Information Related to "What's Wrong With Our Governments? 1999"
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What's Wrong
With Our Governments?
Why do so many problems seem to defy solution? Why isn't
government
effective at preventing and solving our longstanding problems?
by Gary Petty
How will historians look back on
the events of the last few decades? How will they interpret the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the reunification of Germany, the moral decay of the United States and other
Western nations or the reasons for the AIDS epidemic?
Libraries bulge with books explaining the social, moral, economic, military, religious,
agricultural, environmental and political reasons that every government from the
ancient Sumerians to Nazi Germany has ultimately ended in ruin. The cycle repeats
itself again and again.
Rudyard Kipling captured the essence of the cycle of man's inability to govern himself
in his novel The Man Who Would Be King. The tale describes two British soldiers in
19th-century India who decided to travel into remote mountains to find an "uncivilized"
people and set themselves up as kings.
In the course of the story, the two soldiers take over a small mountain tribe, teach
its members how to use firearms and proceed to conquer the neighboring tribes. They
institute a benevolent dictatorship.
At first the self-styled English kings seem to bring progress to the tribes. Eventually
the mountain people begin to look on the pair as gods.
The Englishmen's favored condition persists until one of the men makes amorous advances
toward a local girl. This leads the villagers to decide that their rulers aren't
really gods. The pair are dethroned; one is killed, the other tortured. The second
man lives just long enough to escape and tell his story.
It seems that man needs government, laws and leadership for his own good, but people
tend to corrupt themselves by the very power inherent in government.
The Roman Empire and the United States
Why do great nations and even empires decline and fall? No great power's collapse
has spawned more discussion than that of the Roman Empire. Although many differences
between ancient Rome and the United States are apparent, many unsettling similarities
demand serious consideration.
Related Information on UCG Sites:
Sidebar: Prophecies of a Different Government
Table of Contents that includes "What's Wrong With Our Governments? 1999"
Other Articles by Gary Petty
Kingdom of God - what it is: