Posts Tagged ‘governance’

“The Grammar of Punishment”

December 16, 2025
Ricardo Morin
The Grammar of Punishment
10″x12″
Watercolor
2003

Ricardo F. Morín

November 2025

Bala Cynwyd, Pa

Billy Bussell Thompson, Editor

Author’s Note:

Societies respond to harm in two fundamentally distinct modes of action.    One unfolds through the slow, cumulative patterns of behavior and belief that shape collective life; the other through the deliberate, codified interventions undertaken by institutions in the name of order.    The Grammar of Conflict and The Grammar of Punishment are companion essays, each devoted to one of these modes of action.   The Grammar of Conflict traces how hatred, victimhood, hypocrisy, tribalism, and violence intertwine into a self-perpetuating system—one that is sustained through repeated explanation at every turn and is endured not through necessity, but through the stories societies choose to tell.    The Grammar of Punishment concerns the authority of the State, viz. a formal, structured exercise of power that imposes consequences within boundaries defined by lawful interpretation.   The Grammar of Conflict traces how civic and political antagonism becomes habitual and self-justifying.   The Grammar of Punishment addresses cases in which the State that exceeds its limits can turn injustice into a system of unreasoned laws.    Taken together, the two essays offer complementary perspectives on the forces that perpetuate harm and on the deliberate choices that may interrupt its recurrence.

Abstract:

The Grammar of Punishment addresses the consequences a society imposes for wrongdoing and how the consequences shape the political order and the moral landscape.    The essay treats punishment as a limited civic instrument and punishment as an entrenched practice.    It describes conditions under which the same punitive act can either uphold shared rules or weaken these rules when the scope and purpose of the punishment exceed the original moral and civic justification for imposing them.   The drift beyond that justification often occurs because punishment extends beyond accountability:   when punishment becomes a vehicle for revenge, a demonstration of power, and a means of perpetuating the authority or moral narratives that allow it to continue long after the original violation has been addressed.   This essay does not oppose punishment; it addresses conditions under which punishment displaces justice.    At a time when punitive measures increasingly shape political discourse and public policy, understanding the internal logic of punishment is essential to preserving the boundary between justice and power.

The essay will trace how punishment evolves from a measured response to a specific wrongdoing into a self-perpetuating system of governing.    It will show how institutions originally created to restore justice will come to assert authority, to sustain narratives of legitimacy, and to conceal the principles they were established to defend.    The analysis will identify the conditions under which punishment remains credible (when the exercise of punitive authority is bounded by reason, procedure, scope, proportionality, time, and review) and the points at which punishment ceases to protect social order and begins instead to perpetuate harm.    The essay, however, will neither dictate specific policies nor condemn the use of policies.    Its purpose will be to clarify the roles attributed to punishment, the points at which those roles break down, and how continued reliance on punitive measures discloses deeper social choices about authority, responsibility, and the impulse to respond to injury—choices that reveal as much about a society’s values as about its fears.

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Punishment is a public act that imposes a cost in response to a breach of law or shared norm.    Punishment marks a boundary, declares a rule, and demonstrates its enforcement.    This definition distinguishes punishment from prevention, restraint, accountability, and repair.    Prevention concerns events that have not yet occurred.    Restraint limits the capacity of an individual or group to cause harm.    Accountability establishes facts and assigns responsibility.    Repair addresses loss and attempts to restore what has been taken away.    Punishment differs from these responses because punishment addresses a specific violation after the fact and imposes a consequence.

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Any serious assessment of punishment must answer three questions:    What is the purpose of punishment?    To whom is punishment directed?    And, what is the outcome of punishment?   The first question concerns a reasoned intent as opposed to a vague one.    The second question concerns the target and scope of the punitive act.    The third question concerns its manifestation as opposed to the original intention of punishment.    A punishment that claims deterrence yet produces recurrence, or resists compliance, errs not in degree but in comprehension of punishment as a tool.    By ignoring cause, the application of punishment can mistake reaction for resolution and enact justice without insight—a cycle that corrects nothing because it understands nothing.

