It was and remains, one of the greatest deeds in history, that George Washington, first president of the United States of America, chose to retire from the presidency after serving two terms. That word, “serving”, plays an important role in this context. It is no mistake or coincidence that we, in American culture, say that a publicly elected leader “serves” in office. It is a foundational pillar of American culture, that a leader serves those whom submit to their leadership. A leader does, in fact, provide a service. The service they provide is that of organization. A leader allows individuals to work and move in unison for a single purpose. (Of course, there are various possible decentralized systems which do not rely on direct leadership, but we currently do not live and operate within such systems, so they are a topic for another time.) Within a hierarchical system, a leader provides individuals with a common synchronistic mechanism by which they may all move in harmony relative to a fixed point. This resembles the ability of all human society to organize relative to each other by synchronizing our clocks to a centralized system of time and then operating relative to that centralized system. So the role of a leader is ultimately to provide a service. Individuals follow leaders because they gain something from it. They are brought further toward their own individual interests. However, when the leader raises the price for that service higher than what the individual followers gain from the service itself, it is both reasonable and justified that individuals can and should abandon that leader in favor of one who will provide the same service for a lower price. After all, breaking even is the first rule of all enterprises.

Despite what some may have us all believe, there is in fact precedent for this in the traditional European culture of old times past. Firstly, it immediately calls to mind one of my favorite quotes from the Bible (Mathew 7:15-20) where Jesus says:

15 “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? 17 So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 So then, you will know them by their fruits.”

Here Jesus describes false prophets as “bad trees” and says that we can know if someone is a false prophet by their “bad fruits”, and he goes on to say that all bad trees should be thrown into the fire. In other words, Jesus says that leaders should be judged by the results of their actions and that leaders who yield bad results should be overthrown and cast away as false prophets.

In another place and time, it was the custom that Nordic vikings who followed a leader into battle, and were not rewarded well enough with plunder, would abandon that leader in search of another who would lead them to greater prosperity. This was the formidable and indomitable viking spirit which has been immortalized in legend. It submitted to no man, not even a leader, and was forged upon common goals and comradery rather than submission, genuflection, and humiliation. It was this viking spirit which was brought across the vast ocean by those seeking freedom from the oppressive leaders of Europe who had become too greedy and horded the prosperity for themselves. Just as the vikings of old, the American refugees abandoned the leaders who did not provide proper spoils from the common effort and thus took it upon themselves to gather their own spoils elsewhere. When the haughty and entitled European leaders attempted to give chase and seize the profits gathered by those who had left them behind, the Americans united against them, again for a common goal, for the common profit of all. This culminated in the great American Revolutionary War which founded the American Nation and solidified the basis of its culture. This revolutionary spirit, a will toward freedom, and a rejection of all leaders who do not deliver prosperous fruits to their constituents, is the founding cornerstone of American culture. More than anything else, the revolutionary spirit is that which has driven America toward ever-greater heights since its inception.

It is apt then, to say that America is the “Land of Revolution”. Whether it may yet be the “Land of the Free” depends entirely on the American will against tyranny.

What I will describe here, the concept of “Divine Concession”, is the fundamental basis upon which the American culture and will against tyranny is based. Divine Concession is the willing resignation of power by a leader to the individuals contained within a populace.
The word “Concession” refers to a Concession of power to The People. The word “Divine”, in this context serves two purposes.
First, it describes the type of power wielded. Power over many people’s lives is a God-like power. It mimics the power of God. Yet this power is not meant for human beings. That is why kings are forced to claim some divine qualification. They know that a regular human does not have the right to rule over many others and use them as he pleases. So they claim either that they are a god, or that they are appointed by God. In either case, they claim that they are divine, and thus above all others.

