Unknown Artist: Nullification….despotism (1833)
LITHOGRAPHER: Endicott & Swett

"Commerce between master and slave is despotism." Thomas Jefferson

"We were founded to instantiate E Pluribus Unum, never the other way around."

Democracy demands that the governed give consent to those who govern. The alternative, however else it might get dressed up, amounts to despotism. To clarify my terms, despotism denotes any form of governance depending upon absolute power to affect that governance. In other words, under despotism, the people do not have a say about who governs them or how that governance operates. It amounts to a Father Knows Best form of government where The People enjoy the absolute freedom to be treated as ignorant children. Many organizations operate under this form of governance, not least some of the more prominent churches. Traditionally, whatever The Pope declared was considered the word of God. It's difficult to imagine any more absolute power than that exercised by God or his duly designated representative here on Earth. Even The Pope holds an elected position, though. A general election of all Catholics might not have chosen him, but a collection of the second-highest potentates, who supposedly represent the interests of all their constituents, come together to select a Pope from a slate of candidates of their peers, effectively providing consent of the governed to the selection process. In this way, not even the Catholic Church fully qualifies as despotism since the power seems to initiate from the consent of at least the governed’s representatives.

Labor unions are founded upon just this principle: workers should properly have a say in managing the operations within which they labor. I've never understood management's opposition to such power-sharing since sharing Consent might favor the company's operation. Who's wounded by including the governed in strategic decisions? Does an enterprise need a despot to properly leverage market position? Where does one find the omniscient being who's better served by excluding such a vital constituency from active participation in key decision-making? The notion that some people are more omniscient due to an accident of birth or as the result of diligent study amounts to an insidious form of classism and has never once proven to be the case in practice. Throughout history, the most vulnerable leaders have always been those unable or unwilling to freely share their power and authority with their governed. Even kings improved their acceptability after formally considering their subjects' interests and acknowledging their rightful influence. The rights of kings were not entirely worthless before the commoner's rights were established, but the English kings were rarely threatened by uprisings from within after the Magna Carta was written.

Consent of the governed utterly depends upon both free and fair elections. This liberty was most recently compromised in this country by what became known as The Citizen's United decision in 2010. The Supreme Court equated campaign donations with free speech, severely limiting what might be disallowed. This gave rise to what are called Super PACs. These political action committees are essentially unaccountable and, therefore, able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars without disclosing their funding sources. Shadowy figures have since increasingly influenced election outcomes, with clear evidence that foreigners (Russia, Iran, and China) have contributed significant monies for and against candidates in violation of multiple statutes against foreign election intervention. Our incumbent most certainly owes his latest victory, as well as his earlier one, to the presence of significant amounts of questionable foreign money and, clearly, funds from our ideological and physical enemies. Consent of our enemies was not traditionally included in the definition of Consent of the governed.

A question abides as we acknowledge the succession of power amid such fog. If the freedom of an election comes into question, the governed rightfully hold questions about the legitimacy of their leaders. If even benign actors deeply influence outcomes, that effectively nullifies the Consent of those actually governed. Those who pay taxes to a government without first exercising free and fair influence to determine who might govern become essentially slaves to the corrupted outcome. Any enlightened leader would tirelessly work to ensure full re-enfranchisement. Not every leader seems quite that enlightened. This closes in on the point of this story. Democracy demands a minimum level of enlightenment. Self-centered narcissism has its moments, but it does not belong near the center of any governance. People have forever argued that Consent sure seems inefficient, but governance's purpose was never efficiency but effectiveness. One can efficiently run rough-shod over any democracy but must remain more circumspect to achieve effectiveness. The two, efficiency and effectiveness, need not necessarily exist in conflict, but where efficiency gets held in greatest esteem, democracy has always taken it in the shorts. This seems true in business and well as government. Efficiency in the service of democracy amounts to an insidious form of slavery, a despotism of the virtual machine.

Thomas Jefferson noted the relationship between commerce and despotism, and ever since (and even before), both masters and slaves emerged from that haze. Free and fair elections are not purchased, even with currency representing free speech. Free means it doesn't cost anybody anything, not that it's quickly amortized or written off as a business expense. The phony polling and vacuous implying our incumbent and his minions engage in seem specifically intended to divorce their offices from the Consent of those they govern. They engage in this way at more than their own peril, for they risk breaking the sacred bond between this government and the underlying Consent it utterly relies upon. Those denied Consent resent whatever occurs in its absence. They cannot find themselves in it, becoming increasingly impossible to manage. Dissent escalates beyond any point of manageability. It's never a matter of how many troops to deploy. Wherever a democratically-elected president starts considering deploying troops, Consent has already been neglected. That said, there were times when the Consent of the governed amounted to despotism, too. The Nullification Crisis of 1832, when South Carolina declared Federal tariffs illegal, earned that state a visit from Andy Jackson's federal troops. In the early nineteen sixties, Southern States attracted Federal troops when they attempted to block desegregation of public schools.

The governed are no more always wise than are their governors. My point lies in there somewhere. When governance stops being an ongoing conversation between mutually respectful parties, it starts resembling despotism. Whenever one presumes to know better for another without first engaging in a free and fair discussion, the know-it-all coerces more than governs. Whenever anybody does anything for another's good without first asking what they prefer, they violate the only genuinely inalienable right, the one promising self-determination. This right grants no one the presumptive rights enjoyed by any king, but the franchise to continue the conversation never really intended to definitively decide anything. This allows for the relatively equitable means of wending our collective way through today and into a future worth sharing. The cost of dominion lies in the future we forego whenever we neglect to consider orthogonal opinions. We were never intended to be homogenized or efficient. We were founded to instantiate E Pluribus Unum, never the other way around.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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