The Good King, Part I

The Good King

There was a certain king who lived a long time ago.  The king was indeed a rarity during the Age of Kings and in fact for any age; for it was said wide and far, by the rich and the poor, in the markets and in the planters’ fields … that he was a good, a just, and a wise king.

No matter the terminology, monarchies tend toward absolutism and absolutism in any form is always disastrous.  No man can be allowed unchecked authority.  This is perhaps the most profound and proven lesson of all history.  If you haven’t learned this in totality, pick up any textbook.  Read of Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, Hussein, Lenin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Ivan the Terrible, Edward I, Nero, Khan – these are just some examples of rulers who abused absolute authority.  One might even be able to reason that all truly notorious villains were only able to become notorious because they were first trusted, and given free reign.

Early Americans understood this.  In the 1770s, one of the popular signs in Patriotic Boston read, “We serve no sovereign here.”  Rule by the people was at once a revolutionary concept and a baldly obvious one.  It was understood in full, that rule by one is always lacking, always corrupt, always self-serving, and often cruel and murderous.

Even though the king of our story lived many years before the French and American revolutions, this king understood this just the same.  His understanding came not so much from history but from his knowledge of human nature.  Keenly, he saw that his best intentions were sullied by his own self-interests.  And at his very worst, he was capable of acting with malevolence and cruelty.  Yes, relatively speaking, he was a good and kind person.  But there was too much at stake to allow himself to fall for this ancient trick that has been the bane of so many.  A firm conviction in this absolute truth of the human condition shaped the man, forging him into a being of vigilance and constant self-inspection.  And so, with this belief held firm in his spirit, he painstakingly established the rule of law in his land.

In the field of psychology, doctors are sometimes compelled to constrain patients from hurting themselves.  A person who desires to hurt himself can quite be considered insane, or at the very least, irrational.  But a person who is a risk to hurt others is simply human – the very reason for police, armies, jails, and laws.  A very small part of these institutions protect the citizenry from crazy people.  Largely, they are to protect us from our very neighbors – the ones we trust and the ones we think would never wrong us … the reason why our king sought self-constraint.  He was wise enough to distrust himself. 

He began with the establishment of a national defense of which he was the commander-in-chief.  He added a police force and shrewdly appointed his most ardent and capable critic to manage it.  The final piece was communication.  An informed kingdom at least meant that they could see the need for tax and certainly the need for protection.  The king necessarily kept a small court, in order to ensure that his men held firm to the same principles as he.  That also meant the king and his most trusted advisers spent many hours organizing group meetings so that all would be informed and the subjects knew how there taxes were applied and how their kingdom was being run.  All in all, the king had designed a very clean system with a small government and very few laws.

In hindsight, the weakness was the lack of a systemized judiciary.  Basically, the laws were three:  do not kill or injure one another, do not damage another’s property by theft or by vandalism of any sort, and pay taxes as required by the crown.  Punishment for breaking these laws was swift and firm, (by today’s standard, rather Draconian) and usually handled by a local magistrate.  The king had reasoned that such a simple system would not require an elaborate court system and so one day a month, he sat as judge over the very few cases in the kingdom that required interpretation of the law.

Kings throughout history have had cronies and have provided favors to their friends.  Our king recognized this and decided, unhappily, that in order to avoid this trap, he would need to live a life of isolation.  He was very visible and recognized he needed to spend time among the people but he held that he couldn’t allow himself to become too close to any of them.  Any sign of an obsequious nature meant one was unfit for high office in the palace as the king needed honest dialogue, not spineless compliance.  And while these men were respected and trusted, they could not become close friends.  Once business had been conducted, he kept his distance from even his most capable and honorable advisors, out of a desire to remain impartial.

One can imagine that the king might’ve been profoundly sad, if dutiful.  And for a time, this was true.  Until the day his son was born. 

The king’s son was the most celebrated personage in the history of the kingdom.  The people loved their king and they loved this little prince who had brought such happiness to the palace.  Their sad and wise and good king who was always fair with his people had become passionate about the future of the kingdom.  The king was still stalwart and resolute, but the prince had come into the picture and the king eschewed his more robotic tendencies.  No longer merely seeing his role as a custodian over peace and justice, the king began to see the kingdom as a place for his son to inherit and the result was a brighter light to his countenance and a more hopeful, purposeful stride in his step.  In effect, it was the difference between maintaining a place for the landlord and maintaining a place that you own.  He saw each day as an opportunity to impart to his son, the beliefs and ethos of his rule – a system carefully developed and executed out of earnest and meticulous study of people and paradigms and natures ... what works, and what doesn’t.

END OF PART I