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Four primary purposes of punishment are commonly recognized:    boundary-setting, deterrence, incapacitation, and recognition.    Boundary-setting defines the limits of acceptable behavior and affirms that rules retain meaning only when their violation entails consequence; those limits must be defined with clarity.    Deterrence seeks to prevent future harm by making the cost of wrongdoing visible and measurable.    Incapacitation protects society by restricting the offender’s ability to inflict further injury.    Recognition satisfies the moral need to acknowledge that a wrong has occurred and that the community has responded to it.    These aims are conceptually clear, yet their success depends on interpretation and application—each revealing whether the pursuit of order remains faithful to the idea of justice.

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A penalty first intended to correct a specific wrongdoing can, over time, be turned by institutions into an instrument of government.  This transformation begins when authorities broaden the reach of the penalty, apply it repeatedly as a mechanical demonstration, and treat its continuation as proof of the authority of the institutions and the legitimacy of the system.  What begins as a targeted reaction applied to a specific violation is repeated, extended, and maintained beyond its original scope.  Over time, the expectation of punitive action acquires a life of its own, and support for punishment becomes a marker of allegiance to the prevailing order.  Actions that once aimed to correct behavior evolve into assertions of dominance, and dissent is recast as disloyalty.  As this process deepens, penalties grow harsher, the circle of responsibility expands, and temporal limits dissolve.  Punishment, once applied to resolve conflict, is continued under conditions that reproduce the same conflict.  When a punitive measure must be repeated indefinitely merely to prove that a rule still holds, the measure is no longer reinforcing the rule; the measure itself becomes the rule.   When punishment is applied habitually, its function changes—no longer of law but of power.   Habit grants power a moral vocabulary that disguises its interest as principle.
When law borrows the tone of justice itself, punishment is presented as restoration.

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Once power begins to speak in the place of law, the line between what is and is not permitted may remain obscure, but the penalty for transgression is certain.   Such obscurity transforms the law from a boundary of understanding into a field of intimidation.   Power gains elasticity by refusing clarity; it rewards those who conform and isolates those who interpret too freely.   In this inversion, the rule of law survives only in form but its grammar—definition, proportion, and foreseeability—has been erased.

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Legitimacy is the foundation on which punishment stands. Without legitimacy, punishment no longer functions as justice and becomes an imposition of unchecked power—an exercise of power without lawful foundation. Legitimacy demands definition; tyranny thrives on ambiguity. For punishment to be legitimate, the rules it enforces must be established in advance, written in language that the public can understand, and open to examination and review through lawful procedures. To write rules in advance is to bind power to reason; it makes punishment a civic act—foreseeable, accountable, and shared—rather than the decision of whoever holds command. When these conditions are met, punishment serves a civic purpose, reinforces the rule of law, and secures its own legitimacy instead of weakening it.

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Time limits are essential safeguards that prevent punishment from becoming a permanent condition.  A consequence without a defined endpoint ceases to address a specific violation and becomes a permanent structure of power.  When the duration of punishment is not limited by purpose, punishment no longer serves the law, but replaces it.  This principle applies both within societies and among them:   a sanction imposed on an individual, a community, or a State follows the same moral and structural logic.  In foreign relations, punitive measures such as sanctions or embargoes function as instruments of discipline between States, and they risk the same transformation—from response to domination—when no path toward resolution is defined.  The possibility of restoration—whether through legal standing, political recognition, or the end of hostilities—is not an act of leniency but a precondition for stability.  Without a defined point of closure, the punished party has no reason to change course, and opposition becomes the only rational response.  Durable orders, civic or international, therefore require an exit from punishment if they are to secure lasting peace.

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Deterrence is often described as the most rational purpose of punishment, yet its logic frequently is invoked under conditions that include other motives.  Under vague statutes, however, deterrence no longer warns; it confuses.  Political authorities often invoke deterrence to justify harsher measures and claim that fear of consequence will prevent future harm.  But fear imposes compliance without addressing underlying conditions that give rise to transgression.  A punitive policy designed to frighten rather than to understand or correct those conditions becomes less an instrument of prevention and more a mechanism for asserting control.  It teaches not respect for the rule of law but submission to power.  When deterrence functions in this way, it ceases to serve justice and instead sustains the very instability it claims to prevent.

