An interesting article by Stephen Pinker which suggests that violence is lessening in the world and over history . This is consistent with Harpur's and Deniehy's republican thesis that decreasing tyranny and increasing liberty allow individuals to express themselves morally - which includes less violence.

From the article:

Some of the evidence has been under our nose all along. Conventional history has long shown that, in many ways, we have been getting kinder and gentler. Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, conquest as the mission statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture and mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and differences of opinion, assassination as the mechanism of political succession, rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide as the major form of conflict resolution--all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history.

But, today, they are rare to nonexistent in the West, far less common elsewhere than they used to be, concealed when they do occur, and widely condemned when they are brought to light.

Deniehy extrapolated from history that tyranny and despotism crimped and limited an individual's ability to fully express their morality. He and Harpur both articulated this in the depravities of old Europe and the utopian Australian future - free from tyranny and an example of liberty to the world.

Deniehy and Harpur believed that human progress would discover its grounding in moral improvement. This is a matter for the individual rather than the coercion of the state; however their insight was that tyranny, despotism and coercion from the state directly effected an individuals moral expression and progress.

For that reason Australian Republicanism focuses heavily on the eradication of tyranny through political technologies such as constitutionalism, rights, separation of powers, etc. The negative societal effect a tyrannous regime has on the moral choices and expression of individuals inevitably increases violence.

It is also important to note that tyranny does not have to be absolute to be destructive in this area. Even insidious tyranny - which we know as arbitrary government - has a detrimental effect on the individual's moral expression. This is also why the state of emergency and state of exception must be resisted and deemed incompatible with liberal democracy and republican governance - as it is tyranny.

It is a shame that Dan Deniehy and Charles Harpur don't have wider reading's outside the history of Australian Republican Philosophy, as their thesis would probably have been included as one of the points trying to describe the effect in the article.

cam