XIX – Everything I Just Said Was Wrong

There are a lot of concepts wrapped up in the proper exercise of Authority, so it is extremely important to get it right. My definition of legitimacy was flawed, and lacks nuance. What I hoped to capture is a number of things: Obligation to authority, a pretense for exercising authority which is recognized, and conditions on that exercise. That cant be captured in one word. So here are four words:

VALIDITY – A deed which follows the form prescribed by Authority

LICITY – A deed which one has the authority to perform

LEGITIMACY – Authority which has been validly and licitly transferred from a higher Authority

FIDELITY – The duty to validly and licitly exercise Authority

Let me submit for your consideration a proof by reduction.

Legitimacy without validity, i.e. Authority invalidly transferred, is not really legitimate Authority at all. If the rules say the Lady of the Lake must crown a king, then the lady of the forest cant claim to have made any kings. Legitimacy conceived independently of ideas of validity also cannot stand. If Legitimacy can be established–that is, if authority can be transferred–in a way outside of the norm, then there’s nothing stopping Huey Long from making every man a king. Authority only has value because it can only be achieved a specific way. In other words, legitimate authority has a high barrier to entry ONLY THROUGH structured ideas of what is valid or invalid.

Legitimacy that illicit–authority which has been illicitly transferred–is not really authority at all. Huey Long cannot beknight a friend because it is not in his authority to do so; it is illicit. Legitimacy cannot be conceived independent of this idea of licity because it defines what legitimate authority can, in fact, do; and because no one but legitimate authority can do it, it has value. People honor and respect knights because only the King can beknight them.

Legitimacy without fidelity is not really legitimacy at all. Can you be said to be an authority figure if you refuse to exercise power or if, in exercising it, you do so invalidly or illicitly? Authority has obligations to abide by the source of authority, which is the next highest authority. The hand which giveth, can also taketh away. One cannot claim authority and abuse that authority at the same time.

Finally, Authority must have legitimacy, otherwise it isn’t authority at all. I can declare myself the King of England right now, but no one will listen to me. It is illicit for me to declare myself king; my ascension to the “throne” is invalid because i have no relation to the royal family; i certainly cannot be fidelitous to a title i cannot attain, therefore i am illegitimate. If i continue to press my claim, i am a Usurper or Pretender to the throne, and it would be licit for the current monarch to deal with me harshly.

There are many consequences to these definitions which will be explored in due course.

This was on my mind, and I wanted to get it out before Christmas. More to come!

AMDG

XVIII – How to Win at Chess with Nothing but Pawns

Update: A new article has ideas which substantially modify the ideas presented herein.

---

This new concept of Legitimacy has been applied to Civil leaders, but what then of our spiritual hierarchy? Can this be applied to matters of faith, including the confusion surrounding Pope Francis?

There are two primary concerns, which are distinct but related. First, what is the source of Faith and the object of legitimate spiritual stewardship? This will supplant the implicit civil concept of the common good. Second, what are the duties and responsibilities of our Spiritual authorities?

The Fountain of Truth

The idea of Faith having a source was described by way of metaphor when I was talking about this with my friend. Imagine Christ standing at a well. He dips his bucket in, and pours it out to the buckets of his disciples. They carry that water and pour so me out in their evangelical ministries. Those pour it on and on and on, etc, through time and space. All that water comes from Christ. You cannot add to it, subtract from it, change it, without substantially altering what it is. Our responsibility is to transmit that deposit of faith on, unchanged, through evangelism to those around us, and to the next generation. The common spiritual good is to preservation of the deposit of Faith, which comes directly from Christ.

They can only Move Diagonally

Spiritual stewardship and authority comes in the form of Apostolic Succession. Christ laid hands on his Apostles, who laid hands on the first Priests and Bishops, on and on through the centuries. In thinking about this I realized my definition was missing this valid element: The form of authority must be valid. By which I mean: If a King can only be appointed by an aquatic ceremony, then receiving a sword from the Lady of the Forest is not valid, but receiving an Anchor from the Lady of the Lake would be perfectly fine. In this case, one might be otherwise faithful and accept responsibility, but you cannot be a valid bishop unless you go through the steps. Second element missing from the definition is also the idea of responsibility not just to the subordinate persons but to the ‘common good’.

Lets try this revised definition:^[1]

LEGITIMACY – The Acceptance of any authority higher than their own, and acceptance of responsibility for anyone subject to their authority, by a person validly appointed to their authority in accordance with the law, into a structure whose aim is fundamentally the common good.

Therefore: A Bishop must be validly appointed bishop, accept responsibility for preservation and propagation of the deposit of faith, and accept their subordinate status to the next highest in line.

But what if it breaks?