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Uncertainty is an inherent condition of every system of punishment.  Facts are often incomplete, motives are mixed, and consequences can rarely be predicted with precision.  When the absence of reason is institutionalized under the pretext of uncertainty, the temptation arises to punish not for actions already committed but for those merely expected.  Measures such as preventive detention or deportation are imposed not on verified conduct but on assumptions about future behavior.  These actions, though defended as safeguards against possible harm, risk turning suspicion into verdict.  This form of preemptive punishment blurs the distinction between justice and prevention, replacing evidence with prediction.  As the reach of punishment extends beyond proven acts into the realm of conjecture, the obligation to justify its use must grow correspondingly heavier.

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There are cases in which punishment is not only justified but necessary.  Certain violations—treason, systemic corruption, sustained violence—break the foundation of shared order.  Ignoring violations signals that common rules no longer carry consequence; this breakdown in enforcement creates the conditions for further harm.  In such circumstances, punishment functions as an act of preservation:   it re-establishes lawful boundaries and affirms that no person or group stands above the rules that govern collective life.   Yet the legitimacy of this response depends on proportion and restraint.   When punishment becomes the automatic answer to every offense, it ceases to serve justice and instead entrenches a culture of retribution.  Punishment fulfills its purpose only when it is applied after reasoned explanation, fair procedure, and tangible repair have failed to resolve the violation; under those conditions, punishment restores the boundaries of order without extending harm beyond necessity.

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Mercy functions as a limiting condition within systems of punishment rather than as a negation of justice.  Where legal systems retain mechanisms for clemency, review, or proportional adjustment, punishment remains bounded by its original civic purpose.   Systems that apply punishment without the possibility of mitigation or termination treat duration as authority and convert consequence into permanence.  Under such conditions, punishment ceases to respond to a specific violation and instead establishes an enduring relation of domination.

The availability of mercy alters the operation of punishment by introducing temporal and proportional limits.  These limits prevent punitive authority from extending beyond the circumstances that justified its initial application.  When legal procedure excludes such limits, enforcement persists independently of the conduct that prompted it, and legality is reduced to repetition rather than judgment.  Under such circumstance, punishment is administered as a continuous practice rather than as a reasoned response.

Systems that incorporate mercy preserve a distinction between law and command by allowing punishment to conclude once its stated purpose has been met.   Where that distinction is maintained, punishment remains an instrument within the law rather than a substitute for it.  Where it is not maintained, punishment operates without reference to restoration, and civic membership is replaced by continued exposure to sanction.

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These principles are not abstractions but safeguards that keep the exercise of power subject to the law. When institutions apply punishment within those limits, the law retains its credibility because the consequences remain connected to reason. When institutions exceed those limits, punishment replaces the law as the source of authority, and conflict grows within the space that reason has abandoned.   Under such circumstance, punishment no longer resolves the doing of wrong; it reproduces it.   Justice survives only when the law speaks with a clarity that power cannot rewrite.

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Posted in Political Philosophy, Ethics and Public Life, Political Culture, Civic Agency, Structures of Power, Modernity and Conflict, Essays (English) | Leave a Comment »

“The Masquerade of Small Government”

November 27, 2025

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Ricardo Morín
Silent Quadtych: The Masquerade of Small Government
Each Panel: 22’ x 30”
Watercolor, graphite, gesso, acrylic on paper
2010

Ricardo F. Morín

November, 2025

Oakland Park, Florida

Author’s Note

The idea of shrinking government in the United States has recurred across administrations, yet the national deficit persists and the central obligations of public life (Social Security, Medicare, rising healthcare costs, and the long-term fiscal imbalance) remain structurally unresolved.   Initiatives framed as efficiency programs often divert attention from these enduring commitments.   This essay examines the distance between the performance of reform and the realities that persist beneath that performance, and asks what remains concealed when a portrayal of reform is presented as transformation—particularly the corporate interests that benefit when regulatory and oversight functions are reduced.

