The "Legitimate" Government

The modern governments of the world have existed for hundreds of years. People seem to take the existence for these governing bodies as givens in our society. However, what is it that gives these nations the right to be in power and control lands that they travelled to? In no nation is this more prevalent than in the United States. We are literally a nation of immigrants, who suppressed our native population almost out of existence.
Leslie Marmon Silko, in her novel Almanac of the Dead, writes “there was no, and there never had been, a legal government by Europeans anywhere in the Americas. Not by any definition, not even by the European’s definition and laws. Because no legal government could be established on stolen land. Because stolen land never had a clear title. … All the laws of the illicit governments had to be blasted away” (133). While this is blatantly a statement bashing America, it also raises a good point. While our government might disagree, according to this statement, which is said by a Mexican Indian living in Arizona, we have no right to the lands that we live on. According to this statement though, Europeans are entitled to the lands they live on and all other people are as well, just not any country of primarily European descendants in the Americas. This statement seems to validate the fact that other people displaced the natives in their homelands and took over the nation. This was common in the western world. The Romans displaced the Celts and other earlier European groups; the Romans were later displaced by the Goths, and the other Germanic tribes who organized the modern nations of Europe. The Aryans also displaced the natives of India and the Japanese displaced the Ainu in Hokkaido, the northern province of Japan. I am not stating this to say what the Europeans did during the era of exploration was good, but it wasn’t new and it wasn’t just limited to the Americas.
I believe that this claim can really be applied to all people living in almost every nation throughout the world. Evolutionary theory has all humans originating in Africa, and thus each part of world belongs to everyone. In essence, the fact that we moved to specific lands means that we stole the land from the other early civilizations. This begs the question, if our government has no right to rule because we stole the land, then who really has the right to rule. I would argue that the government that truly has the right to govern is a true people’s democracy, not one where we represent elected officials, but a world government where everyone is informed and understands how to govern. Ideally a democracy governs for the people, but if a “legal government” can’t be set up because the land doesn’t belong to the inhabitants, then a world government, set up around complete unification is the only government that could truly work. While some tribal lands are still controlled by the “original inhabitants,” the argument could be made that since the government doesn’t really represent the people, especially in a lot of third world countries, then no government, be it a monarchy or a representational democracy can be legitimate.
This also makes the notion that the government is a power in control of the land and not the people. In any land where people live, there will always be people living in it, and government is somewhat of a basic human necessity. Government is not formed by the land that the nation encapsulates, but by the people living in it. People make up a government. I feel that what Silko is arguing against is a government blatantly disregarding the minorities living in it; they must represent everyone. Thus, while a world government is a viable solution to this problem, another option is that we could truly represent all minorities in America equally.
The idea that there is no true government because we don’t really own the land brings into question the idea of nationalism. If there is no nation, can there be nationalism? Benedict Anderson, in his work Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, “nationalism has to be understood by aligning it, not with self consciously held political ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that preceded it” (12). This presents the idea that nationalism is dependant on the nation state. Thus, without a nation there is no nationalism. This does leave a slight window open for some form of nationalism. Nationalism is in essence a glorified love for ones nation and origins. I feel that while nationalism might seem to be dependant on a government, it might actually depend on a bond between the people who live in a region. It isn’t the government that creates nationalism, but the people. Since Silko doesn’t argue about religion or specific birthplace, I believe that religion would likely have replaced nations if there wasn’t a nation to begin with. No matter what, humanity will always be divided. We can never all assimilate and be the same. As was discussed last week in Snow Crash, the only time humanity was ever uniform is when we were practically controlled by a universal language. However, with language and geographic differences, comes basic human differences.
While I raised the idea earlier of a unified human government where every person was informed because no nation truly owns the land, the people will never be unified, and it might be nearly impossible because of basic human differences. I said earlier that it was basic human differences that create nations. I believe this is necessarily true for any nation, and thus, nationalism is one of these differences. In the case of Silko’s statement, the problem may be two different views of nationalism. The Mexican Indians do not feel any attachment to the United States, and thus don’t respect it. They feel that it is an illegal government because of nationalism. Their nationalistic impulses divide them between the white Americans. They can only see the differences between the America that they want and the America that is. They see themselves as oppressed in their homeland. This raises the question of what is the role of a government, if it is not to represent all people. The natives align with a different set of values and goals, because nationalism comes from the culture that precedes it, and thus, all people are inherently different, and to over come this and truly unify as a people, we will need to see each other as a common human form, rather than by racial and national differences.