Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

(Someone asked me over fb chat to address this issue due to high activity. Here it is.)

RE: Separation of Church And State.

1) It Is a rare in history – and very questionable. Why? Because religions propagate the norms. Norms are ‘costs’ you and I pay by forgoing opportunities to do something we would do if there were not such norms. Norms form dependent networks. These norms are economic principles. Competing norms are effectively theft from one group to another. In effect religions and norms create competing sets of ‘laws’ and competing ‘economies’. Christianity is very ‘special’. The west is ‘special’. it is special because it’s early battle tactics required warriors to provide their own equipment and retinues, and to follow cooperative and individualist battle tactics. As populations grew, they needed to increase the number of soldiers – enfranchisement of more and more people. In trying to keep the ‘east at bay’ the ‘poor minority’ in the west created the ‘fraternal balance of power’ model. From that balance of power, came debate among equals. From debate among equals came logic and rhetoric. From rhetoric philosophy and from philosophy science and the politics of the balance of powers – in effect individualism. From individualism came property rights. From property rights came economic prosperity. That’s why the west is special and is propagating capitalism all around the world. Capitalism means “mass participation in mass production for mass consumption”.

2) The purpose of Christian Monarchies was to allow the church to unite the germanic tribes so that the (evil) East could be kept ‘at bay’. Christendom is a means of preserving european independence from eastern conquest. The average westerner does not understand this reason and attacks christianity on logical rather than utilitarian grounds. The post medieval monarchies were ‘private governments’ that had public institutions – and they relied upon the balance of powers and the gold standard for self regulation. THis appears to have been the best form of government invented by human beings to date. (I can argue this on very technical grounds if I need to.) It may not be clear that the western church was always poorer than the eastern church and that the west really fell because of the mohammedans (islam), when they conquered byzantium, disrupting mediterranian trade, and creating a shortage of coinage. The plagues prior to this period were no help either. THE WEST is an attempt for individuals to keep the decadent (mystical) east at bay.

3) The enlightenment purpose for separating church and state was enacted for two reasons. a) because the colonies did not want to ‘weaken’ religiosity with a diluted and dispassionate state religion. Their purpose wasn’t to keep the church out of the state. It was to prevent the state from weakening the moral and religious structure of society. b) when the industrial revolution started in the 1700’s, and people moved to factory-cities, the churches combated alienation, and provided social services that were needed due to dislocation and disenfranchisement. The thinking at the time was that the state needed all these little sects to make people feel at home – a community center – and that the state was incapable of providing the service. So supporting multiple CHRISTIAN SECTS was desirable. There is absolutely no evidence that the framers were anything other than devout – in the sense of the time – which prior to Darwin, mean that mythology was a thing, and science was a thing, and they’re just ‘different things’. Fundamentalism (including state fundamentalism – the religion of state worship) is a reaction to darwinian attacks on mythology.

It is very likely that everything you currently think about your existing government and the governments that came before it, consists of intentionally created and distributed political propaganda that was used to discredit the monarchy and the church so that the middle and lower classes could take over the government and use it to profit from the newly discovered north american continent. It was a profit seeking land grab. Constitutional, Multi-house, Monarchies were the best form of government ever invented by man. Because they reflect the social structure of society, and they force the social classes to cooperate rather than compete for spoils of self destruction.

Democracy is the god that failed. It is an even worse god than the monarchic one.

I hope this helps with the discussion.