The Mandate of Heaven

Throughout their long history the Chinese have had a very useful concept, a concept that has survived the Communist takeover of the land in 1949. It is called the “mandate of heaven.” Over the millennia it has toppled great dynasties, some that lasted for centuries. The concept basically asserts that a government that is effective, however raggedly or brutally, has the mandate of heaven. When it loses all legitimacy and effectiveness, it has lost the mandate of heaven – and the existing order must fall.

It makes for peculiar revolutions and regime changes in China. It is not so much that there is a violent overthrow of the existing order. Rather, the Chinese people quit paying much attention at all to that order. The fight is over what will replace it – for everyone already assumes the old order is dead. This is why even Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping is terrified of the serious economic troubles boiling away in modern China. Should it fail to provide even subsistence for a broad swath of Chinese, the result will not be like Tianamen Square, where some people demonstrated for change and the army dutifully put the revolt down. If people came to believe the Communists had lost the mandate of heaven, Xi would suddenly become irrelevant – and even the Chinese Army would pay little heed to his orders as they joined the scuffle to determine what would replace Chinese Communism.

In America, leftists believe the only authority that exists is formal authority. They know nothing about moral authority. They rely on credentials and office rather than expertise and a sense of justice. When they get those credentials or even a petty office, they think it means people must obey whatever they say, abusing whatever formal authority they have in an attempt to rule rather than to lead. When they are out of power, they say dissent is the highest form of patriotism. When they are in power, dissent can get you cancelled or jailed.

The problem for the left is that every time they abuse formal authority, they tear away a chunk of their moral authority. When moral authority is sufficiently drained, formal authority collapses entirely. The mandate of heaven is lost and something different emerges. Like termites, the left is busy gorging on the formal power they have won or stolen, completely unaware that they are eating away the very structure they seek to control.

1. 1. By pushing to destroy all safeguards to election integrity, they are destroying confidence in the legitimacy of elections.
   2. Choosing their preferred outcome and then reverse-engineering a legal sounding justification for it, leftist judges are destroying confidence in the integrity of the judiciary.
   3. By jailing dissidents and releasing violent criminals, prosecutors are destroying confidence in the justice system.
   4. Making big promises big to justify ever greater taxes while delivering a pittance and usually making things worse is destroying confidence in governmental competence and good will.

The listed items are merely the edge of a much larger conflagration. While they think they are taking over, the left is actually setting fire to all public legitimacy.

The problem for most ordinary folks is that normalcy bias is so strong they cannot see the fullness of the comprehensive effects of left-wing abuses of authority. They tend to see each depravity in isolation while assuming everything else will stay the same. I see somewhat silly analyses about how, if Democrats win this time, they will import even more illegal aliens to swing states, grant them citizenship, then build a one-party state throughout the country that will rule permanently. Oh yes, that is the Democrats’ plan. But it won’t work. Reality always catches leftists by surprise – and it will again this time.

That is not to say that the election is not vitally important. It is – but not quite like either the left or the right thinks. It is important in determining how serious and violent the strife will be in bringing the country back to a fundamental liberty under God. The left is destroying all semblance of moral authority in their frenzied bid for raw power. The right is still ringing their hands over their tenuous grasp of formal authority. And so, legitimacy – the mandate of heaven – is up for grabs.

When you destroy confidence in the foundation of law, people become lawless. Should the left succeed in their effort to create a one-party state that rules by decree, do you really think Americans are going to meekly submit? Of course not! They will act to protect their own interests and the liberty and prosperity of their children or grandchildren.

I have spoken before of boundaries changing during the crisis before us. The most obvious instance of that would be secession from those who have overthrown the American Republic in an administrative coup. In Illinois just recently, some folks asked me what would they do, since they live in a deep blue state. I asked them what would happen if Cook County (the Chicago area) were not part of Illinois. I watched the light dawn as several people responded that it would be hard for the Democrats to ever win another statewide election.

When I speak of secession and division, I am not speaking just of existing states changing loyalties. There are a whole lot of big blue tails wagging even bigger red dogs. If the administrative coup is successful, a whole lot of blue cities are going to find themselves isolated and separated from the red states that support and sustain them. Truth be told, country folk are much better navigating city ways than city folk are at navigating through country ways.

The godless left has come to think they are the titans of the universe, that their rule over the folksies is iron destiny. The truth is that they are utterly dependent on technology and formal authority, exercised through raw force, to get their way. They can’t do anything real. They can’t grow food, they can’t build houses, they can’t win wars.

Ordinary, sane people can do and have long done all these things. The left has gotten so mindlessly arrogant, it thinks it is the duty of ordinary people to serve it – and that if it can just seize all formal power, those smelly ordinary folks will forever be their serfs. But if ordinary folks just quit serving, the arrogant left will die on the vine.

If the economy collapsed and all utilities and technology were lost for a time, what would happen? Very bluntly, if Uber Eats were no longer delivering, most of the folks who fancy themselves the elite would starve to death. Ordinary folks would roll up their sleeves and find a way – because they can do real stuff.

In some ways, what we face ahead is more stark and comprehensive than most people can imagine. Yet people worry way too much about things that are not likely at all. We may go back to a frontier society for a time, but we are not going to be invaded by China or any other great malefactor. We may suffer a large terror attack – but it will not facilitate any serious occupation of the country.

What we are engaged in right now is a competition for the mandate of heaven. The left is busy shedding it at an ever accelerating pace. A few on the right are trying to re-establish it, but precious few. Most on the right are just trying to persuade people they would be more benign rulers than the insane left. They are probably right, but miss the point. We are not in the business of choosing our destructors, but of recovering the sovereignty of the people.

We are engaged in the opening battle for the mandate of heaven. At CORAC, we take to heart the words of Christ: “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them (ordinary people); and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For which is the greater; one who sits at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits as table? But I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22:25-27) We serve God by serving others.

We do not seek the mandate of heaven, but the mandate of Heaven. It is the only lasting legitimacy. Live it and it will come.