the limits of the purpose of government

[Advocate]

People band together to form societies, of which government is a natural extension, in order to enable goods not available individually, primarily through efficiency. On a theoretical level there are negative (preventing harm) and positive (ensuring life is worth living) aspects to government. The context of both kinds of state action is relative. It's good for everyone to be wealthy but if anyone is too much more wealthy than anyone else, that is a problem, not a good, as it leads to general discontent. If someone is too much destitute relative to others, that will effect everyone's trust in society, since it could also happen to them. In short, the purpose of government is first to ensure that nobody is too much better or worse off than anyone else. Only by remaining a collective in a meaningful sense can governments work toward collective goods in a meaningful sense, which is their mandate.

[Nick_A]

People band together to form societies, of which government is a natural extension, in order to enable goods not available individually, primarily through efficiency. On a theoretical level there are negative (preventing harm) and positive (ensuring life is worth living) aspects to government. The context of both kinds of state action is relative. It's good for everyone to be wealthy but if anyone is too much more wealthy than anyone else, that is a problem, not a good, as it leads to general discontent. If someone is too much destitute relative to others, that will effect everyone's trust in society, since it could also happen to them. In short, the purpose of government is first to ensure that nobody is too much better or worse off than anyone else. Only by remaining a collective in a meaningful sense can governments work toward collective goods in a meaningful sense, which is their mandate.

Weil gets the term "Great Beast" from Plato. Specifically, this passage from Book VI of his Republic (here Plato critiques those who are "wise" through their study of society):

I might compare them to a man who should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is fed by him--he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and evil to be that which he dislikes...

A strong central government is a beast master. Its intent may be to promote fairness but its natural hypocrisy only gives the appearance of fairness as it promotes selective prestige. It is doomed to failure since a secular government strives to substitute its hypocritical secular values for religious values and the source of conscience.

A strong secular central government requires more and more methods of control to maintain hypocrisy. Eventually the people revolt against the threats of the Beast Master. Then the secular cycle begins again. The secular government must be limited by hypocrisy. It is in its nature. The leopard does not change its spots