What recourse do we have if the chain of spiritual authority breaks? Lets take an extreme example and say a priest has begun preaching heresy. Our responsibility is to link up back with the proper authority as soon as possible, and to take our family and friends with us if they have not become aware of the heresy. Said another way: The chain of authority breaks, we have been validly placed in command as we are responsible for those subject to our own personal authority. We are obligated to re-forge the link to the primary spiritual authority as soon as practicable; that is to say, we are in error if we recognize the chain has broken and do nothing to repair it.

What if the break is higher? A Bishop, for example? We are subject to the priests, and the priests have a responsibility to protect their flock. We have the responsibility to listen to our priests. They are still valid authority, and they are the one tasked with reforging the link to the primary spiritual authority.

What if the break is at the highest? A Pope? We are subject to the priests, the priests are subject to the Bishop. Our obligation is to them, their responsibility is to us. They must work to maintain authority from God, and reforge the chain through the Petrine See. In any case, at all times, our immediate obligation is to our priests. In modern times, with concern with deeply rooted spiritual problems, the best thing we can do is align ourselves with a valid, legitimate priest, who will protect his flock.

God is the ultimate authority, and a link to Him will never be broken. Using the principle of subsidiarity, we must work at the smallest possible level to resolve problems up stream. We live in a world of instant gratification. We can see bigger issues than we ever could before. But we cannot change anything that is not immediately around us. We can change our home parish. We can speak to our neighbors, our friends, our families. We cannot change a Bishop without a major transplantation; we definitely cannot change a Pope. We must Pray, and we must trust in God, and we must do all that we can in the space in which we can do it.

AMDG

---

^{[1] – After writing this, I realized there were two concepts being crammed into the same definition. I’ve since separated ‘Legitimacy’ and ‘Validity’ as different definitions. An Authority must be valid to be legitimate, but validity applies to more things than just legitimacy, so is worthy of separation.}

XVII – The Lady of the Lake Throws an Anchor at the King

Update: A new article has ideas which substantially modify the ideas presented herein.

---

It occurs to me that there are some consequences to this new conception of legitimacy. Traditionally, Legitimacy has been considered a thing leaders have. However, much like responsibility, or fortitude, or other virtues, instead it’s a trait leaders must maintain. The old idea is the Lady of the Lake giving a sword to King Arthur, and now that he has the sword of legitimacy, he can assert his right as King of England. Now the Lady of the Lake gives him an anchor, and the chain spools all the way back to God, and he’s got to carry it around with him.

Chain Chain Chaaaaiiinnnnn^[1]

This idea helps me to grok a concept Zippy wrote about that I struggled with for a while. Lets start at the beginning: Legitimacy is a chain of Authority that starts at God and goes all the way down to you and me, the humble citizens of a given nation. As described: If that chain of authority is broken, it is the responsibility of the surrounding links to join themselves either to each other, or to look to God for guidance. But it stands to reason that we are all in the line of authority. We might be 200-millionth in line for the Throne, but if everything broke down, we would indeed be obliged to step up to the responsibility of governance. You see this in post-apocalyptic scenarios on TV, movies, etc. In the absence or breakdown of civil society, leaders rise and take responsibility for small communities until the link can be reformed with legitimate authority. In the meantime they are acting under the direct authority of God.

Zippy described this in the context of subsidiarity^[2], the principle that problems ought to be solved at the smallest or most local level possible.

Thus, we come to Zippy’s thesis regarding the 2nd Amendment:

An armed populace may thus be a good and natural thing when viewed from the standpoint of subsidiarity. Nobody is in a better position to defend a family or classroom, in the immediacy of an armed attack by a criminal, than the particular authorities literally closest in space and time to those defended: fathers and teachers, respectively.

But this depends upon viewing the authority of fathers and teachers in a context of subsidiarity: specifically not as rivals to or as the source of higher authority. The police may be slower and more distant than teachers; the courts may be slower and more distant than the police. But they are all integral parts of the same organic hierarchy of authority resting on a custodial relationship with the common good.

A ‘consent of the governed’ view pits the people against government. A ‘Chain of Legitimacy’ or ‘Consent to be governed’ view puts people in the chain of command. To wit: In an active shooter situation, a citizen could be deputized^[3] to respond to a grievous violation of the law and act to subdue the offender^[4]. A citizen can step into the chain of command to bring the Law where it’s proper enforcers may not be present.

Chain of Fools

This again requires a population of Edenites to work perfectly. You don’t want someone who places themselves in personal rivalry with government to step into the chain of command and do damage. There is a responsibility to both act in the preservation of legitimate authority and to prevent scandal. We live in a society where there is no guarantee of that. This is where we reach the problem of liberal society, epitomized by the Presidential Campaign Slogan of the tragic socialist Huey Long: Every Man a King. Liberalism could be summarized essentially as the supremacy of the individual over the sovereign, which leads to this fallacious argument that every man is a King or Kingmaker.

