Those Romans. You gotta hand it to them. Ever since Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire (With him as head of both church and state) power has poured out of Rome (and riches flowed in) for about 1700 years. First Constantine’s Christianized Roman Empire, then the Holy Roman Empire, then the Roman Catholic Church took their place as the most powerful political force of their time. And how did this work? Church and State in cahoots. It’s a sure bet.
It wasn’t until Luther and a bunch of radicals came along with the novel idea that the church shouldn’t really be meddling in politics that anyone challenged this strategy.
And then, with the Reformation blowing across the church and Democracy gnawing away at Absolute Monarchy, the power of the church in politics slowly disintegrated, except for in a few reactionary backwaters like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United States.
In Retrospect
From our democratic point of view, it seems pretty obvious. If the leader of the government is also the leader of the church, then it’s a double whammy against anyone who wants change. A complaint against the government becomes a sin, and you’re damned in body and soul for daring to criticize.
Is Democracy That Shaky?
As a matter of fact, yes. Democracy depends on everybody getting together and agreeing on everything important, and agreeing to disagree on everything else. As union organizers, volunteer committee chairpersons and other herders of cats know well, achieving this balance is a delicate art.
This makes it easy for an organized group with a lot of social or financial power to muscle in and play divide-and-rule games. And, if I may jump on an old hobbyhorse for a moment, especially if the government is elected on a First Past the Post system, where you only have to gather the support of about 40% of the population to take charge.
All of which supports the idea that if we are to have democracy, we have to be able to govern ourselves. We don’t want any organization with superior social or financial power to interfere in our government like the Roman Church did.
Enter Big Business
But now we have the same problem in different guise. SNC Lavalin is the tip of the iceberg. Bombardier has been milking the governments of Quebec and Canada for decades. Don’t get me started on how much weight Big Oil swings in Alberta. Think of how long the tobacco industry has kept murdering us, with government support. And then there’s the “Jobs, jobs, jobs,” party that has ruled in B. C. 75% of the time for the past 70 years. In all these examples Big Business has manipulated government to its own advantage at the expense of the taxpayers of Canada.
Two Ways to Bamboozle Government
Big money has several ways to exert influence on government, some more direct than others, some more legal than others. The biggest example of indirect and legal influence is the lure of jobs and tax revenue. The worst example of illegal, immoral and direct manipulation is what seems to be happening in the SNC Lavalin scandal. Over the next two weeks, we will be looking at these two methods and their effects in more detail.
Stay tuned.