Quite unlike anything that I have posted before, this post is a continuation of thoughts inspired by de Jouvenal on Power, posted at Political and Philosophical Commentary, at bakersfield.com. 

This will be the first time that I have written directly about politics, but since there exists at least one person interested in politics at a philosophical level, namely the maintainer of the referenced blog, I am writing this primarily for him and his fellow philosophy scholars.  I think there are a few other people here who might be interested in an examination of this depth as well.

This is timely in the context of the nature of numerous recent posts.

Imagine yourself enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon in your home.  Your peace is soon disrupted, however, by a street gang in a vehicle or motorcade, terrorizing you and some of your neighbors at will, trying to break into their homes or, at least, making it known that stepping outside your front door is a step into danger.

In a civilized society such as ours, with peace officers to protect us, that would indisputably be felonious criminal behavior.

Now imagine taking a closer look at this street gang, and you notice that they are wearing official uniforms of the state.  These are indeed real uniforms, and these are indeed authorized agents of the state.  Because they are agents of the state, they are equipped with the tools to break into any home that they choose, and there are laws against resisting their attacks.

That little fact changes everything.  Unlike the criminal street gang acting outside of the law, they are the law, accountable to no one.  You cannot turn to the state for protection; they are the state.  That one detail makes the difference between criminal terrorism and lawful, state-sanctioned activity, even though the actions themselves are identical to those of the criminal street gang.  And in this logically plausible hypothetical example, the state-sponsored form of terrorism is more dangerous than that of the rogue street gang.

The second example, obviously, benefits from being legally authorized.  However, I would dare to say that it is logically impossible to argue that this second example of power, even more destructive than the first by dint of its specialized equipment and special legal protections, is by definition a legitimate form of power, if the criminal street gang is not a legitimate exercise of power.

This conclusion becomes my first premise: legal authorization of power and use of force is not, in itself, sufficient to deem an implementation of power to be a legitimate one.

For the next thought experiment, hypothesize about what sort of government might doing this.

The first example that comes to most people's minds is the despotic regime, like Saddam Hussein and his army.  Most everyone will agree that the Hussein regime was basically a criminal organization with the color of authority.  Hussein's power was illegitimate.

Such a regime operates without the consent of those being governed.  Without the consent of the population, no amount of "official" legal recognition can make such a plundering agency of power legitimate.

However, such malicious abuse of power might meet with wide local popular approval.  The roving band of well-equipped terrorists might be operating with the consent of a democratic majority or a fairly elected legislature.  They may be singling out people who support an opposition politician or belong to a hated minority group.

Most people would still argue that this use of power is illegitimate despite its popular approval.  So, we have another premise: popular support for a politically empowered body is also not sufficient, in itself, to make a particular use of power legitimate.

In between the despotic regimes and the democratically supported exercises in evil are governments operating under many different shades of illegitimacy.  However, I will dissect those later.

The premises that this kind of analysis require imply a necessary precondition: there must exist some standard of legitimacy outside beyond that of the empowered institution itself.

This puts us in a really difficult spot: what determines legitimacy and illegitimacy apart from the empowered agency?

Such a determination requires the existence of objective normative ethics, one of philosophy's most challenging quests for a definitive answer.

One easy way out is to appeal to divine command ethics, in which "God says," and it is so. 

However, that faces a serious epistemological problem.  It is uncertain enough for any one of us to ascertain whether any message, text, or inspiration revealed to us is truly of divine origin and not from an impostor; it introduces an added layer of epistemological uncertainty to trust an outside human institution to hand down "what God said." 

In order to trust an outside human institution as a source of God's authority is to trust both that it is possible for such an institution to definitively ascertain divine authenticity, and that you or we have vested our trust in that this particular institution, as opposed to others, will always, faithfully and accurately, relay God's revelations to the rest of humanity.

Legitimacy by appeal to alleged divine edict, therefore, introduces an extra layer of uncertainty between ourselves and ethical truth, rather than eliminating the one layer of uncertainty that is troubling us.  Appeals to (asserted) divine edict obscure the path to ethical truth rather than clear it.

So, divine edict ethics are out of the question.  What absolute ethical standard should apply instead?  Is there such a thing as an absolute ethical standard?

The difficulty of this question splits libertarian thinkers down the middle.  On one side are the passive libertarians, moral skeptics who believe that almost any use of power or force to influence others is illegitimate.  These libertarians, one would think paradoxically, tend to condone absolute states' rights and/or pure majoritarianism within communities.

On the other side are pro-active libertarians, who believe that it is a legitimate use of power to resist and oppose illegitimate power or use of power.  These libertarians are more likely to support the American Civil Liberties Union.

The moral skepticism of the first group introduces a paradox.  They take freedom of association to an extreme, their definition of freedom includes the freedom to form empowered political bodies and use power freely against others,  even against their own community members, regardless of how inhumanely and indiscriminately it is used.  Using force to interfere with their uses of force is considered an illegitimate use of force, even if the force being targeted is itself illegitimate.

