Jefferson said “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
People in governments tend to work to build their own interests rather than in the public interest when they do not fear the retribution of the masses. Sure we elect people from different parties but they largely follow the same agenda and more to the point the career bureaucrats are almost impossible to do anything about as it is nearly impossible to fire them.
Should people work to make the government fear them and what form should that take?
That is what elections are for, to make politicians fearful of pissing off 51% of the country.
There are some drawbacks to this, because people aren’t rational. We want more spending on services combined with lower taxes. Welfare for me is fair and a great investment. Welfare for my neighbor is cheating and lazy. When my congressman gets increased spending in my district that is ok, when another one does it that is pork. Things like this cause a lot of problems.
On an unrelated note, supposedly cracking down on ‘pork’ has made congress more unruly because it can’t be used by politicians to bribe each other.
Take a minute to read about the Battle of Arginusae. Or the French Revolution, for that matter. If the mob has the power to murder or expel their leaders every time they make an unpopular decision, your society will very rapidly run out of competent leadership. If the leader is so afraid of being fired (or worse) that he just rolls over and promises people whatever stupid thing they want, that is the definition of a demagogue.
Second point: Who exactly is the government supposed to be afraid of? “The people?” What “people?” Which “people?” We can’t get 51% of Americans to agree on whether ice cream should be cold. If you let the loudest, angriest, stupidest people veto everything they dislike, you don’t be able to govern at all… And you’re seen how well that has been working out for us the last eight years.
Okay… I think the government should do X, you think they should do Y. They cannot do both.
Which one of us have they failed to serve? Which one of us should they be afraid of? Either way, one of us is going to be mad because we didn’t get what we wanted. Does that make the government illegitimate? Or should the government just accept that they can’t make everyone happy?
They should accept that they can’t make everyone happy, but keep trying. Obviously some people will fear that they aren’t being served some of the time, but government knows when it has failed to serve most people.
Now, think a little deeper. This isn’t just about simple political jabbering. Shouldn’t government fear that their failures could lead to the collapse of a nation? Government can’t be cavalier, they must know that a failure to serve the people will eventually destroy that government.
If the government fears the people then that’s a situation where the people and the government are* enemies, *and a government ruling over its enemies is unlikely to be nice.
Only if they think they can’t win.
If the government fears the people then the rational choices for the people comprising it are to oppress & kill the people or flee the country. Which is why “governments should fear their people” is a poor idea.
Currently, Republican incumbent politicians are generally terrified of losing primaries to Tea Party-type challengers. This has been going on since the 2010 elections.
OP, do you think that has resulted in a significant improvement in the Republican Party? If fear hasn’t improved one political party, why do you think it would improve a whole government?
OP, you better define what you mean by “fear” in this context. Because as mentioned there is the fear of failing to serve the people well, the fear of displeasing them, and the fear of actually being harmed by them.
That the stability of the state must based on fear of the people is a clever buzzline for a comicbook and the film based thereon but in actual politics? As already mentioned, it creates a presumption that the relation between the state and the public must be essentially an adversarial one and that turns the concept of government of/by/for the people on its head IMO.
BTW I observe the phrasing in the OP to the effect of: “more to the point the career bureaucrats are almost impossible to do anything about as it is nearly impossible to fire them.” That has nothing to do with the theory in question: you WANT the bureaucrats to be able to do their job as per the laws and regulations no matter what party holds the elected offices. What you want those jobs to be is a mere policy disagreement.
No, ALL of the people will be unhappy at some time or another.
Government (or “the state”) has to make choices about what to do, and even then has to prioritize how and when it carries out those choices. A government that’s constantly afraid of revolution will either do nothing, or, as Der Trihs points out, will treat the people as an enemy.
It’s hyperbole. In the context of Colonial America, the “people” were subjects of the Crown. The King ruled by divine right and could do whatever he wanted to preserve his authority, as there was no mechanism to remove him…
From Jefferson’s perspective, he wanted to inverse the relationship. Instead of fearing retribution for rebelling against unjust laws, those in power should fear being removed (peacefully, ideally) for not addressing the needs of the people they rule.
IOW, he was advocating the people having a hand in choosing their leadership. I believe he wrote some of this stuff down somewhere.
The mob is not the people. It’s just a small group that happens to be near the seat of government. The mob deciding to kill a leader it doesn’t like is no more legitimate than an assassin shooting a President. The government should be subject to review by the people as a whole not by every individual person in the country.
It the people as a whole who should have the power to decide if government officials are removed from office. And despite your cynicism, we manage to accomplish this every few years.
In the short run, the the loudest and angriest and stupidest people may get their way. But then the smart people get organized and outmaneuver the stupid people. This is why we keep making progress.
Also agreed. There should be cautious respect. I don’t want the policeman, with a gun at his hip, to be afraid of me (and I don’t want to be afraid of him, either.)
Kicking them out of office should be pretty much the worst they should have to “fear.” Meanwhile, I’m far more afraid of the people who vote for bad legislators than I am of the bad legislators themselves. When a significant number of our fellow-citizens favor tyranny, that’s damned scary.
I’m no historian, but I don’t think you have it quite right. The Americans beef was with Parliament, not so much the King. Remember, the Stamp Act was an Act of Parliament, and the Americans were protesting “no taxation without representation”, as they had no representatives in Parliament. I don’t believe that GIII could “do whatever he wanted”. The English Monarchy (later to become the British Monarchy) had limits placed on it beginning with the Magna Carta in 1215. That is not to say that there was a consistent diminishing of royal authority from that point on, but by the time of the American Revolution, I don’t think anyone believed that the king could “do whatever he wanted”.
As for the OP, it is or was the political equivalent of a bumper sticker, and not a serious recommendation for policy (whether it was said by TJ or not).