The Psalm 85 Society.
In the 85th Psalm, the Sons of Korah describe a society which is pleasing to the Divine Will, a society which have been redeemed:
Show us thy grace, O Lord, and grant us thy Redemption.
I will hearken what the Lord God will say: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his lovers, that they turn not again to folly.
Surely his salvation is near to them that fear him, that glory may dwell in our land.
Mercy and Truth shall meet, Justice and Peace shall kiss one another.
Truth shall bud out of the earth, and Justice shall look down from heaven.
Yea, the Lord shall give good things, and our land shall give her increase.
Justice shall go before him, and shall set her steps in the way.
The Godly society, therefore, is based on Mercy, Justice and Truth. Truth buds from the Earth - that is, it is the ground upon which all of society's institution stand and the daily bread that sustains them. Justice, meanwhile, looks down from Heaven- that is to say, it is, together with Peace, the idea which society serves. Truth and mercy serve as the basis without which neither is possible.
The Institutions of Justice and Peace vs the Institutions of Truth and Mercy
The institutions of Society capable of enforcing Justice and Peace are the coercive ones -those of Law and Power, that can intervene when acts of injustice or violence are being committed, to right the wrong and punish the wrong-doer and compel him to make full restitution.
But those institutions can function only when a different set of institutions had already ensured that the personal virtues of Truth and Mercy are widely practiced, which turns violence and injustice into the exception rather than the rule in society.
A society in which falsehood and cruelty are normalized, cannot have effective institutions of Justice and Peace.
The Judge, even if personally committed to his peculiar principles, would not be able to make head from tails of the evidence before him. The enforcers would feel no revulsions by the cruelty of the violent man against his neighbor. Neither the strong man be bothered by the lack of Peace, which merely limits their opportunities to satisfy their cruelty using their power, nor would the weak man give up easily his single pleasure - to watch the occasional ruin of one of the Strong Ones in their endless struggles.
Therefore, the institutions that instill truthfulness, teach people the methods of distinguishing truth from falsehood and those who praise and practice Mercy, cannot be the same ones that enforce Justice and Peace, but must predate them and be the silent foundation upon which they rely.
In other words, the State cannot be relied upon to establish proper morals in the People. The People themselves must see to it- through the proper fulfillment of their familial and communal duties that they perpetuate a largely moral society, without which there cannot be a beneficial State.
(That is not to say that those institutions- family life and support, schools, communitarian institutions and so on - cannot or should not be integrated with the State- but even in such cases the coercive and violent organs of the State remain distinguished and separated from its educational, spiritual and eleemosynary structures that are merely shielded by it).
The Prudence of the Psalm 85 Society
The desirable society described in the Psalm is not Utopian. On the contrary, it is the minimum required for a society to be considered decent enough to start its long ascent along the path of Holiness, which is the "nearness" of God mentioned in the Psalm.
The reason for this is that while Holiness is definitely possible on the Public level in the Psalmist's view, it cannot exist without the prerequisites of Justice and Peace maintained by the Coercive State, while Truth and Mercy are perpetuated by voluntary social institutions.
The Psalm also assumes that the members of the given society desire holiness and wish too set up their society to be a holy one. However, this is not to say that a society in which the members did not set up such a societal goal all these prerequisites are unneeded. Truth, Mercy, Justice and Peace are prerequisites for a holy society because they are the building blocks of all societies. Those societies which are deficient in any of the four can be described as sick, injured or incomplete societies.
The Limitations of the State
The State, which is the coercive organ of society, tasked with enforcing justice and keeping the peace, cannot therefore fulfill the roles of families, schools, religious sects and fraternal organization in making people more truthful or more merciful.
But what can be done when these institutions neglect or lose their ability to perform their work? It would have been a tempting idea to suggest that the Coercive organs should be enlisted into restoring the voluntary ones. But voluntary institutions cannot be restored using coercion. Furthermore, the Voluntary Organs of Truth and Mercy predates the Coercive ones of Justice and Peace not only in time but in order. It is the equivalence of climbing the roof of a crumbling house in order to repair its rotten foundation. Not only is this venture doomed to failure, there is danger that the very weight of the workmen would be the final blow that would take down the roof, the workmen, the walls and all the rest.