However, the second meaning of the word “Divine” in the term “Divine Concession” describes the quality of the act being done. To concede power to the people is itself a divine act. By conceding power, the leader demonstrates their understanding that they are not divine in quality. They do not choose to become a false prophet or idol. They do not choose to enslave other people and thus give into the temptations of evil. Instead they choose the path of righteousness. They give over people’s lives to the people who live those lives. This is a divine act, for it is an act of Liberation, instrumental to the creation of paradise, and sits firmly in the middle of the straight and narrow path towards ultimate righteousness.

This type of Concession is archetypally exemplified by George Washington and by Lucius Cincinnatus of Rome.

Cincinnatus was an ancient Roman statesman and military leader who was called upon by the Roman Senate to assume command of the Roman military and save Rome from invaders. Cincinnatus had been retired and was humbly working on his farm when he was called out of retirement and granted dictatorial power. Cincinnatus took only fifteen days to defeat the invaders, at which point he immediately resigned from dictatorship and returned to his farm and his plow. Cincinnatus was regarded as a model of virtue and great leadership in ancient Rome, where they held him up as an example. Later, in early America, the Founding Fathers had great reverence for Cincinnatus, whom they saw as a model for the ideal statesman. The comparison between George Washington and Cincinnatus was made early on, and became a part of the early culture and mythos of America. In fact the city of Cincinnati was named after Cincinnatus.

George Washington, as Americans should well know, retired after only two terms, and set a precedent for all other presidents, until Franklin D. Roosevelt went on to be elected four times and serve for four terms. After this, the 22nd Amendment was ratified, officially limiting the presidency to only two terms. If not for Washington’s willingness to give up the power of the presidency, however, it may very well have been the case that America descended into dictatorship or monarchy early in its history, and that we would not even be talking about American democracy and the will against tyranny now. It was Washington’s act of Divine Concession which solidified the status and culture of America as firmly Democratic and anti-monarchist.

Yet the fact that it became necessary to create a law to solidify Washington’s tradition and safeguard democracy is telling. Any system of government will always have holes which can be exploited, and the harder we make it for authoritarians to seize power, the more inefficient and drudgerous we make our system. Authoritarians use this to claim that authoritarianism is more natural, efficient, and inevitable. Yet this remains to be seen in practice, as authoritarian regimes are notoriously riddled with their own problems, separate from those of Democracy. But further than that, it is not the American way. The American way is and always will be some form of democracy, and anything else is simply un-American.

Yet, we are still faced with a practical conundrum. Any system we create can be exploited. The game of politics is a never-ending arms race between those who design systems (such as the founding fathers) and those who find the faults in those systems and hack them, in the same way as a computer hacker. Politics is an eternal struggle between systems programmers and hackers.
Thus the simple fact remains, that any system of governance, but especially a democracy, cannot be sustained on law and institutional regulation alone. Democracy must also be sustained by a culture which venerates and respects it. The people of a nation must demand Divine Concession as their natural right, and must abandon any leader who refuses, lest they be enslaved.

Divine Concession is fundamentally vital to the creation of a just and unauthoritarian society.
This is because there is a fundamental paradox which plagues the governance of humanity. That is, the state of Anarchy is fundamentally unstable and vulnerable to anyone even mildly Authoritarian. This is because political power is, and always has been, derived primarily from mass organization. Authoritarians use mass organization as a means of power, while Anarchists shun organization as “evil” and “unjustified”. In other words, Anarchists shun the means of power altogether. This makes them inherently vulnerable to any kind of organization, and no amount of screaming about how wrong and unjust it is will dissuade Authoritarians from using this fact to subjugate them.

The paradox of anarchy is that it is vulnerable to being taken over by anyone who is willing to organize properly. Thus, Anarchists themselves need to be organized in order to protect their cherished freedom, and that organization requires, to some degree or another, a hierarchical system which regulates people and tells them what to do.
Of course, the authoritarian will immediately jump to the claim that this justifies the opposite extreme as the only viable alternative. Yet this is a false binary, because there is an entire spectrum of variation which exists between complete anarchy and totalitarianism. This is evident from the fact that there have been, and continue to be many systems which regulate certain things and not others, allowing certain freedoms and not others. The trick to all of these systems of course, is figuring out which things to regulate, how much, and in what way. That is a discussion for another time.

