Executive conscience or statecraft? The limits of individual morality in sovereign power

“ You said that the leaks are real, but the news is fake. I guess I don't understand. It seems that there's a disconnect there. If the information coming from those leaks is real, then how can the stories be fake?
TRUMP: The reporting is fake. Look, look... (CROSSTALK)
TRUMP:
You know what it is? Here's the thing. The public isn't -- you know, they read newspapers, they see television, they watch. They don't know if it's true or false because they're not involved. I'm involved. I've been involved with this stuff all my life. ”

“ It says that the President has a right to employ agents of his own choice, to aid HIM in the performance of HIS duties.
Mr. President, if these doctrines be true, it is idle for us any longer to talk about any such thing as a government of laws. We have no government of laws, not even the semblance or shadow of it; we have no legal responsibility. We have an executive, consisting of one person, wielding all official power, and which is, to every effectual purpose, completely irresponsible. The President declares that he is "responsible for the entire action of the executive department." ”

“ IF the State is a moral person whose life is in the union of its members, and if the most important of its cares is the care for its own preservation, it must have a universal and compelling force, in order to move and dispose each part as may be most advantageous to the whole. As nature gives each man absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic absolute power over all its members also; and it is this power which, under the direction of the general will, bears, as I have said, the name of Sovereignty. ”

“ But State is essentially a concept of power, of competition: it signifies a group in its aggressive aspects. And we have the misfortune of being born not only into a country but into a State, and as we grow up we learn to mingle the two feelings into a hopeless confusion. ”

“ And the reason you're my first stop is that, as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth. (Laughter and applause.) And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you're the number-one stop is exactly the opposite -- exactly. And they understand that, too. ”

“ Every State contains in itself three Powers, the universal united Will of the People being thus personified in a political triad. These are the Legislative Power, the Executive Power, and the Judiciary Power.—1. The Legislative Power of the Sovereignty in the State, is embodied in the person of the Lawgiver; 2. the Executive Power is embodied in the person of the Ruler who administers the Law ”

“ It is therefore proper to consider, whether the executive power of the United States is so moulded, as to be calculated for av/akeaing man's evil moral qualities, and for propelling us towards the political elements of force and fraud; because the principles of our policy ought not to be contaminated and destroyed by its details.
Experience having ascertained, that executive power in most state forms, does not awaken individual ambition and avarice for the annoyance of society ”

“ The State is reduced to a shadowy emblem which comes to consciousness only on occasions of patriotic holiday.
Government is obviously composed of common and unsanctified men, and is thus a legitimate object of criticism and even contempt. If your own party is in power, things may be assumed to be moving safely enough; but if the opposition is in, then clearly all safety and honor have fled the State. ”

“ What had to be at first rawly imposed becomes through social habit to seem the necessary, the inevitable. The mdoern unquestioning acceptance of the State comes out of long and turbulent centuries when the State was challenged and had to fight its way to prevail. The King’s establishment of personal power—which was the early State—had to contend with the impudence of hostile barons, who saw too clearly the adventitious origin of the monarchy and felt no reason why they should not themselves reign. ”

“ If the State wished to conform to this standard it would often find itself at variance with its own particular duties. The morality of the State must be developed out of its own peculiar essence, just as individual morality is rooted in the personality of the man and his duties towards society. The morality of the State must be judged by the nature and raison d'être of the State, and not of the individual citizen. But the end-all and be-all of a State is power, and "he who is not man enough to look this truth in the face should not meddle in politics." ”

“ The morals of a State are nothing but the morals of its individual members. To say that morality must be observed by those members in their dealings with each other, but not in their collective dealings with the members of other States, is to weaken private and not public morality. Public morality is not distinguishable from private. The man who abstains from stealing his neighbour's goods cannot, without personal deterioration, join his neighbours in appropriating the territory of another {317}nation. ”

“ The state is an aggregation of individuals. Its public character is the expression of their personal ones. By no political prestidigitation can it be made better and wiser than the sum of their goodness and wisdom. To expect that men who do not honorably and intelligently conduct their private affairs will honorably and intelligently conduct the affairs of the community is to be a fool. We are told that out of nothing God made the heavens and the earth; but out of nothing God never did, and man never can, make a public sense of honor and a public conscience. ”

“ Yet in all this realm of power there is nowhere that sense of personal moral liability which is acknowledged between men and without which civilized human relationships would become utterly impossible. A corporation is like a State in this respect: it cannot, if it would, make moral decisions. The right to do that is not delegated by people to a State nor by stockholders to a corporation. ”

