... END OF GOVERNMENT

THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY IS THE END OF GOVERNMENT

“The happiness of society is the end of government” says John Adams (1735- 1826) in his “Thoughts on Government (17776).”

This assertion sounds interestingly controversial isn’t it? Therefore, who will believe in this claim? Perhaps many- the marginalized, the “have not,” and those who should they have had their own way, would oust governments from power and prefer a state of anarchy- but that’s even catastrophic.

Well you might not be convinced by this thought provoking topic. Yet, I’ll proceed to present some views of John Adams and other scholars on leadership, democracy and government.

John Adams in his ‘Letter to John Taylor, 15 April 1814’ says that “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.” He again made an interesting and true remark when he said “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right… and a desire to know, but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers” in his “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765).”

Lord Chesterfield (1694- 1773) in his “Letters, 1748” says that “Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.”

Now, Henry Brooks Adams (1838- 1918) in his “The Education of Henry Adams (1907),” says that “Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”

The expositions of these writers or perhaps philosophers convey the strong signal that government’s role in national development (especially in Africa) is amazingly small. These objective criticisms must register deep down the heart, mind and soul of leaders, those in Africa and across the globe, whose intended vision for the nations good are often clouded in poor prioritization, ill-propaganda, libeling and slandering, bribery, corruption and mismanagements. Civil unrests and war, culminating from power drunken rulers and officials are in itself a form of underdevelopment.

One Nigerian poet Philip Obioma Chinedu Umeh, is also “sick and tired” of African governments. He expressed frustration and disappointment in his classic “Ambassadors of Poverty.” This is a portion from the poem:

                   “Ambassadors of Poverty are

              The corrupt masters of the economy

              With their heads abroad

              And anus at home,

              Patriots in reverse order

              Determined merchants of loot….”

So what more do I have to say? None! Matter-of-fact, some economies are doing well and the many others being “wolves in sheep clothing”- offering society nothing but only war and innocent massacre. Shame on those governments which forget they are to serve the nation which is in competition with other nations culturally, economically and technologically.

The happiness of society to my mind may be the end of government, although that remarkable transformation comes with its own drawbacks.