If you want to understand the great theories of government, the historic philosophies of state, then you could study J.S. Mill’s “On Liberty”, F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”, and the works of Locke, take a trip to the dark side with Marx, Engels and Hobbes — make sure to expunge their evil from your mind with “The Naked Communist” — or at least check out their SparkNotes.
It could take you many hours, much thought, and make you incredibly livid at the government…
…or you could save yourself a lot of time, effort, and if you have children involve them too, by reading a too often overlooked classic of English literature, T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King”.
A fantasy novel about King Arthur, not exactly my kind of book, the 1958 classic includes in its early chapters a simple yet effective exploration of competing political philosophies, the wizard Merlin transporting the young, future king Arthur to the realms of differing species — fish, hawks, ants, geese, and badgers — each with their own ways of governance.
The fish live under the strongman dictatorship of “might is right”; the hawks, though magnificent in their ridiculous way, live under oppressive martial law; the badgers are bookish but isolationist; the geese, free-wheeling but propertyless individualists, look out for each other in spontaneous order and meritocracy; yet it’s the ants that are most memorable.
The ants live under the totalitarianism of socialism, with their one-sentence constitution inscribed over the entrance to the colony: “EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY”.
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