“ And we must keep these principles in mind—the principle of conduct based upon a personal example rejecting force, and the principle of conduct based upon a social edifice relying upon force for its well-being and advancement; otherwise we confuse the issue, and weaken our appreciation of the moral position which each side assumes. It is surely quite evident that the State, while based upon force, cannot (except as an indulgence) countenance the claim of any individual to make the morality of its action the test for personal allegiance and service. ”

“ Conscience, then, is a witness respecting the identity of the will and the reason, effected by the self-subordination of the will or self to the reason, as equal to or representing the will of God. But the personal will is a factor in other moral synthesis, for example, appetite plus personal will = sensuality; lust of power, plus personal will = ambition, and so on, equally as in the synthesis on which the conscience is grounded. ”

“ The test of our morality is whether we are living not to follow but to create ideals, whether we are pouring our life into our visions only to receive it back with its miraculous enhancement for new uses.
Secondly, I have said that the conception of right as a group product, as coming from the ceaseless interplay of men, shows us that there is no such thing as an individual conscience in the sense in which the term is often used. As we are to obey no ideals dictated by others or the past, it is equally important that we obey no ideal set up by our unrelated self. ”

“ Along with these three kinds of law goes a fourth, most important of all, which is not graven on tablets of marble or brass, but on the hearts of the citizens. This forms the real constitution of the State, takes on every day new powers, when other laws decay or die out, restores them or takes their place, keeps a people in the ways in which it was meant to go, and insensibly replaces authority by the force of habit. I am speaking of morality, of custom, above all of public opinion; a power unknown to political thinkers, on which none the less success in everything else depends. ”

“ If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. ”

“ Its power must be greater than the gain resulting from the crime as the infraction poisons the enjoyment. Now, a state of mind where duty is sovereign is morale proper, and therefore a source of moral pleasure. What, then, sublimer than the heroic despair that tramples even life underfoot, because it cannot bear the judgment within? A good man sacrificing his life to conform to the moral law, or a criminal taking his own life because of the morality he has violated: in both cases our respect for the moral law is raised to the highest power. ”

“ No man, who has ever deeply read the human history, and especially the history of republics, but has been struck with the consciousness, how little has been hitherto done to establish a safe depositary of power in any hands; and how often in the hands of one, or a few, or many, of an hereditary monarch, or an elective chief, the executive power has brought ruin upon the state, or sunk under the oppressive burthen of its own imbecility. ”

“ The truth is, as has been already hinted, that the real danger is, that the executive will use the power too rarely. He will do it only on extraordinary occasions, when a just regard to the public safety, or public interests, or a constitutional obligation, or a necessity of maintaining the appropriate rights and prerogatives of his office compels him to the step; [32] and then it will be a solemn appeal to the people themselves from their own representatives. ”

“ We have given power to an executive council which will enable it to do something. We have constituted a government which will be inactive, not because its hands are tied, but because it chooses not to do anything. The leader of the successful party cannot say that he has failed to keep the party pledges because he had no power to act. No one, however, need fear that the concentration of power in the hands of a few will prove in any way dangerous to the liberties of the people. The council of state can exercise power only so long as it retains the confidence of a majority in the legislature. ”

“ Real authority inheres in a genuine whole. The individual is sovereign over himself as far as he unifies the heterogeneous elements of his nature. Two people are sovereign over themselves as far as they are capable of creating one out of two. A group is sovereign over itself as far as it is capable of creating one out of several or many. A state is sovereign only as it has the power of creating one in which all are. Sovereignty is the power engendered by a complete interdependence becoming conscious of itself. Sovereignty is the imperative of a true collective will. ”

“ Self-knowledge can be obtained only by looking into the mind and virtue of the soul, which is the diviner part of a man, as we see our own image in another's eye. And if we do not know ourselves, we cannot know what belongs to ourselves or belongs to others, and are unfit to take a part in political affairs. Both for the sake of the individual and of the state, we ought to aim at justice and temperance, not at wealth or power. The evil and unjust should have no power,—they should be the slaves of better men than themselves. None but the virtuous are deserving of freedom. ”

“ It is not in men's power to prolong their own lives; but it is for them to prolong as much as possible the life of the State, by giving it the best possible constitution. The best constituted State will have an end; but it will end later than any other, unless some unforeseen accident brings about its untimely destruction.
The life-principle of the body politic lies in the sovereign authority. The legislative power is the heart of the State; the executive power is its brain, which causes the movement of all the parts. The brain may become paralysed and the individual still live. ”