By refraining from all but the most minimal use of legitimate power, they abdicate the command of power to illegitimate uses and agencies.  Like a pacifist community invaded by a warlike tribe, passive libertarianism vacates the stage to allow non-libertarian, even evil, assemblages of power to rise to dominance.  Thus anarchy is indeed a short route to despotism.

Passive libertarianism, due to its moral skepticism that tolerates despotism if that is what the nation or state wants, is out as well.  Passive libertarianism is of little help in ensuring legitimate power instead of the illegitimate power that was produced many of the darkest pages of history.

To tackle the difficult task of finding a higher ethical standard that can separate legitimate uses of power from illegitimate uses, I will borrow from the thoughts of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.  Even this depends upon assumptions that may call for questioning, but to my eyes, the thoughts of MacIntyre look like a good starting point that is difficult to argue against.

In Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, MacIntyre recognizes the need for a balance between individual interests and societal interests, with neither the individual nor social interests being grossly disregarded.  It can be observed directly when a society's ethical or political system is causing it to flourish, and when it is causing a society suffering and is holding it back.

The title quote, "dependent rational animals," recognizes the dual nature of the human species as a social species of animal with a built-in dependency upon the surrounding society, and as a species endowed with powers of rational thought and contemplation.

The capacity for rational thought gives us the potential to recognize and acknowledge our own vulnerabilities, to anticipate that each of us may encounter times of hardship when one must reach out for the aid of society, and to recognize that the vulnerabilities that each of us bear are borne by everyone else.

If anything can be a statement of the obvious, an ethical or political system designed to inflict ill being upon its own members, or benefit those in power and their supportive constituency to the deprivation of benefit to the remainder of the population, or exploits citizens' vulnerability to create hardship, cannot possibly be a system that will result in the individual and collective flourishing of its members.

The detrimental effects that illegitimate power have on a society are quite visible.  It is no coincidence that parts of the world where governments that wield power in purposefully harmful ways against their own communities, result in levels of poverty, pestilence, barbarism, and lack of education much more severe than local environmental circumstances would otherwise create.  The Taliban is probably the most noteworthy example in current events.

The application of objective normative ethics in a society is much more than the implementation of a political system, of course, and their application to political systems includes many more considerations than just ensuring the political system's legitimacy.  (It may tempt one to conclude from what follows that ensuring the legitimacy of political power would by consequence ensure the ethical use of that power, but I hesitate to elevate that to an axiomatic degree of certainty.)  Yet with this foundation in place, I can go back to examine the shades of illegitimacy that power can take, using an objective ethical lens.

Consider an election won or ballot initiative passed through heavy campaign spending that exposes false or misleading information to great numbers of people, far more people than the opposition is able to reach with a counteracting message.

Voters may have "consented" by delivering an election victory, but if voters' decisions were based on information that deliberately concealed possible harm or other adverse consequences that victory would bring, including harm to those who voted in favor of it, then that power was obtained illegitimately, and the needless harm that follows is the product of power being used illegitimately.

Somewhat related and much more familiar to most Americans are legislators indebted to powerful special interest groups who hold the reins and purse strings that can make or break their re-election.  Candidates win on an ostensibly winning message, only to tweak the laws in ways that favor their masters to the detriment of the citizenry.  The changes leading to the current financial collapse are the most familiar examples of power used illegitimately, since it was used to favor powerful interests with disregard to the potential damage to Main Street.

In a country like the United States, where illegitimate power exists in moderate amounts, and yet where voters still have some choice of outcomes, it can (and in our case, has) become a political game to allege the illegitimacy of whatever party or group is in power at the moment.

While it can be a necessary thing to point out illegitimate power and its use when it is indeed illegitimate, over-use of the allegation for partisan purposes can make future restoration of perceived legitimacy (and perception is also important) very difficult.

In 2001, some Democrats alleged the illegitimacy of the Bush presidency by charging that the election was stolen.  In 2009, so-called "birthers" question the legal eligibility of President Obama.  Whether or not any truth exists in either claim, charging illegitimacy has itself become a power game that, ironically, can be wielded illegitimately.

Restoring both the perceived and real legitimacy of power in the United States and lower tiers of government will be difficult but necessary if we expect to retain our position of world leadership.

That will require building or restoring safeguards to prevent the acquisition and use of illegitimate power.  Unfortunately, illegitimate power once gained, as it is rather common today, is extremely reluctant to let go of it, and will use it to continue to skew the system to oppose such safeguards or render them ineffective.  The difficulty in passing campaign finance reform is a classic example.

The other opposition that ensuring against illegitimate use of power will encounter are objections to the inconveniences that the safeguards will cause. 

Those who want the police to be able to rush into any situation on any pretense using any methods that they choose, will be turned off by the restoration or imposition of defined procedures designed to protect against misuse of their lawful power.  And those whose emotional impulses favor disproportionate punishments for certain wrongdoings, real or imagined, will be put off by expectations that punishments, if any, be measured according to actual harm done rather than the strength of some people's visceral reactions to the deeds being punished.

But if we are going to allow the establishment of empowered agencies that have the privilege to "do things to" the citizens of a community or nation, it is ethically mandatory that all practical measures be taken to ensure that such power is used legitimately.

Otherwise, we have something hardly better than "legalized" criminal behavior.