Editorial

KING PHILIP LEVINE ET AL

17 March 2015

By David Arthur Walters

The divine right of kings survives in Florida in the vestigial, common law form of the sovereign immunity of government officials from liability for damages ensuing from their neglect of the public whose health and welfare are entrusted to them. See, for example, the landmark Florida Supreme Court case of Trianon Park Condominium Association, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 468 So.2nd.912 (1985).

So sovereign immunity, and along with it tyranny, the very thing libertarians wanted abolished, is legalized by republicans. Have not the crimes against humanity of the rich and powerful always been legalized in one way or another where might makes right?

Well, who would want to rule if they could be financially ruined by lawsuits for their negligence despite their claims to good intentions, the Kantian definition of absolute good despite relative deeds? Your Honor, no crime was intended here.

On the other hand, who would want to be ruled by irresponsible officiates who rely on royal discretion to excuse themselves, as did the kings’ men of yore?

A public relations mogul and real estate developer by the name of Philip Levine expended over a million dollars to purchase the mayor’s seat and a majority on the commission in the City of Miami Beach, which he presides over as if he were king in his court.

One of Levine’s opponents was Steve Burke, a comedian, who depicted Levine as a king. We laugh when jokes have some element of truth to them, and we laughed at this joke on Levine. His friend Bill Clinton came down to Florida and endorsed him, but Levine did not resemble a Democrat at all. His campaign did its best to repress free speech, the foundation of democracy. Only two or three organizations were deemed legitimate media, and one of them, the Miami Herald, trashed Levine in favor of his chief opponent, Commissioner Michael Gongora.

Critical journalists were threatened by Levine’s campaign with frivolous defamation suits. The Miami Herald editorial board favored Gongora, but it fell in line after Levine’s wealth purchased the office, wherefore the only daily newspaper remains as the propaganda organ or booster of the city administration.

Levine would have slight executive authority given the city’s strong city manager, weak mayor charter, if it were not for the majority on the commission, who incessantly praise him for his great leadership, and a cooperative city manager who brags about a few managers and scores of lower level public servants fired.

The new city hall was full of smiles and tight lips at first, but the smiles are bound to fade. One-hundred percent appreciation must be expressed for the mayor and his administration, or else. A few confess confidentially that the smiles conceal their fear of the tyrannical and vindictive mayor.

Victor Cousin, the French eclectic philosopher whose idealism had a profound effect on American educators and the New England Transcendentalists, taught that the advance of civilization was in the inevitable progress of liberty, although that advance is not really inevitable if people may determine their fate for good or ill. The radical republicans of his day conceived of that progress as liberty from the tyranny of kings whose faith in the Supreme Being led them to believe they were above the law as the source of the law, and therefore had a divine right as kings to bestow exceptional privileges upon nobles or notables of their choosing, exempting them from due process guaranteed by the rule of law for all individuals or granting them exceptional leniency under its invocation.

Commissioner Micky Steinberg of the City of Miami Beach remarked shortly after she was seated that a wise man expressed the importance of due process. It is unclear whether that man is her husband, or Solomon, who said there is nothing new under the Sun when it comes to vain human behavior. Only the omnipotent Lord is free from due process, is Freedom. His contract with His chosen ones is one-sided: obey or else.

Of course there is an artificial distinction drawn between means and ends. In truth, whatever process is due under laws made by men may result in injustice, for means have various ends good and evil according to the dispositions of legislators.

Human beings naturally crave power over nature hence over one another, wherefore individual differences in character and differing opportunities dispose society to hierarchical organization. Although it may be irreligious and impolitic for them to say so, men would rather be ruled by men and not by ironclad laws, for then they may either secure their safety in servility, or they may attempt to overcome their masters and become rulers instead of ruled.

For example, in Miami Beach people would fain grovel at the feet of Mayor Levine. Tomorrow someone else may do.

Liberation from the personal tyranny of others requires absolute equality, subjecting everyone to slavery, each man being a little king in name only. If every man were actually an archon or king of kings instead of a subject, society and therefore man would perish in the very anarchy that anarchists profess as man’s salvation.

So it may be said that the advance of civilization to individual liberty from individual tyranny is absurd, that it will culminate in decline, that it is doomed from the very beginning. Battles must be led for wars to be won. The war of all against all calls for singular commanders to suppress the riots. Ultimately the last man standing shall fall, the victor shall be vanquished. Such is the suicidal struggle of man against nature, his own nature, which is his doom, the doom of a being who defies the fate of everything that is and become the Dominus that dooms the world and everything in it.

If the truth be more fully told although words are bound to fail us, it must be said that there is nothing new about this quandary except the rhetoric that veils it. In truth nothing under the rising and falling Sun is new; all things shall perish in time, even this planet we call Earth, even this star we call Sun, and even more besides, the Universe itself, until Being is revealed as Nothing in itself.

We shall see how long Mayor Levine retains office. The rumor mill has it that his friend Bill Clinton will make sure he is appointed ambassador to one country or another if Hilary becomes President of the United States.