The Comforts of the Rich & Powerful

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

 -Voltaire- 

It is said that many (maybe all) serial killers, typically start by killing animals, before they move on to begin killing people. It should be no surprise, then, that in this same way, Lords and monarchs alike, enjoy hunting as much as they do. 

Humans are the only creature that claims to believe in a God, someone once wrote, and the only one that acts as if they haven't got one. This contradiction can be seen in no better place than our attitude toward murder. 

In the book of Exodus, for example, we see how Moses - by being as obedient to God as Abraham - is relieved of any responsibility for the savage murders he directs his followers to commit. After receiving the Ten Commandments, Moses comes down from Mount Sinai and sees that his people had built for themselves a Golden Calf. Angered, he breaks the tablets (a fine way to treat holy writ) and proclaims, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” 

In other words, right after God gave Moses the commandment “thou shalt not kill,” God commanded Moses to act like Charles Manson and tell his followers to “kill them all!” Ignoring the obvious contradiction, Moses obeyed, blood was spilled, and a God who would force his people to wander around in the desert for forty years was avenged for the insult to his vanity.     

Humans also have the ability to denounce murder as both an immoral evil and a sport, a sin agaisnt God and an obligation to a monarch. And they do this without even a hint that they are being completely "relative" by choosing when and where, or even for whom it is, that any such "murder" is committed. 

And this is precisely the nature of power, that it alone has the authority to "be like God," and to determine when murder is right from when it is wrong. For a King is everywhere celebrated for doing with an armada, as St. Augustine pointed out in the City of God, what the pirate is condemned for doing with a single ship.  For like God himself, who is loved by the world despite having murdered it once already (along with the impending threat included in the book of Revelations of doing it, or at least allowing it to be done, yet again), so the sovereign can do no wrong.

This is why David's ascension to the throne was the sin of Adam & Eve. It is also why war is more like hunting pheasants or foxes for the rich and powerful, than it is for those killing and dying in them. And why the comforts of the rich, as Voltaire said, depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.