Liberal society is designed to break legitimacy, because it views all government as Tyranny. With no legitimacy, and no one to inform them of a true conception of legitimacy, every man begins to view himself, indeed, as a king. Absent a million swords of Damocles hanging over their heads, they abdicate both their responsibility to subordinate persons and their own subordination to greater authority.

The result being a crowd of usurpers, with the affectations of legitimate authority, but none of the heavy burden that comes with it. All of the credit, none of the blame, so to speak.

Which returns us to the grand question: How does one begin to encourage a population to become formed in virtue?

AMDG

---

^{[1] Chain of Fools – Aretha Franklin}

^{[2] Note to self, add to dictionary.}

^{[3]Quote from Zippy: “Setting aside the multivocity of the term “free State” it is possible to propose an (illiberal, explicitly authoritarian, and thus unusual) interpretation of the second amendment as deputization. Armed citizens are viewed as loyal subsidiary agents of the sovereign, a militia very much loyal to and subject to the sovereign, against proximate threats posed: not threats posed by the sovereign, but by criminals and foreign belligerents in that crucial quick minute and last mile.” Emphasis mine.}

^{[4] Every care must be taken not to take a human life. The ‘Right to bear arms’ (or, the Privilege granted by government to own and keep arms) is not a license to kill. Every Human Life has a certain dignity. A life can not and should not be taken lightly.}

XVI – Legitimate Consent

Update: A new article has ideas which substantially modify the ideas presented herein.

---

I added a definition to my dictionary related to Zippy’s guide to Authority. The word I added was ‘Legitimacy’. I defined it as follows:

LEGITIMACY – Acceptance of any authority higher than your own, and acceptance of responsibility for anyone subject to your authority.

Legitimacy works in both directions. Consider a Governor. A Governor could not govern if he did not recognize responsibility to his citizens under his direct authority. He also could not govern if he did not recognize the President of the United States as a higher authority whose pronouncements he must accept.

God, properly contextualized as the source of all Authority and the King of all creation, is thus the pinnacle of authority. A Legitimate ruler must recognize God as the highest authority and furthermore must recognize the responsibility to all those under his immediate control.

God’s pronouncements, as a result, must be accepted by the highest temporal authority in any given area. Anyone who does not accept the authority of God is not a legitimate leader. Anyone who does not accept the responsibility to the people is not a legitimate leader.

This is why ‘Government by consent of the governed’ is rationally incoherent. It is an inversion of the logically reasonable definition of legitimacy, and thus breaks the chain of authority.

The ‘Government by consent of the governed’ definition is as follows:

LEGITIMACY – Acceptance of authority of anyone subject to you, and acceptance of responsibility for any authority higher than your own.

In other words, ‘you must accept the will of the people; and if someone above you does something we don’t like, we will hold you accountable.’ This is no way of governing, but it is the hallmark of the rationally incoherent tropes of Classical Liberalism. Citizens must consent to be governed rather than provide consent for those governing.

Our First Trip Away

Edenites accept the proper chain of Authority. If an Edenite gets power, he first accepts that he is under the authority of the next person up the chain, and that he is responsible for everyone below. If that chain of command is broken, an Edenite need not despair: The chain is restored at the point of the Edenite and virtuous judgement has a restorative effect. It is analagous to a wartime scenario cut off from the immediate commander. A company of soldiers doesn’t stop and wait; they proceed with the mission. They may have radio contact with the command-and-control base, but not their battalion commander. So an Edenite, faced with illegitimate authority above them, still subjects themselves to the authority of Christ, and thereby can function effectively in a broken machine. This function is conditional on their responsibility for all parties subject to their own authority. If an Edenite cannot be sure their authority is producing the desired outcomes down the chain, outcomes which they are personally responsible for, they have a responsibility to act to correct it or to prevent scandal by removing themselves from association with the illegitimate authority. By analogy, imagine a Pharisee who believed Christ was Lord but refused to leave the company of Caiaphas et al.

Anakites, in contrast, believe they are the only proper source of legitimacy. Government by consent of the governed, and the right to self determination. They are their own arbiters of Truth. Therefore an Anakites is not bound to accept any authority higher than them, if they deem it to be illegitimate; and further are not obliged to accept responsibility for those subject to their authority if there are intervening steps between. If the chain of command is broken by real or perceived illegitimacy above them, they may act unilaterally to restore whatever order they feel appropriate; as they are not bound by any authority higher than themselves. Consider again the wartime scenario, where a company of soldiers are cut off from immediate command. Anakites discard previous orders and create new ones for themselves. They treat the absence of rule as freedom to create rules; rather than an opportunity to seek higher rules.

Edenites, in pursuing virtue and subordinating themselves to Christ, bring order to any system of which they are part. Anakites may bring the appearance of order, but it is prone to break down when stressed or challenged. The absence of subordination to Christ sows disorder into any structure of authority.

AMDG