Early last year, HBO offered up a new, expanded version of The Godfather I & II. Building on the idea behind the 1977 Godfather Saga, which presented the original two films in chronological order with some deleted scenes added back, the Godfather Epic runs a bit over 7 hours and includes even more deleted scenes. While I don’t recommend it for those who have yet to see the original films, I highly recommend it for those (myself and my friends included) who have viewed the films enough times to quote them verbatim. The Epic not only adds a wealth of back story, it offers a different perspective on the relationship between Vito and Michael Corleone (and in doing so, demonstrates the power of editing). It’s not better than the originals, but it’s fantastic for the aficionados who want to get more “back story.”
I offered this exact observation to a long-time friend, who in return suggested I read the original book by Mario Puzo. I recently did so, on a lazy, rainy Saturday, cover-to-cover. His advice was right – the book is excellent, and it provides yet more back story (as well as including some story arcs that don’t appear in any form of the movies).
One line, spoken by Michael Corleone, is as apt today as it was when Puzo wrote it (1969) and when the fictional Michael uttered it (1950s):
I don’t trust society to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them.”
Michael, like his father before him, saw the path to wealth, power and security through action apart from the structures established by government. His observation, spoken late in the book, echoes the lesson put forth at the beginning in the tale of Bonasera the undertaker. Bonasera came to America for a better life and started a family. His daughter fought off an attempted rape by two young men from rich, powerful and well-connected families, and was severely beaten as a result. Bonasera sought justice for his daughter through the structures of his new home’s legal system, was failed by that system when the two young men were handed suspended sentences and walked free, and only then looked to the “community” solution, Don Corleone, for justice.
The real-world problem with Corleone-style “justice” is that it is entirely dependent on the morals and restraint of the dispenser. Don Vito rebuffed Bonasera’s request that the two young men be killed, because Bonasera’s daughter was still alive, but did agree to dispense commensurate physical justice. A less “moral” man might have ordered the murders of the two young men, their families, and the judge who put forth the lenient sentence. While viscerally satisfying, it’s reliant on human whims and is no basis for a civilized society.
The tale of Bonasera and Michael’s broader observation that I quoted above speak to the state failing its people. While we idealize the notion that government done right will provide proper justice, government is formed of people, people who are no different in their flaws and prejudices than the people they govern. When such failures happen, people (being people) start to seek alternate solutions.
In our comfortable, relatively well-functioning, first-world nation, we may believe we have much to complain about, but by and large our system works pretty well. To understand this, we merely need to look at other parts of the world. In many countries around the world, bribery to government officials and public workers is a normal part of doing business. It should come as no surprise that the top countries on this list are poorly functioning ones, run by varieties of totalitarian government. But, even our own well-functioning society is not immune from this. We simply have a different name for it: cronyism. Being well-connected to politicians and government is a sharp advantage in the competitive marketplace, and a tremendous amount of regulation and policy is written with the intent to pick winners and losers in various ways. Economically, these are inefficiencies rather than outright failures, but they are still clear demonstrations of the state failing its people.
Even starker is what’s going on in Venezuela. The rise of overt socialism there has led to widespread shortages of everything, growing corruption, runaway inflation, black markets, and the advent of Bitcoin as an alternative currency for people desperate to avoid the total devaluation of their wealth. As the state continues to fail its people there, the socialist governmental structure is descending into an outright dictatorship, which itself may very well end in horrific, violent anarchy.
Despite the lessons offered by Venezuela, and earlier lessons offered by the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain, Red China and many other big-government states, and despite the endless failings of our own big-government, too many Americans still support the idea of big-government as the preferred solution to, well, every problem they perceive. They want to put their fates in the hands of people “whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them…” with the only caveat being that those people be of their preferred political flavor/team/tribe. When those people fail them, they rage impotently, all the while demanding that more of those people be put in control of their fates.
All hope is not lost, however. Even as the surveillance and regulatory states grow, technology is enabling forward-thinking anti-establishmentarians to work around the state, its failings, and its unwelcome intrusions on our lives and liberties. People like Cody Wilson, Ross Ulbright, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange are, in their own way, following in the footsteps of the Corleone in their desire not to let the state have total control over our lives. Small-government organizations and movements push back against the idea that we should blindly put our trust and fates into the hands of elected officials.
Certainly, when we perceive the state to be relatively well-functioning, we should turn to the state for matters properly handled thereby. Crimes against individuals: assault, theft, robbery, rape, murder, and the like, are first and best handled by the police and the courts. BUT, since the police are not everywhere, and since they actually have no legal obligation to protect us, we’d be fools not to reserve the right of self-defense. Likewise with other fundamental rights, including speech, religion, association, assembly, et al. And, when the state fails in its duty to respect and defend those rights, we’d be fools not to argue or dispute their failings.
The lesson to take from The Godfather is not one of outside-the-law vigilantism or crime. That was their “solution,” a solution that cost many lives, including that of Vito’s eldest son, inflicted great harm on many people, and was itself subject to individual human whims, failings, and violations of the rights of others. The lesson is that we should invest as little power as possible in the people we choose to run society for us, that we should leave as little of our fate in their hands as possible, and that we should reserve for ourselves as much power as possible via strong protections for individual liberty and free action. Others will fail us, and the more power they have, the greater our powerlessness to escape those failings will be.
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