Reexamining the Three Cases
We have seen how such an attempt had failed the Puritans in England when they have tried to impose and alter the domestic institutions of the English in their celebration of Christmas.
This example was particularly egregious since the examination of the Protectorate State which the English were provoked to due to this and other invasive acts had not only led them to believe that their voluntary institutions were in good repair and faithful to their charge remained agents of Truth and Mercy, but that the State was failing in its role as promoter of Justice and Peace. It was a reminder that the Protectorate existed by usurpation, murder and theft.
When Alexander Janaeus and the Sadducees had declared war on the Common Judaism of the People and to alter a public voluntary institution of Truth and Mercy (the Temple) by mocking and eliminating the beloved ritual of the Water Libation, they have ran into a similar problem.
There was no need in this case to reach into the homes of the Citizenry and intervene in their private life.
The People were shocked and insulted to the core of their beings that a murderer, a usurper and a violator of the sanctity of his own (dubious) high-priesthood deigns to mock their understanding of God's Truth and Mercy.
In the end, the Sadducees had won the battle but have lost the war not due to their small number and their concentration among the wealthy and powerful, but due to their disdain of the People and their willingness to wage violent war against them. It is not an accident that the last remnant of their sect spent the rest of its miserable days dreaming of doing just that, before perishing in the Dead Sea desert,
Where does change comes from then? In the example of the American West we have an example and a pathway of a society which have organically outgrown its original forms and have have matured a new ethos in new lands, which in turn was split in two versions, of whom the one most capable to manage the Coercive organs of society had prevailed.
While the society of the North West was far from perfect, it excelled in separating the voluntary organs of Society from the Coercive ones. Out in the wilderness, the State was absent for quite some time, but that did not bring about the collapse of familial, religious, transactional or fraternal association, fostering their understanding of Truth and Mercy according to the Law which was revered and obeyed because it was associated with civilization, virtue and improvement.
On the contrary, these institution had thrived to the degree that they could create States from the ground up and then invite the Federal Government to supervise them, while retaining their extreme independence and the freedom of society from government encroachment into them.
It was only after the State had already existed in these lands that the South-Western Slavers could practice their craft on a significant scale.
Slavery, by its very nature, depends on the Coercive organs of Society, or rather on their perversion and abuse, but it penetrates the innermost sanctums of the Voluntary organs and twists them into coercive functions and dependents.
Slaves, unlike, let's say, prisoners in the Soviet G.U.L.A.G. system did not exist in a far-off land where the State alone had abused and coerced them. They were omnipresent - in the city and in the field, at home or on the road, in schools, churches, fine-dining restaurants and houses of ill-repute - everywhere were human beings forced to perform services great and small, toilsome or light, useful or infamous - and this was done by the State granting their masters absolute protection and impunity in coercion on one hand and hunting down, punishing and returning to service those attempting to escape. In other words, the Master, the Slaver, the Planter- whatever you may call it - have become an agent of the State within his own home, on his own land, in his own place of business, worship or learning.
The Voluntary organs of society, thus usurped and conquered by the Coercive State, had deteriorated and decayed. The South lacked the North's intensity of faith, stability of marriage, vigor of enterprise and love of learning - except when it come to the preservation of Slavery. Then were the Bibles thumped. Then was family honor defended. Then were complex operations conducted. Then were elaborate theories constructed.
The State, in turn, became that thing which empowers slavers - and nothing more. Thus when the Federal government was seemed to become somewhat hostile to Slavery (despite no particular policy aimed at uprooting it) the Slavers have seen it as in breach of contract and left to raise their own State, which was incapable to bring about Justice and Peace, incapable of doing anything apart from enforcing the Injustice of Slavery - and collapse under the pressures of War.
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