Under a legal system reigns legal ethics. Legal ethics are exclusive of moral ethics because morality has to do with choice and legality has to do with obedience. Another way we could put it, so as not to completely nullify either concept within the framework of ethics, is this: obedience drives individual will under a system of legal ethics and will drives obedience under a system of moral ethics. Because of the root mutual exclusivity of these two ethical categories, morality has fundamentally no meaning nor relevancy to or within a legal system. That is, in a society governed by a political ruling class, which we call Government, or the State, this ruling class will necessarily appeal to the Law for its legitimacy of purpose and power. It exists to make sure everyone is acting ethically. All that is necessary is to convince the masses that legality is the best way to do this. Which isn’t difficult because it seems that humanity almost universally accepts the collectivist metaphysical premise: that the individual is a product of some greater collection of parts—the tribe or the nation or the race, for example—or some outside force of nature or of the divine; that the individual, as a function of something outside of him, is, in fact, an existential illusion, or a mystery, or a lie.

Since morality has no meaning nor relevancy under the auspices of government, because government is necessarily rooted in legality, then moral consequence likewise has no meaning.  Society is organized according to legality, and this enforced by government. In a framework like this, moral consequence then can have no place in the organization protocol. Society is to be ruled, and this makes it fundamentally subject to obedience, not to the choice of individuals living out a distinct and metaphysically singular existence. The point of the State is to eradicate the consequence of moral choice in order that perfect legal order can be established and realized, and by this, the perfect ethical utopia—perfect goodness—and this as the proof of the legitimacy and efficacy of government, which really means the legitimacy and efficacy of the ruling class, and this really means the manifestation of the zenith of power, which is absolute, which is the point of collectivism.  And this is why we see, as the nations wear on in their programmed and inevitable way, from rise to certain collapse, more and more reliance upon the law for the remediation and prevention of social woes, and less and less on individual choice and responsibility.

The reason the State gets bigger, up until the point the State no longer asks what its citizens want or think, is no mystery, and yet the amount of woe and teeth gnashing and shaking of fists at the heavens at every expression of government excess and increase by those of a more conservative or libertarian political bent belies the simplicity of what should be perfectly obvious. The reason the State gets bigger is because the people want it bigger. Period. To vote for government, because of the very nature of government and because of the metaphysical and eithical presumptions one must accept in order to accept the existence of government in the first place, is to tacitly or implicitly, at best, desire government to grow; to desire the reduction of individual choice and the increase in government control. You cannot affirm government (by voting, for example) whilst simultaneously demand it contradict itself by giving you more freedom and itself less authority.  That’s like getting a cat, buying it litter and cat food and cat toys and scratching posts and calling it Felix and then decrying the fact that it’s not a dog.

So, yes, the State gets bigger because the people want it bigger. And its not hard to see why people want this, and are so tempted by government, and why it seems to win every time when it comes down to choosing how society will be organized.  People WANT to be ruled MUCH more than they want to be free. It’s obvious, its arrant, and here’s why:

The existence of the State is a hedge against moral consequence, by the very fact that it supplants morality with legality. The bigger the State then, it is eventually assumed, the smaller the moral consequence…and the smaller individual misery due to bad choices. In a legal system morality is null, and thus unwanted moral consequence should likewise be null and this should translate into people no longer feeling such consequence. And if you think people don’t know this, or don’t understand it on some fundamental level, just look at how quick people are to appeal to the Law when some shit goes down that they don’t like. Don’t like abortion, make it illegal; like abortion, protect it by Law. Don’t like guns, make them illegal; like guns, waggle your finger emphatically in the direction of the second amendment. Don’t like illegal aliens, have the government build a wall; like illegal aliens, have the government provide them with public subsidies and sanctuary. And the list goes on and on and on—education, healthcare, poverty, war, etc. etc.—unto absolute power. Without getting into the minutiae of it right now, it will suffice to say that all of this can be handled by appealing to choice and the responsibility of individuals to deal with the consequnces of those choices. Why don’t we, then, you ask. Well…I suspect because it’s not as linear; not as mathematical; not as ostensibly simple. Legality is also very abstract, which makes it look and feel very intellectual, requiring a high degree of erudition and competence to mange it. Which makes people feel safe in the hands of those who say they shall wield it for the common good.

The bigger the State the smaller the perceived moral consequence.  The smaller the moral consequence the greater the perception that social woes are being or have been handled. And, well, they have been, legally. But not morally, which is why moral degeneration continues not only unabated but even exponentially, whilst legal intervention increases likewise exponentially, as though there is an inverse relationship between the two. But people, confusing moral ethics with legal ethics, continue to vote for this person or that, swinging back and forth with the regularity of a pendulum between the conservative parties and liberal ones, seeking out more and more radical players, in the futile hope that if they just get the right person in charge everything will be fine. Instead of blaming the philosophical assumptions which legitimize government, they blame rulers for not ruling properly. As morality then declines in a morality-less system, and as moral consequence continues to be felt with greater severity, the people begin to vote in greater numbers for ideologues and authoritarians…people who will push or promise to push their agendas with greater force and less compromise. This is because once you’ve accepted that government is good and government is truth and authority is reality and legality is ethics, you understand—though perhaps subconsciously; or even emotionally—that the more despotic the ruler, and the more worthless and disinterested he is at doing anything other than slaking his own thirst for power, the BETTER he is at ruling. Because power IS the only rational objective of ruling Authority, period.

END PART ONE