24 December 2015
Sovereignty in a Stable
Ultimate authority is not born in palaces.
By Neil Tidmarsh
This week, President Xi of China addressed world leaders at the World Internet Conference at Wuzhen, calling for state censorship of the internet in the name of ‘internet sovereignty’.
Let’s think about that word ‘sovereignty’ for a moment. It means ‘the ultimate authority’. To most of us, the sovereignty of a political entity like a nation state means the people who live in it, what they wish or do not wish. Their government exists to obey those wishes. It exists to protect them by upholding the laws guaranteeing their freedoms and by defending them from external aggression. The government is a servant, not a master. Whether this can ever be perfectly realised in the real world is another matter; the point is that we all agree that this principle is what should guide us, however imperfectly we achieve it as a goal.
Sovereignty emphatically does not mean the government protecting itself against the wishes of the people; though if the government or the ruling party believes that sovereignty belongs to them and not to the people they govern, then that is inevitably what happens.
All this, when written down, looks like a facile truism. Yes, yes, of course, it’s obvious, why bother expressing it?
And yet, there is President Xi, telling world leaders that they, not their citizens, should decide what people can say, do, see or read on the internet within their countries. Closer to home, there’s the EU in Brussels trying to override the sovereignty of member states week after week, and trying to drive those member states into an ever closer union so that Brussels indeed does have sovereignty and member states (let alone those states’ citizens) have none; only then, we are told, will Europe be strong enough to solve the problems which it faces (ever the argument of would-be dictators since the dawn of time); if there’s a grain of truth in that, let’s remind ourselves that the EU is in many ways responsible for those problems in the first place.
If the sovereignty of the people seems like a truism, it is because we take it for granted, like the taste of water in our mouths. We need to remind ourselves of it, like we need to remind ourselves from time to time of how refreshing the taste of water is. And when we do, we will find it alarming that many governments in the world would not agree with us. It’s alarming that the debate wasn’t argued and won, done and dusted, ages ago, the world over. After all, it’s over a hundred and fifty years since Abraham Lincoln spoke of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” as being “the great task remaining before us.” It’s eight hundred years since Magna Carta put King John back in his box. And it’s two thousand years since four men sat down to write, in rather battered classical Greek, the story about how the cosmos invested ultimate authority, “sovereignty”, not in the Roman Emperor, or in the Roman senators, or in the Roman provincial governors, or in Roman generals, or in the kings, princes or high priests of Judea, but in the infant son of a humble carpenter, a worker. An ordinary human being. Born not in a palace or mansion, but in a stable, the lowly home of animals.
This piece isn’t trying to make a religious point. It’s trying to make a political or philosophical one. The writings of all major religions have lessons for all mankind, for people of all religions or none. The Christmas story is for everyone. You don’t have to believe in its literal truth to benefit from the metaphorical truth of a story which tells us that the only time ultimate authority has been manifested on Earth was when a helpless baby was born in the humblest of accommodations to an ordinary family. The baby grew up to use that sovereignty to free mankind, working as mankind’s servant, not its master, and proving it by making the ultimate sacrifice and dying for his fellow man. A literal, religious truth? That’s up to you. A metaphorical, political truth? Undeniably.
Merry Christmas!
