Return of the Goths

Ringo Starr once said that "everything government touches turns to crap." By extension, big government turns more to crap than small government, and when government gets its hand on all aspects of life, society itself turns to crap.

The truth in this is evident everywhere these days. We got crappy education, crappy news, crappy literature, crappy health care, crappy "green" energy, crappy money and crappy markets. There's great confusion about everything, not least philosophy and ethics. When college professors join rioters, and argue that burning down businesses isn't violence, then we know that sound ethics are in short supply. Everything has become a diffuse muddled mess.

The fact that government has this effect on society should come as no surprise. Government is after all founded on the lie that it's a necessary evil. Based on this it grants itself the right to tax and wage wars. It establishes a saturnistic hierarchy of privileges based on circumstances rather than merit. Vice is turned into virtue and virtue is demonized as vice. What's ugly is deemed beautiful. Weakness is strength. Propaganda is truth. Freedom is slavery and paper is money.

The inevitable end to such a world view is of course chaos, and it's into this chaos that the Goths, who are never far away, return and restore order. Goths live by three simple rules to which everything else is subordinate:

1. Don't break stuff
2. Don't steal
3. Honor your words

Apart from this, they don't give a damn. It doesn't matter what your circumstances may be. Rich or poor. Blue or Green. Black or White. They don't care. If you break stuff, they'll cut you down. If you steal, you're dead. If you break your words, you'll be dispossessed. However, if you refrain from vandalism and looting, and you're a man of your words, you have nothing to fear. They'll consider you harmless and worthy of protection. If you help them out, you become one of them, regardless of race or social standing.

This is why the Romans developed such a love-hate relationship with the Goths. They loved the way they could totally rely on their words of honor. But they hated the way they retaliated if they were in some way cheated. When the Romans failed to pay the Goths for their services against invaders and rioters, the Goths looted Rome. When the Romans failed again to honor their words on a later occasion, the Goths took over. Rome fell to the Goths, not because the Goths couldn't be trusted, but because the Romans tried to cheat them out of their just reward. The Byzantines, who also employed Goths to quell riots, never had the same problem as the Romans, because the Byzantines paid their dues in full.

Now that much of the West has fallen into moral and economic decay, similar to that which befell the Romans, we're likely to see a return of the simple honor code of the Goths. Like with the Goths, it will first look rather sporadic and disorganized. There will be armed individuals taking up position to protect private properties. This will become more organized as government decays further. Private security firms and army contractors will flourish, and generally work on the side of government to maintain law and order.

As long as governments honor their words and pay their dues in full, this arrangement will persist. However, should government at any point fail to collect the required taxes to pay these firms, things will sour. Government officials will no longer be protected. They will be ousted, and the Goths will take over.

By Andrea del Castagno - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, Link