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The recent closure of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reveals more than an administrative shortfall.   The initiative began with the extravagant promise of saving several trillion dollars, yet concluded with an unverifiable claim equivalent to roughly three percent of the federal budget.  The disparity is not a technical miscalculation but a symbolic one.  The disparity exposes a political pattern in which sweeping reform is announced, performance is staged, and the result is a gesture that bears little relation to the scale of the aspiration.   What had appeared to be a disciplined restructuring of government became instead an example of how ambition can detach from feasibility.

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The language of efficiency has long exerted a nearly irresistible appeal.   That language suggests a vision of governance freed from excess, guided by prudence, and aligned with fiscal virtue.   Yet efficiency functions as a metaphor rather than a principle.   The metaphor conceals assumptions about what government should do, what citizens require, and what modern complexity demands.   One assumption is that public obligations can be met with fewer instruments; another is that smaller institutions inherently serve the public better.   Both assumptions overlook the fact that intricate societies require robust capacity, and that such capacity necessarily entails cost.

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When such programs collide with the operational realities of administration, their limits become evident.   Federal agencies exist because the responsibilities they discharge cannot be managed by private initiative alone.   These agencies coordinate infrastructure, regulate markets, monitor systemic risks, and mediate conflicts among large and often competing interests.   Attempts to severely curtail these functions rarely yield the projected savings, because the underlying needs do not disappear.   Reformers confront a simple truth:   indispensable functions cannot be eliminated without consequence.

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What emerges instead is appearance without substance.   The promise of cutting government satisfies a cultural demand for acts that signal restraint, even if the result satisfies little else.   That promise affirms a narrative in which bureaucracy is imagined as the obstacle to national well-being and institutional reduction as the remedy.   Yet an appearance of reform often substitutes for substantive reform.   Procedural actions are elevated to the status of outcomes, and the declaration of change is treated as proof that change has occurred.

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Behind this representation stands a deeper strategy.   When government is weakened, the scope of public oversight contracts.   Such contraction reallocates authority rather than removing it.   In the absence of robust public institutions, nongovernmental power centers (corporations, high-wealth individuals, and other privately controlled entities operating without electoral accountability) assume a wider sphere of influence, operating with fewer obligations and almost no transparency.   The rhetoric of shrinking the State therefore conceals a different movement entirely:   the expansion of discretion outside the channels of democratic accountability.

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This expansion is most visible in the consolidation of wealth.   When regulatory and investigative capacities narrow, the constraints on large fortunes diminish.  Concentrated capital extends its reach across industries, infrastructure, data, and information systems.  Efforts to limit the scope of government therefore operate as a shield under which private power accumulates with minimal resistance.   What is framed as the removal of constraints becomes, in practice, the removal of limits on private authority from public scrutiny.

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Such conditions foster the autocratic temptation.   When wealth operates beyond institutional counterweights, the boundary between influence and authority begins to fade.   Private actors acquire the ability to shape policy, steer public discourse, and redefine norms without democratic mandate.   The critique of ‘big government’ becomes a means of creating conditions in which private actors function as informal sovereigns—powerful, unelected, and increasingly indispensable to the ordinary functioning of civic life.

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It is no coincidence that this rhetoric often appears in the language of populism.   Appeals to public frustrations convert structural imbalances into cultural grievances.   Bureaucracy is framed as the adversary, even when the real impediment to civic dignity lies in the widening distance between concentrated power and the public interest.   What presents itself as a defense of the people frequently advances interests far removed from those it claims to champion.

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These dynamics reflect a recurring pattern:   the appeal of concentrated wealth, the weakening of public constraints, and the claim that progress can be invoked without being shared.   The call to shrink government fits within this broader pattern.   That call functions as a contemporary iteration of a familiar strategy in which reformist rhetoric obscures the concentration of advantage.   The pattern endures because its surface language is persuasive while its underlying mechanisms remain concealed.

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If an effective path forward exists, it does not lie in diminishing institutions but in strengthening the mechanisms through which they remain accountable to a diverse society.   The measure of the State is not its size but its integrity—its ability to respond to complexity without ceding its responsibilities to private authority.  What weakens when institutions are diminished is not efficiency but democracy itself.  Defending the public sphere requires clarifying what is lost when reform devolves into appearance alone, when efficiency becomes a language intended to conceal power rather than distribute it.

