choose their legislative and executive representatives (and, in many cases within State governmental structures, their judicial representatives) to their respective offices;
            ~ the self-agency of individuals to lead their lives as citizens rather than as subjects;
            ­~ the constraints placed upon officers of government with the intent to protect the rights and status of the people;
            ~ the expectation, being one such constraint, that officers of the government give true and honest accounting to the People of their policies, their actions, and their behavior;
            ~ the political equality of all citizens;
            ~ the orderly rule of law in place of the unruly disorder of violence as the proper mechanism to resolve dispute;
            ~ the acceptance of majority will, short of any trespass on the rights of others, while reserving the privilege to ongoing disagreement and debate.