A letter to a granddaughter – The size of the State

When searching through the stats of this blog of mine, I've found a large number of accesses from foreign countries. So in honor of these most dear readers, I pour the text into English

In May, 1998, when we have just arrived to live Santarem, a town in the middle of the Amazon forest, and she lived in Rio de Janeiro, I’ve answered a letter from a very darling granddaughter where I made some reflections as timely today as when I've written them in the ending days of the twentieth century. Here is that letter:

My Dear Granddaughter

Your letter is a joy. Joy for being remembered and of remembering you, joy in reliving your memories, your features, the sounds of your voice, the touch of your embrace, the memories of your dealings, interests, jobs, studies, leisure, and your love affairs, joy in sharing your projects, your philosophical views. And the immense pleasure to exchange ideas and feelings with someone so well educated and cultured as you, even if we often disagree on your dearest ideologies... By the way in speaking of ideologies, I'm convinced they mostly serve to mess up things.

The four statements I'll put up now is a summary of my point of views:

1) We must be ethical in our actions and beliefs;

2) We must be tolerant of others' beliefs;

3) The set of individual prosperities makes prosperous all the society, and we must seek our singular well to achieve the common good;

4) We must be flexible, practical, and track pragmatic ways to achieve these goals.

The ethics limits us into the boundaries our rights and makes us respect the rights of others. Tolerance allows us to live together and cooperate. The best way to achieve the largest (best) overall good for all people is each individual to be free and responsible to solve its own issues, seek its own well, and pursue its own happiness. Pragmatism allows us to solve the problems that always exist in the overlapping rights. Humanity is fully permeated by antagonistic and conflicting rights, but civilization adapts us to resolve neatly and orderly these conflicts. Within these parameters, the State is crucial, but its action must be extremely limited.

Throughout history, with its origins in martial conquests, far from being an instrument of the common good and welfare, the State has been an oppressive instrument for dominating and exploiting peoples. It's that kind of atavistic wickedness I abhor; I dislike the State by this malignant aspect. Certainly, there are functions that only compete to a democratic State. However, even in the most democratic nations the State presents its pervasive and oppressive face. Thus, I am inclined to desire a smaller State, a so small one that it could not hide behind its monstrous, corporatist, impersonal and impenetrable bureaucracy; a so small State that could be democratically controlled.

The way things are I welcome anything that reduces State’s size and power, even at the expense of hypothetical or actual financial losses to the exchequer. Profit for the nation and individuals would arise from the reduction of the abuse by modern satraps, mandarins and Maharajas, and from decreasing the arrogance and hubris of the lords of power. This would fully compensate for any financial loss, resources that anyway would never go for the benefit of the people, but instead for the profit of the powerful.

I apologize for the length of this outburst, but you're a smart young woman, and I’m distressed by the feeling that you may not had opportunities to look at the world from the perspective of the fundamental and inalienable human rights and freedom. I’m distressed by the feeling that you could accept as natural and praiseworthy oppressive and totalitarian and human rights violators governments under the inexcusable and irrational claim that they bring some specific benefit to the people.

Most of the worst tyrants also provided specific benefits to their peoples. Hitler was praised and loved by his people, as was Getúlio Vargas, Fidel Castro and other dictators. Much of Chile population accepts Pinochet as benevolent leader. Trying to justify aggression to human rights and the undue restriction of freedom is disrespectful to so many heroes who, throughout the centuries, have given their lives for freedom.

My vision of mankind in this turn of the century, after millennia of injustices and massacres and genocides, is that the individual has a gradation in the immediacy of their vital needs. If there is lack of air or water, food or shelter, affection or achievement, freedom or dignity, the human being stifles and dies, physically or morally. Notice that the air is a basic physiological need while freedom is a necessity of the highest moral and intellectual nobility.

The crude primitive may not realize the value of freedom for which you need to have an educated and critic humanistic worldview. Today, the World is reaching this perception of the noblest needs, especially in Europe and North America, but also in other parts.

I will not, but you will see the new World that is coming in during the next decades as a complex of interests that clash and resolve peacefully and successfully under the aegis of universal laws that respect the noblest essence of the human beings: freedom and dignity of the individual.

This view implies the existence of democratic, pluralistic and specialized States limited on the administration of justice and the protection of individual rights, and also in universal high quality education and information. That's why I believe in the progressive and continued relaxation of totalitarian and dictatorial regimes, those that still remain, but within the next two decades will become real democracies.

When I was a child, I often heard people say that "the world marches to communism." I never believed in this fallacy. Trapped at home recovering from an illness between my twelve to fourteen years I read Cesar Cantu’s Universal History, all 12 volumes from my father’s bookcase. Many years later, I spent my spare time at the Biblioteca Nacional in Rio de Janeiro reading Toynbee’s A Study of History. These and other historians and biographers have shown me a path of moral and political improvement of Mankind. Improvement achieved in steps of millennia in the beginning, centuries more recently, and decades nowadays.

I believe the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which governs entropy, also applies to social phenomena. Therefore, it is merely a matter of time before the concepts of democracy, human rights and freedom will ultimately permeate and apply to all this world of ours.

As you can see, I regret the lack of more intelligent and educated people like you and your Mom around me so we could exchange experiences and ideas on so exciting topics. I would like pretty much to have you nearby.

I recommend that all of you join a lot of money and available time to come and spend a good time here with us.

I feel an immense tenderness and affection for you, with love, a kiss from your

Granddad.

In rereading this old text and recalling the events that brought down so many dictatorships around the World, even more, verifying the citizenship concept spreading everywhere, including in Brazil, I rejoice on having faith in the predictions I made to myself so many years ago at the turn of the millennium: Humanity marches to democracy.

And this prediction is even truer as better technology opens paths to transparency of government acts, and the spontaneous coordination of citizens to defend their rights against abuses, corruption, inefficiency, indifference and arrogance so usual in the behavior of State’s agents.

Also, the events of 2008 confirmed that the effective financial and other market regulations belong to the essential State functions.