Sovereignty and Political Power

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Merriam-Webster defines sovereignty as:

1 obsolete : supreme excellence or an example of it

2 a: supreme power especially over a body politic b: freedom from external control : autonomy c: controlling influence

3: one that is sovereign; especially : an autonomous state



But how does sovereignty come into being, or more importantly how do sovereigns take power? In this article I try to answer those questions. In addition, I consider in whom the best results of sovereignty might be gained.

I am not a historian, but I have been educated sufficiently to understand basic human history. Plus, I have been around long enough to see it happening, so some of my opinion comes from experience. With that in mind, let's start with how sovereignty began. The very first humans were individuals mostly, and responsible for their own well being. Whether you believe it or not, science places us on a chain of evolution of creatures with the great apes being our direct ancestors. But even apes are not solitary creatures. They have a social structure. So, most likely the first humans were not completely individual in their actions. At the very least they had families that stayed together and supported each other.

The families were autonomous as a group; they had no outside power that could force them to do anything - except other more intrinsically powerful creatures (like lions for example). But the human family was sovereign in its power. Did all individuals have equal decision making power within the family? Was the entire family sovereign? The answer probably varied from family to family and from age to age as time passed. In small initial families, the elder was probably the head or sovereign that others looked up to for answers - the "father figure". Thus, sovereignty was born, and it represented political (decision making) power.

So far we have discussed not only human nature, but actually nature itself - the natural order of things. And as primitive as that is, the "father figure" of sovereignty has continued through the ages right up until today. Our human nature makes us feel more comfortable if we surrender our decision making powers to an elder or elders to make the really big decisions on our behalf. Thus, we (think) we can veg out and just enjoy life. With this in our nature, it is not difficult to understand how kings and emperors came into being. Thus, elite (in their minds) sovereigns easily took political power from the masses - this not because they had any special natural abilities or wisdom of their own. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And as time passed and power accumulated, who could challenge them?

Has this path to political power been good for humanity? What do you think? What does our history show? It is not a good picture, is it? If the same historic trends continue, we are headed for disaster. And this situation is not the fault of decisions by the people (meaning the masses), but decisions by our leaders whom we trusted with everything we have. I for one do not believe that trust has been warranted. There are many of us in the masses who could have done the job better, many with more intelligence and wisdom than our leaders have shown through history. And I am not referring to elites, but ordinary, everyday citizens of whatever country, nation or region is being considered. There is a saying (a wise saying I think) that with quantity, you get quality. Just by the numbers, if more are included the result contains more of quality. In the case of people making political decisions, better decisions will come from a larger pool - the bigger the better.

So if we are to save ourselves from the political history we have followed till now, we must have the will to reform our political systems. Do we have the right to do that? I believe we have the right to self determination and that is a natural right. We should be able to help make the big decisions in our lives. There are many ways we can do that, but I do not recommend the method used in the 1700s; we don't need to revolt. There has been enough violence. But we have to make a massively powerful political statement in order to change our course! How do we do that? Certainly not by following the system in place; this system is corrupted and can never be corrected by politics as usual. What's worse is that our media has also been corrupted by the system that controls it. Today they tell us our only choices for president are Clinton, Obama and McCain, although we still have the candidates Ron Paul and Mike Gravel who are committed to real political reform in the two major parties. And that is exactly the reason why the media excludes them from any rational discussion. It's not because they are unelectable.

In spite of all that, we can retain some political power for ourselves rather than continue to give it all away. We can enact the National Initiative for Democracy and give ourselves national ballot power. Many of our states have this power already. The National Initiative is more rigorous for the people's rights in law making than the state initiative laws. The National Initiative is real political reform. Reform that will give us self determination permanently.