I have never received more e-mail and phone requests from readers of The Gem State Patriot, than I have received regarding articles I have written in the past about civil and government corruption. In the coming weeks, I will write about specific events that have occurred in Boise, and Garden City. In this article, I will write about the writings of our Founding and Church Fathers regarding ”corruption” and the propensity of politics in general and government bodies specifically to become corrupt. Let me just begin by saying that The Church Fathers—Aquinas specifically, and the Enlightenment Philosophers including our Founding Fathers knew that because the nature of man had been corrupted, government itself had the propensity to be corrupt. Hence the separation of powers and the division of authority in our US and all our State Constitutions.
If a policeman cites you for speeding, you have broken a law, if you try to bribe him “off the ticket” you are committing a corruption. If you don’t pay your taxes, you are committing a crime. If you bribe the IRS agent to not report you, you are committing a corruption.
Corruption doesn’t have to be illegal. In all its forms it is defined as a voluntary act within a transaction between a principal, and the object in which an agent asserts itself to the detriment of one of the primary parties—sometimes both parties one of which the agent was obligated to serve. By violating its’ obligation, the violating agent exercises the power it received from the principal in a way that is distinct from the principal. In doing so the corrupting agent marginalizes the object or the principal’s (wealth, reputation, integrity, standing as a citizen—fill in the blank). Again, this doesn’t have to be illegal to have the undesired effect on the integrity on the process involved in the transaction, be it legal, political, or economic. It is the actual faith in the process that confers to any organization the ability to assert its’ authorities and responsibilities to the people that they govern or oversee. Corrupting the processes involving government organizations puts that faith to a test.
Thomas Aquinas, four hundred years before the Founding of our country, wrote about NATURAL LAW. His ideas helped to link the philosophies of ancient Greece and Rome, with Christian ideas about individual self-worth, free will and liberty. His ideas formed a “hinge” in the road from ancient philosophy to the Enlightenment Fathers—John Lock, Edmond Burke, Thomas Jefferson, Rousseau, and Hobbs.
Aquinas in his treatise De Regino discussed how easy it was for civil government to be corrupted in all its forms and at all levels.
He specifically believed that corruption in government was precisely what breeds “factionalism”. His feeling in this regard very much parallel what Madison wrote in Federalist #10—THE VIOLENCE OF FACTION. Laws that are not grounded in The Natural Law quickly become corrupted. “When rulers lack virtue (and manipulate the law to fit the circumstance instead of the converse when they fit the circumstance to the law—the application should fit the existing code, the code shouldn’t have to fit the application), they are committing a corruption.
If you as an appointed or elected city official make a representation of being consistent and fair to opposing parties in a real estate application, and you give one party unfettered access to tax payer funded government services, but you limit access to those who voted for you and paid for those services, you aren’t breaking the law, but you are committing a corruption because—”by violating the obligation, the corrupting agent exercises the power it received from the principal, wholly distinct from the principal or the object”.
Next week specific examples of corrupt governance and governments in Idaho.
