We the People have one job! Appoint good leaders.

Posted on by M.C. Atkins

Assuming your people are culturally sound and rational, if you have a good leader you can expect relative peace and security in stable times, and hope for survival in tumultuous times.  

And how exactly will a culturally sound and rational people expect their good leader to bring this about?  By making and executing sound decisions that benefit the people of course.

Chief among the decisions he will make are whom he appointment as his ministers e.g. the king’s men of Humpty Dumpty fame.  All human organisations much larger than a family or hotdog stand will require its leader to divide his responsibilities into parts and appoint a minister over each part such as captains of companies, the night shift manager, or the Secretary of State.

No leader can be thought of as good who lacks the ability to identify, appoint, monitor, and direct competent subordinates.

A difficult task for sure because power attracts both the incompetent as well as competent and the leader must be able to sift the two.  But a task made very difficult because power attracts the corrupt like food attracts the starving or a bank attracts bank robbers.  

Furthermore, there are men who for whatever reason lack the ability to blush.  They do not feel embarrassment, shame, or remorse.  At least not like most of us.

Combine ambition, a corrupt character, and absence of conscience and you have the most dangerous of all possible public servants.  These are the ministers who would send an army of young men to their destruction if it would line their own pockets or raise their status.  And then sleep like a baby.  

The lesson here is that We the People, if we expect to remain free (or regain lost liberties), must make it our business to appoint good leaders who in turn will appoint good ministers.  Leaders who will appoint sheepdogs rather than wolves or foxes.  

If We the People will do this, then we can expect republicanism, democracy, and the rule of law generally to work reasonably well.  If we will not do this one thing, then we deserve what we’ll have coming to us. 

M.C. Atkins

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Published by M.C. Atkins

I have six wee bairns who are all seventh-generation Henry County, Tennessee, and all from the same doe. It is the people of Henry County that I most want to reach but I am writing to Southerners generally. I am without credentials but rather dare to speak by the same authority as the little boy who cried 'The king has no clothes!' My core belief and starting point is that like everything, we humans have a nature, it is not so hard to understand, and to pretend that it is other than it is, is to jump off a cliff. Which is what we Americans have in fact done.

1 thought on “We the People have one job! Appoint good leaders.”

  1. “Assuming your people are culturally sound and rational”

    That is a big assumption.

    I wonder where our leaders in 10, 20 or 30 years will come from. I do despair of the public education system. I cannot imagine a leader is being formed in the public school I work in. The system is neither culturally sound nor rational.

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