Political Confusion
Contemporary politicians give politics a bad name. They misuse politics for personal pursuit of power and wealth, rather than for the pursuit of higher purposes that benefit all people.
This distortion causes people to avoid politics, an activity that is vital to their well-being. People find corruption, deception, and tyranny so repulsive that they forfeit participating in decisions that shape their destiny.
In order to remedy this situation, we need a better definition and understanding of politics.
Valid Definition
In essence, politics is the discipline of negotiating agreements that codify how we treat one another.
Politics is the art and discipline of setting agreements with our neighbors (in Biblical terms, with our brothers and sisters) laying out how we can best achieve the greatest mutual benefit.
Policies (the agreements) provide patterns for conducting our communal and social lives.
Focus on Power
Contemporary politics overtly or covertly discards the idea of an ongoing negotiation between neighbors (brothers and sisters).
Instead, contemporary politics focuses on gaining and exerting power over the lives of others.
In an ideal world, politicians would be the most skilled mediators, the most successful reconcilers. Politics, however, has abandoned the art of negotiated agreements for the exercise of brute power.
For the People
The original creed of the United States—a nation of the people, by the people, for the people—conveyed the guiding principle of mediated policy emerging from the governed.
Our nation’s Founders believed that individuals most affected by a particular policy should create that policy. But this basic principle has been discarded in recent times.
Today we find decision makers “from afar” dictating policy for huge swaths of citizens. This top-down style of governance will result in the loss of our Republic. Ever distant and increasingly powerful individuals will exercise total power over all facets of our lives.
Politics conceived and defined as the “exercise of power” perverts the role of elected leaders. When politics becomes an exercise in gaining the power to dictate policy rather than negotiate consensual policy, we soon fall under the control of despots. We lose all ability to determine how we will live with one another. This nightmare scenario looms before us.
Subsidiarity
Catholic social doctrine supplies a concept that can help us evaluate our system of politics.
This doctrinal concept, subsidiarity, which is usually ignored or dismissed, calls for policy making to take place at the smallest possible social unit.
In other words, neighbors set policy for the neighborhood, city residents set city government policy, and citizens of a particular state set the laws for that state.
The federal government, as a result, should be limited and restrained. The majority of policies should be set at levels closer to the governed.
Subsidiarity advances the idea that people most directly affected by a policy are the most qualified to arrive at a negotiated agreement. Townspeople who work and live together craft better social rules and norms than politicians issuing decrees from a distant government seat.
The Founders, it appears, grasped the concept of subsidiarity and imagined a government “of the People” and “by the People.” They wisely limited central government in favor of local and state rule.
However, a failure to maintain limits on the federal government has spun out of control. Increasingly we witness globalists seeking to exercise complete power over all humankind. Eventually, this Orwellian trend will render people powerless, unable to control their lives in even the smallest measure.
A revival of limited government and a return to personal power, delivered by subsidiarity, are overdue. We face a choice: individual freedom or collective slavery.
Politicians as Mediators
The best politicians, those most qualified to facilitate policy making, may well be mediators, experts able to facilitate negotiation to bring about consensus and peace.
Mediator politicians will not seek to exert power but rather will nurture collaborative decision-making. They will seek training in divine collaboration; they will bring deep spiritual principles to the public square conversation.
If we hope to retain any vestige of freedom, we will need to amend our view of what makes great leaders. The era of predatory politicians must come to a close. We must replace power hungry leaders with political leaders infused with wisdom and the ability to deploy the skills needed to bring enduring peace and bountiful prosperity.