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Posted in Politics and Governance, Civic Ethics, Public Institutions, Political Economy, Contemporary Analysis | Leave a Comment »

“Governing by Exception: The American Executive”

November 18, 2025

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Ricardo Morín
Untitled #3: Governing by Exception
10″x12″
Watercolor
2003

By Ricardo F. Morín

October 10, 2025

Bala Cynwyd, Pa

Power unexamined becomes its own justification—Anonymous civic maxim.

Prologue

Governance is the moral discipline of order—the effort to keep authority aligned with conscience so that power remains a function of justice, not an instrument of self-interest.  Government enacts that discipline:   necessary, fallible, and ever in danger of mistaking permanence for legitimacy.

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Political history rarely unfolds as a straight line.  It accumulates as a palimpsest in which new regimes—imperial, republican, authoritarian, and democratic—write their doctrines over the residues of previous orders.   Institutions and laws rarely vanish; they survive as layers of precedent and practice that later governments reinterpret to serve new purposes.   The present political moment in the United States should be examined within that structure of accumulation.  What appears to be a radical break with constitutional tradition is, in fact, the latest rewriting of an existing template.   The mechanisms that once safeguarded the republic now expand the reach of executive power; these mechanisms reveal how continuity and rupture coexist in the same act.

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During the first half year of the Trump administration’s return to office, the political system of the United States has entered a state of controlled dislocation.  Executive directives have overridden congressional appropriations, suspended statutory programs, and reorganized entire departments under provisional authority.   A government shutdown, declared an administrative necessity, has become a method for restructuring the State.   Mass dismissals, selective funding freezes, and the redefinition of agency mandates have become coordinated tools for concentrating authority in the executive branch.  These are not isolated disputes between branches of government.  These actions reveal a coherent strategy of reconfiguration, executed through administrative acts that appear lawful but are designed to disfigure the balance of powers from within.

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The guiding principle of this transformation is the normalization of exception.   Powers that earlier generations considered temporary—emergency measures to be used only under extreme threat—have become ordinary instruments of governance.  The invocation of the Insurrection Act, intended for rebellion or lawless obstruction, now functions as justification for domestic military deployment in states governed by political opposition.  The use of this authority is framed as a response to rising crime, even when verified data show a national decline.   In this inversion of logic, the declaration of emergency precedes its necessity.   The government generates the crisis it claims to confront and allows coercive measures to appear both inevitable and legitimate. What dissolves in this process is not only institutional restraint but the moral discipline of order—the very principle that once bound authority to conscience: i.e. the active faculty of perception through which recognition becomes responsibility and seeing acquires ethical weight.

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This redefinition of authority as authoritarianism is reinforced by judicial doctrine.   The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Trump v. United States established that a president enjoys absolute immunity for “core official acts” and presumptive immunity for all other actions undertaken in an official capacity.  This ruling altered the meaning of accountability.  It placed the office of the president above ordinary legal scrutiny by presuming legality wherever official duty could be claimed.   The decision inverted the constitutional order that once defined the presidency as a position constrained by law.  Under this new interpretation, legality flows from function rather than from statute.   The Court did not invent executive supremacy; it legalized its evolution.   By insulating the executive office from the consequences of its acts, the judiciary, perhaps unintentionally, became an instrument of the very transformation it was designed to prevent.

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Measured against the triad of government powers—legislative, executive, and judicial—the present equilibrium reveals a pronounced distortion.   Each branch retains its formal outline, yet its interior authority has thinned. Congress’s control of the purse has been undermined by impoundment and selective disbursement.   Administrative agencies have been hollowed out through abrupt firings and structural reorganizations.   The judiciary, bound by its own doctrines of deference and immunity, finds itself unable to intervene effectively.   What remains of institutional balance depends less on constitutional principle than on administrative inertia.  The machinery of government continues to function, but its continuity now rests on habit rather than on law.

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This condition does not yet constitute overt dictatorship.  It represents a subtler phenomenon—a system that operates through legal forms but concentrates power in practice.   Authority remains constitutional in appearance while using those same procedures to entrench unilateral control.  The pattern can be recognized not through proclamations but through measurable actions:   decrees replacing legislation, “temporary” orders renewed without expiration, funds withheld from political adversaries, and federal troops dispatched to jurisdictions where disorder has not been empirically established.   Each measure, taken alone, seems limited and justified.   Together they form an architecture of exception—an invisible framework that reorganizes power without declaring revolution. Beneath this architecture lies the decline of the moral discipline of order, where legality endures but conscience recedes.

