Back to the Basics

Recalling old lessons on the purpose and intent of government

“Salus populi suprema lex esto” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

In the waning days of the Roman Empire, one its most quotable orators wrote the book de Legibus, or “On the Laws.”

It told the story of Roman dynasty, complete with an examination of the flaws and errors that had created so much end-of-reign turbulence. He also offered suggestions - including his ideal Constitution - that would help the empire run smoothly.

Whilst in a rabbit hole, I was reminded of Cicero’s maxim, “Salus populi suprema lex esto,” which in English states, “Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.” (Note: There are alternate translations of this phrase to mean safety, welfare, health, good, salvation and felicity of the people. I think it’s best summed up in the word welfare).

Cicero, in roughly 44 BC, viewed this maxim as one of the guiding principles of good government. John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Government, published in 1690, referred to the phrase as a fundamental rule of government.

It’s 2024, and our government is in many ways still structurally built around the Greek and Roman framing of politics. But the question rising since I again came across this phrase is whether we, in our time, are holding to this fundamental rule.

In my last column, I wrote Form Follows Function in Topeka, saying the make-up of the legislature informs us about its design/function. Now, I’m examining whether our function has been altered, away from the core ideals of democracy’s infancy. I have a vision of how that might function if we re-centered people, but I’m also curious what others see - so don’t be shy about sharing your thoughts or ideas.

But first, I think it’s worth working through some realities….

• Everyone brings to the table their own idea of who “the people” are and their own idea of what “welfare” means. For some, people means others who look, act, worship and experience life just like them. For others, it means a group of marginalized people, or a particular identity. We struggle in this environment settling on who government is here to serve. (But I’ll tell you one thing - this system doesn’t go out of its way to do much for people who don’t vote).

• As my therapist sometimes reminds me, a yes to one thing is a no to something else. Often, it seems, a policy that serves one group of people potentially harms another. The debates in representative government are often formed around right-or-wrong morality on issues, when it is really about a conflict of competing rights - and the conflict between factions as cultural norms and expectations change.

• Being in the majority doesn’t make you right, it just makes you the majority. So you have numbers enough to construct a generation’s norms and impose your view of the world on others. For now, anyway. One of the exercises I most enjoy is to ask people to consider what “normal” was on the day of their birth. Then move it back 50 years and forward 50 years and consider what “normal’ or “right” was on those points in the timeline. Normal is a social construct that changes constantly.

I could go on a bit, but I’ll keep this moving along.

In my view, if the Kansas Legislature focused on Cicero’s maxim, things would look a bit different.

• Policy discussions would begin with people, viewed through the lens of service and assistance.

• We’d have a lot fewer conversations about how to make rich people even richer.

• We’d have a lot fewer conversations about how to punish poor people for being poor. Or how to make them do what others want them to do without understanding anything at all about a life in chronic poverty.

• We sure wouldn’t complain about helping people afford food or healthcare while giving away lots of tax dollars to big corporations.

• It would be easier for the public to understand the legislative process, and we’d make it far easier for them to participate.

• We’d stop protecting legacy industries that have long enjoyed the benefit of policies, regulations and tax structures that advantage them and often create barriers for competitors.

• There would be a concerted effort to create a wider lane, so to speak, on which an ever-increasing number and variety of people can thrive. A people-centered government, in my view, would constantly pull more people in and create more opportunities for more people, recognizing there are many paths forward, not just the one that worked for one group of people in one specific period of time.

• It would replace fear and protectionism with curiosity about the world and others, and it would explore innovative thoughts and ideas on how to solve problems. We would spend far less time protecting what used to be.

Again, I could rattle off a bunch more, but then you’d likely lose interest and find something else to read….

Back to my prior point: I have to acknowledge that this is my view - and I’m fully, almost painfully, aware that others view the world quite differently. In their minds, protecting the status quo is serving the welfare of the people. Some even believe that a regression to the past is protecting the welfare of the people - even though those so-called good old days weren’t so good for a lot of people. Yet in that view, they often are doing what they think is right, despite my thinking it is wrong. And if we refuse to talk to each other, if we evade these conversations about differences, if we don’t try to agree on what the problems are, that will be the end of it - each side retreating to its respective corners, pointing blameful fingers at the other for the state of the world.

Holding the welfare of the people as the supreme law requires a system to consider whether it’s serving itself too well, or whether it’s serving too narrow of a group. It also must examine whether it has fallen victim to shifting landscapes that have moved away from democracy’s core values and toward the adaptation of another’s.

I would argue there have been several generations of outsized influence from big business. Government, in my view, has moved away from being a tool to help people and toward being a tool to help corporations - something Teddy Roosevelt warned about more than 100 years ago…

“It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.”

— Teddy Roosevelt, 1910, Osawatomie, Kansas

In Kansas, that has translated into an open hand to business - in the form of corporate tax reductions, increased incentives and loosening of regulations, all while we can scarcely have a real conversation about people-centered policies like Medicaid Expansion and tax reform that would actually save middle class taxpayers some real money.

If we really listen today, we can hear the public trying to tell us that we’ve largely abandoned the idea that the welfare of the people reigns supreme. It has given rise to a sort of modern populism that has bubbled up from both the right and the left.

I think it’s increasingly clear to most people that business - and the business of power and politics - has taken top billing in our modern form of government. Pundits and political opponents inflame already-open wounds and add to the digital noise of the world, while the people’s struggles seem to fall distant to the concerns of well-financed organizations that can influence the form and function of government.

The people are asking us to get back to the core of democracy.

I think we owe it to them to listen, and to try.