But here is where the Divine Concession comes in. Imagine if the Anarchists accept organization as a strategy toward the end goal of freedom, and then they are able to find a leader who will only lead them so far as to ensure their freedom, but will practice restraint, and will refrain from seizing control outside of that purpose. One may justifiably say that finding such a leader is a very difficult task and that trusting anyone to do such a thing is a risky leap of faith. This is a completely legitimate point. Yet we know that such people exist, firstly because we have extreme historical examples like George Washington and Cincinnatus, but secondly, because we have some leaders who do practice restraint in much smaller ways every day. If none of our leaders ever practiced restraint then all nations would be eternally plagued by either totalitarian dictatorships, or endless civil wars. Yet, this is not what we can observe in the world.

The restraint of leaders is founded on two pillars. First it is founded on the natural disposition and character of the individual holding power. But secondly, it is founded on a culture which expects, venerates, and demands Divine Concession from its leaders. Leaders are human beings who grow up in a certain culture just like the rest of us. Monarchs are often raised in cultures that venerate them over all, and despise Divine Concession. Thus they tend to develop a natural sense of entitlement which cannot be reasoned with. However, if our leaders grow up in and are immersed in a culture which venerates and expects Divine Concession, then they will feel much more pressure to practice it. The remainder of maintaining the system will then come down to a combination of electing those with the proper virtuous characters, and designing an ever-updating governmental system which protects against hackers.

Yet, even in non-democratic systems, the overall stability of the system is fundamentally founded upon the actions of leaders. That is, one cannot have a stable system when there is a leader attempting to seize more power than they have been given.
In all of the types of systems which exist between anarchy and totalitarianism, the stability of the system is founded on the leadership refraining from seeking to control more than they already do, and giving away some power to the general populace. That is, if the leaders choose to seek more power, the only way that the populace can resist, is to create an organized movement against them, thus simply granting power to a different institution. If it is successful, then that alternative institution of organization will simply become the new leadership. If it fails, then the leader will simply seize more power. In both cases there is great instability and upheaval of systemic norms. So then, the stability of the system is dependent on the discretion of the leader. The leader must choose to concede power to the population in order to avoid being overthrown by a new institution of power which will take their place. The leader must choose not to attempt to control what they could attempt to control.

For instance, when a leader chooses to attempt to stay in office past his term limits, he forces the population to either overthrow him or to accept his new self-defined term limits (which are so often limitless). So every time a leader leaves office when his term limit is finished, it is a concession of power to the people. It is his resolution to not destabilize the system by seeking more power, and thus to preserve the status quo.

But Divine Concession is present in more things than simply term limits. It exists in every instance where there is the potential for a leader to seize more power. Divine Concession exists in all of the rights and freedoms of a people under a constitution or other legal document. Even the Magna Carta contained some Divine Concession, however small. Divine Concession exists as a leader’s restraint. When a leader chooses to infringe on people’s rights, they force the people to make a decision between giving up their own power, or fighting to overthrow the leader. This decision then creates large change in one direction or the other. So leaders are directly responsible for the stability of the system, and this stability is all wrapped up in Divine Concession. By showing restraint and refraining from attempting to seize more power, the leader actively stabilizes the system.

My reason for describing this phenomenon, and giving it a name, is to give concrete shape to this concept which I think many people already understand intuitively, and also to give an easily recognizable symbol to the concept which people may use to discuss it more conveniently. The idea of Divine Concession, is something fundamental to our entire modern political system, and yet it has been largely unconscious throughout our history. I seek to make this concept more conscious and thus bring it to the foreground of our discussions about democracy, American culture, and the justification of political systems.