[Peace-discuss] What's Left of the Divine Right

[E. Wayne Johnson]

In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and 
thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for 
the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of 
states. But the longer humanity lived the weaker grew the belief in this 
peculiar, God-given right of the ruler. That belief withered in the same 
way and almost simultaneously in the Christian and the Brahman world, as 
well as in Buddhist and Confucian spheres, and in recent times it has so 
faded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonable 
understanding and the true religious feeling. People saw more and more 
clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and 
immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just 
like themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to 
their interests but also to their moral sense. And so one might suppose 
that having lost confidence in any religious authority for a belief in 
the divinity of potentates of various kinds, people would try to free 
themselves from subjection to it. But unfortunately not only were the 
rulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having the 
peoples in subjection, but as a result of the belief in, and during the 
rule of, these pseudodivine beings, ever larger and larger circles of 
people grouped and established themselves around them, and under an 
appearance of governing took advantage of the people. And when the old 
deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindled 
away these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like its 
predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to a 
limited number of rulers.

- Tolstoy (Letter to a Hindu [Gandhi])
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