Weekend read: “Legitimizing Unrighteous Dominion.”
Unrighteous dominion is a Mormon term. The author of the linked essay is LDS and so is the friend who sent it (thanks, JG!). The origins of the phrase are interesting. Having been a victim of mobocracy — state sanctioned crowd violence — Joseph Smith wrote:
We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men [italics mine], as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:39).
No matter what you think of Smith (and I don’t think much of him), he was dead on there — and eventually died from that very thing.
Now “ldsphilosopher” explores the deeper, broader meaning of unrighteous dominion, and the ways we persuade ourselves and others that the unrighteous is, in fact, just hunky dory. He (I’m supposing he) covers some familiar territory: the Milgram experiments, Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment, social pressures, etc. And some less familiar (and disgusting) territory.
Then he turns and aims straight at the heart of a great sacred cow:
The researchers gave participants an imaginary scenario in which they were being ordered to perform objectionable duties by their government (e.g., to arrest and jail protestors who were simply exercising their right to free speech). In one condition, the participants were led to believe that their commanding officer was Nicolae Ceausescu, a brutal dictator in Romania. In a second condition, the participants were led to believe that their commanding officer was John F. Kennedy, a freely elected and ostensibly democratic leader.
What were the results? Well, people were more willing to obey Kennedy’s abusive order than they were Ceausescu’s abusive order. According to the researchers, “the results underlined that the participants obeyed more when the request was made by an authority with a perceived legitimacy, such as President Kennedy (the democratic condition).” According to the data, the single biggest predictor of whether or not the participants would obey or disobey the order is how democratic they perceived the government they were operating under was.
Long, but very well worth a read. Good comments, too.
I didn’t get to read the whole thing, so maybe he already went there but it brings a question to my mind as well…
For us don’t tread on me types working together, where is the line between co-operation and collectivism or creeping statism? And where would we even want it drawn?
Well, now that is interesting. And another piece of the puzzle I think on every now and then. Not sure that it’s helpful though, because try as I might, I still don’t get how it is that people can be so desirous of being lead.
War is the most pernicious example of exerting “legitimate authority” (an oxymoron?) that I know. So what happens when war is opposed? That takes us back to the anti-war demonstrations of the 60s and 70s. I don’t expect to see that large or noisy a rebellion again in this country. I’m sure the fedgov intends to head off such a possibility ever again, for any purpose it may have. The cancerous growth of Homeland Security worming its way into every pore of the country, as well as increased police brutality on local levels around the country, is serving notice to the American people that no more rebellion will be tolerated.
The author also speaks of “righteous” dominion: can *any* dominion (power/control) be RIGHTEOUS, for any reason? I’m inclined to think not. One might argue that, e.g., the civil rights laws were “righteous” in their intent, but often the manner they were instigated was questionable, and some laws themselves were unacceptable and demeaning to large numbers of people.
Funny, but not surprising — especially given what the founders thought about “mob-ocracy”. Even “demonocracy” hits pretty close to home.
The Bible gets that one right, too, by the way. I once did the exercise of seeing if there’s ANYTHING in the text there that seems to support something that looks like a ‘vote’, or majority rule. There seem to be three main candidates:
1) The “twelve spies” return from checking out the land. Two fellows named Joshua and Caleb lost that first vote, 10-2. As for the electorate, “their carcasses fell in the wilderness.”
2) I Samuel 8 tells the story of the folks who demanded “give us a king like ALL the other nations.” In spite of the fact that Samuel warned ’em about what that king would do – they wanted one anyway, and got Saul.
3) Arguably the last, and most famous, example of mob-ocracy in the Bible was a voice vote. A fellow named “Barabbas” won that one by acclamation.