When a baby takes its first breath of air, it is not how legitimate the child is deemed to be by onlookers that determines whether it will live or die. Viability is an issue for survival. Legitimacy is not. And yet authorities have since time immemorial taken upon themselves the right to determine the legitimacy of children and nations.
Authority is a strange and mysterious topic. It is a concept resorted to during power struggles, but it purports to be about more than who is bigger and stronger. It is about legitimacy or lawfulness, but what can that possibly mean when the topic in question is anyone's right to exist?
When the British Mandate was lifted, it was not the Balfour declaration of 1917 nor the United Nations General Assembly's recommendation of partition in 1947 that created the State of Israel. It was winning the ensuing war in 1948 that ensured its existence.
Yet the word "authority" is often bandied about, when the existence of countries is in question. Take for instance James Monroe's envoy to Galveston, George Graham, who was sent by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to deal with Jean Laffite. Here is the beginning of a letter Graham presented to Jean Laffite.
When the reply came in the form of authorization from John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State under James Monroe, Jean Laffite found himself being more circumspect and explaining that he was there to help the United States. But what did all this back and forth correspondence about authority really signify?
When someone asks you by what authority you exist, chances are what he really means is: Whose guns will protect you if I decide to do away with you? Is there anything else it could mean?
Some people believe that anarchy is bad, because it leads to chaos. Those people cling to authoritarian regimes and institutions, because they think that is the only way order can be maintained. In fact, anarchy, if left to take its natural course, leads to traditional command structure in social groups. The problem with authoritarianism isn't the command structure. The problem is that natural selection processes have ceased to function. In an authoritarian regime, the command hierarchy has calcified into something that no longer functions.
In chimpanzee groups, leadership is fluid. In hunter-gatherer societies, people follow leaders only to the extent that they believe a particular individual whom they are following is going the right way. But as civilization becomes more entrenched, people stop judging for themselves what is true and what is false, and they delegate their thinking to institutions, traditions and authorities.
Real dominance is something a leader earns. It is not something inherited by virtue of race, sex, age, or social rank in a highly structured society. Yet when people talk about traditional family roles, they somehow assume that authority is what leads to dominance. Men dominate women, adults dominate children and employers dominate employees as a result of the structure of society, as opposed to the structure building itself out of the function that each person plays in the immediate social circle.
InTheodosia and the Piratesthe difference between natural dominance and false authoritarianism is highlighted. The American Navy has the authority, but not the leadership ability to thwart the British in the War of 1812. The privateers under Jean Laffite have no authority, but they have the ability to do so and the true support of the people. Joseph Alston has the authority to command the local militia, by virtue of being the Governor of South Carolina, but not the ability to exercise that command. James Madison has the authority to secure a declaration of war, but not the natural abilities of a true warrior like Aaron Burr to be a good supreme commander.
Even within the sphere of the family, there is a difference between natural marriage and legal marriage. In a legal marriage in the nineteenth century, a man commanded his wife by virtue of her oath of obedience. However, many men were unequal to the task, as being male did not necessarily give them natural dominance over the women they married. Arguably, in many ways Dolley Madison was a better leader than her husband in times of war, even though she was not his intellectual equal as a scholar.
By the same token, though Theodosia was a far better scholar than Jean Laffite, she was not his equal in leadership under fire. It is for this reason, and not because of any authoritarian command issues or sexist preconceptions, that in this novel, Theodosia accepted Jean's leadership.
Today, with all the egalitarian changes in the law that we have seen take place, people are still confused about these issues. The majority support authoritarianism in science and in education, because they fear anarchy. They do not seem to realize that if we just allow nature to take its course, the right leader will always arise in a time of crisis. People will follow not because they are compelled to do so by fear of reprisal, but because they want to do the right thing.
