The conflict between sovereign will and intelligence: Loyalty to the person versus fidelity to truth

“ It is high time to realise that to place the truth before a Sovereign is an act of fidelity, and to hide it is a felony. Recent events have successively shown us the faults of those who are opposed to the wise measures which had been recognised by our Sovereign as necessary to save the Nation and the Government, and, putting aside all personal enmity, I am tempted to believe that they will profit by the goodwill of our august Sovereign and devote all their efforts to the good of the country. ”

“ We learn, also, that to be loyal to the truth is of more account than to be merely successful in formulating it: in a word, that the interests of the human spirit, or, perhaps more correctly, of the intellectual and moral consciousness, are supreme, and that the great flow of significance, so to speak, is from within the human consciousness to the outward conditions, and not from without inward. ”

“ If, in the subject of a monarchy, loyalty to the sovereign be a just and a generous sentiment,—and most assuredly it is so,—still more noble in character is the nature of that loyalty which has for object a sacred bond, uniting in one family the beating hearts, the active spirits, the intelligent minds of millions of men ”

“ With advancing political opinion has come still greater restriction of imperial power. Belief in the supernatural character of the ruler, long ago repudiated by ourselves for example, has left behind it nothing more than the popular tendency to ascribe unusual goodness, wisdom, and beauty to the monarch. Loyalty, which originally meant implicit submission to the king’s will, now means a merely nominal profession of subordination, and the fulfilment of certain forms of respect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But I want to just tell you, the false reporting by the media, by you people, the false, horrible, fake reporting makes it much harder to make a deal with Russia. And probably Putin said "you know." He's sitting behind his desk and he's saying "you know, I see what's going on in the United States, I follow it closely. It's going to be impossible for President Trump to ever get along with Russia because of all the pressure he's got with this fake story." OK? And that's a shame because if we could get along with Russia - and by the way, China and Japan and everyone. ”

“ The United States of America has been among the greatest forces for good in the history of the world, and the greatest defenders of sovereignty, security, and prosperity for all.
Now we are calling for a great reawakening of nations, for the revival of their spirits, their pride, their people, and their patriotism.
History is asking us whether we are up to the task. Our answer will be a renewal of will, a rediscovery of resolve, and a rebirth of devotion. We need to defeat the enemies of humanity and unlock the potential of life itself. ”

“ Yet in all this the primacy of the will becomes clear again, if this will, which, as we have shown, becomes the sport of the intellect as soon as it allows the latter to control it, once makes its supremacy in the last instance felt by prohibiting the intellect from entertaining certain ideas, absolutely preventing certain trains of thought from arising, because it knows, i.e., learns from that very intellect, that they would awaken in it some one of the emotions set forth above. It now bridles the intellect, and compels it to turn to other things. ”

“ Donald Trump's own campaign officials told him early on that his claims of fraud were false. Donald Trump's senior Justice Department officials—each appointed by Donald Trump himself—investigated the allegations and told him repeatedly that his fraud claims were false. Donald Trump's White House lawyers also told him his fraud claims were false. From the beginning, Donald Trump's fraud allegations were concocted nonsense, designed to prey upon the patriotism of millions of men and women who love our country. ”

“ The past ages have seen many subjects, distinguished for their names, their offices, and the gifts of their sovereign, betray their prince and country, and keep up the most criminal intelligence with the enemy: would you find just the master whom you serve with so much zeal and courage, were he merely upon such grounds to suspect the truth of your fidelity? Why then is a suspicion, which excites the indignation of all other descriptions of men, only supportable when directed against the pious? Why is a conclusion, so ridiculous in every other case, only judicious when against virtue? ”

“ I faltered.
"The Duke is very loyal to his friends, Mr. Ducaine," he said, "but he is also a man with a nice sense of justice. You and he regard two incidents from entirely different points of view, but he does not for a moment suggest that your account of them is not an honest one. He looks upon you as a little nervous and overstrung by your responsibilities and disposed to be imaginative. He will not hear anything against the Prince of Malors."
"My story is as true as God's Word," I declared.
"I am inclined to believe in it myself, Mr. Ducaine," said Lord Chelsford. ”

“ You are a young man, little more than a boy. I for forty years have been a servant of my country, both in the field and as a lawmaker. I am a Cabinet Minister. I have a life-long experience of men and their ways. My judgment in this matter is that you were mistaken, and much mischief is likely to ensue if the Prince of Malors should find himself an object of suspicion amongst us."
"Your Grace," I said, "forgive me, but why do you not say these things to the Board, or to Lord Chelsford and Colonel Ray after they have heard my story?" ”

“ It is easy to see, that a constitution which depended so much on the personal character of the prince, must necessarily, in many of its parts, be a government of will, not of laws. But always to throw, without distinction, the blame of all disorders upon the sovereign would introduce a fatal error in politics, and serve as a perpetual apology for treason and rebellion: as if the turbulence of the great, and madness of the people, were not, equally with the tyranny of princes, evils incident to human society, and no less carefully to be guarded against in every well-regulated constitution. ”

“ The Emperor himself is never addressed by the people by any other name. An old serf will call his master “little papa,” even though he should be a child of ten years old.
In Russia there is no national or domestic association which has not its centre, its unity, its chief, its father, its master. A chief is absolutely indispensable to the existence of Russians. They choose another father when they lose their own. The starost is elected to be unconditionally obeyed. This must be well understood in order to comprehend the true position of the Czar. ”

