A Short Sunday Sermon - Power

In his second Sunday sermon, LL describes two different approaches or "tendencies" of power:

Every revolutionary movement in history makes the same basic mistake. They see power as a static apparatus, as a structure. That’s how President Xi in China is reintroducing Mao to the masses. Power is dynamic, and has two basic tendencies. It accumulates or it diffuses. Most revolutionary movements are only interested in reconstituting the power in a new location. That doesn’t solve any society’s problems and almost always makes them worse.

The US Constitution and Bill of Rights set up a system that allowed for diffusion of power into the system, not regrouping it. And that doesn’t work for a would be tyrant or system of Tyranny. Benjamin Franklin doubted that we could make it work long term. Maybe we can’t. Redistribution of money to buy votes has a stench all its own.

Accumulate or diffuse. To put it another way, centralized or federal. As noted above, the Founders aimed at the latter with some degree of success, and it's exactly that model which is under threat today and for which the South fought, unsuccessfully.

Gentlemen, you have a Republic if you can keep it.

Here endeth the Lesson,

LSP