“ The father is the absolute sovereign of the family, which cannot exist without him. If the father dies, the eldest son takes his place and exercises the full paternal authority. The property of the family is common to all the males belonging to it, but the father or his representative can alone dispose of it. Next comes the village or township, which is like an enlarged family, governed by an elected father or starost. This starost is elected for three years. His power is absolute, and he is obeyed without restriction. ”

“ In a despotic government, where the will of the sovereign is the only law, and men have no right to speak or act unless their speech and their acts are in accordance with the will and good wishes of the powers that be, "the more ignorance the more peace."-Knowledge expands the mind, extends the views, and in a free government, increases the usefulness of its possessor ”

“ Very, very few people could do the job you people do. And I want to just let you know, I am so behind you. And I know maybe sometimes you haven’t gotten the backing that you've wanted, and you're going to get so much backing. Maybe you're going to say, please don’t give us so much backing. (Laughter.) Mr. President, please, we don’t need that much backing. (Laughter.) But you're going to have that. And I think everybody in this room knows it.
You know, the military and the law enforcement, generally speaking, but all of it -- but the military gave us tremendous percentages of votes. ”

“ You do the job like everybody in this room is capable of doing. And the generals are wonderful, and the fighting is wonderful. But if you give them the right direction, boy, does the fighting become easier. And, boy, do we lose so fewer lives, and win so quickly. ”

“ I believe that this group is going to be one of the most important groups in this country toward making us safe, toward making us winners again, toward ending all of the problems. We have so many problems that are interrelated that we don’t even think of, but interrelated to the kind of havoc and fear that this sick group of people has caused. ”

“ Criticism of the State, objections to war, lukewarm opinions concerning the necessity or the beauty of conscription, are made subject to ferocious penalties, far exceeding in severity those affixed to actual pragmatic crimes. Public opinion, as expressed in the newspapers, and the pulpits and the schools, becomes one solid block. “Loyalty,” or rather war orthodoxy, becomes the sole test for all professions, techniques, occupations. ”

“ All assumptions involve moral guilt, which are in opposition to the real and positive affirmations of the Intelligence. As the Will may assume in the absence of such affirmations, and in the direction of them, so it may in opposition to them. When you have carried a man’s Intellect in favor of a given proposition, it is by no means certain that you have gained his assent to its truth. ”

“ Against this history, in recent years, a series of polemics grounded in poor scholarship has vilified our Founders and our founding. Despite the virtues and accomplishments of this Nation, many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains. This radicalized view of American history lacks perspective, obscures virtues, twists motives, ignores or distorts facts, and magnifies flaws, resulting in the truth being concealed and history disfigured. ”

“ The results of war on the intellectual class are already apparent. Their thought becomes little more than a description and justification of what is going on. They turn upon any rash one who continues idly to speculate. Once the war is on, the conviction spreads that individual thought is helpless, that the only way one can count is as a [42] cog in the great wheel. There is no good holding back. We are told to dry our unnoticed and ineffective tears and plunge into the great work. Not only is every one forced into line, but the new certitude becomes idealized. ”

“ In a republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign, the people, should foster intelligence—that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other. ”

“ No matter how loyal the different members of a national body may be one to another, their mutual good faith will bleed to death, unless some among them have the intelligence to trace their national ills to their appropriate causes, and the candid courage to advocate the necessary remedial measures. At some point in the process, disinterested patriotism and good faith must be reënforced by intellectual insight. A people are saved many costly perversions, in case the official school-masters are wise, and the pupils neither truant nor insubordinate ”

“ I hold then that Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated, and that the Sovereign, who is no less than a collective being, cannot be represented except by himself: the power indeed may be transmitted, but not the will.
In reality, if it is not impossible for a particular will to agree on some point with the general will, it is at least impossible for the agreement to be lasting and constant; for the particular will tends, by its very nature, to partiality, while the general will tends to equality. ”

“ Thus for the sovereignty, in an impalpable and unnatural sense, of the general will, we get a sovereignty, in the natural and demonstrable sense, of the multitude. But as the multitude is not everywhere supreme, the assertion of its sovereignty has to be put in the form that it is sovereign 'de jure.' The truth which underlies this proposition is that an interest in common good is the ground of political society, in the sense that without it no body of people would recognise any authority as having a claim on their common obedience. ”

“ Only obscurity, and not always that, could ensure a man’s safety, or prevent him from falling a prey to the jealousy or hate of those amongst his enemies who had for the moment the ear3 of the sovereign. Pre-eminence in rank, or power, or intellect, was enough to give the possessor of the distinction an uneasy sense that he was marked out for destruction, that envy and malice were lying in wait to seize an opportunity to denounce him to the weak despot upon whose vanity and cowardice the adroit could play at will. ”

“ When any man is well known to be mad or idiotic, it is customary to deprive him of his full liberty. On what grounds? has his will perished? if it is the principle of legitimate power, is it not always there to exercise it? The will is still there; but the true sovereign of the man, the lord of the will itself, reasoning intelligence, has departed from the individual. It must therefore be supplied to him from another source,—a reason external to himself must govern him, since his own has become incapable of controlling his will. ”

“ In that commingling and collision of individuals which we call society, the philosophers of whom we speak have pertinaciously adhered to that which does in fact first present itself, namely, the commingling and collision of individual wills. A true instinct, unrecognized perhaps by them, has suddenly reminded them that the will is not, in itself, and by its essential constitution, the legitimate sovereign of man. ”

“ What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine! ”

“ A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. ”