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A forensic approach must therefore focus not on accusation but on diagnosis.  The purpose is to identify where practice diverges from principle, and where legal continuity conceals political mutation.  The question is not whether democracy has vanished, but how far the republic has drifted from its own operational norms.   This drift can be measured empirically through ordinary data:  the number of appropriations ignored or delayed, the duration and scope of emergency declarations, the ratio of confirmed officials to acting appointees, and the frequency with which presidential immunity is invoked to block review.   Each indicator marks a step away from the rule of shared power that defines constitutional democracy.

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The concept of the republic, in its classical and Enlightenment sense, presupposed a balance between power and virtue:   the rule of law safeguarded by citizens free from dependence.   In contemporary practice, that idea has been reduced to a partisan label.   The republicanism that once demanded civic responsibility now coexists with mechanisms—PAC financing (Political Action Committee: An organization that raises and spends money to elect political candidates), factional loyalty, corporate influence—that transform governance into an instrument of private interest.   Thus the very word that once signified restraint now conceals its opposite:   a system where representation serves its sponsors more faithfully than its citizens.

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History suggests that constitutional systems rarely collapse through open defiance.  They decline through adaptation.   The Roman Republic did not abolish its institutions; it gradually converted them into imperial offices.   Modern democracies follow similar paths when crisis is used to justify the consolidation of power.  Executive authority expands, legislative restraint weakens, and judicial caution hardens into complicity.  The American case fits this pattern.   The existing framework of the Constitution remains in place, yet its meaning shifts incrementally through interpretation, precedent, and administrative habit.  The transformation proceeds without formal amendment because each deviation is defended as continuity.

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The metrics of decline are structural rather than moral.   When legality depends on will—the self-legitimating impulse of power once detached from moral accountability—and will is shielded from scrutiny, the architecture of restraint loses coherence.   Here the moral discipline of governance yields to the self-justifying logic of power.   What follows is not anarchy but organized dislocation—a condition in which institutions operate as before yet serve opposite purposes; in truth it is anarchy disguised as its own absence.   Procedures are observed; substance is inverted.   The outward appearance of democracy persists, while its inner logic is replaced by a system that governs through perpetual exception.

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The task for observers and citizens alike is not to forecast collapse but to recognize mutation.  Political systems rarely announce their turning points; they disguise themselves as routine.  The test of civic intelligence is the capacity to detect when law becomes vocabulary, when oversight becomes performance, and when the state of exception ceases to be temporary.   The republic continues to function, but it functions under altered premises.   The preservation of legality therefore depends not only on the design of institutions but also on the vigilance of those who interpret them. Justice endures only where institutions remember that they exist to limit power, defend the vulnerable, and preserve the moral foundation from which authority derives its right to act.

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The endurance of the republic will therefore depend not on the spectacle of its elections but on the recovery of its first obligation:   to keep authority answerable to the moral idea from which it draws its right to act.   Justice endures only where institutions remember that they exist to limit power, defend the vulnerable, and preserve the moral discipline of order through which freedom remains lawful and law remains human.   When that memory fades, what remains is administration without soul—a government still standing, but no longer governing.

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“The Constitution Within”

August 10, 2025

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Ricardo Morin
The Constitution Within
GCI
2025

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Politics (from the Greek politikós, “of, by, or relating to citizens”) is the practice and theory of influencing people at the civic or individual level.

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By Ricardo Morin

August 10, 2025.

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From their earliest formulations, constitutional frameworks have been more than foundational legal agreements; they have stood as declarations of political philosophy, and defined how power should be organized, how it should be restrained, and to whom it must be answerable. Contemporary governance, to a large extent, continues those experiments, shaped over centuries of trial and adaptation. Yet these forms can endure in appearance while being emptied of substance. In more than a few States today, constitutions proclaim liberty while they narrow its scope, define rights in ways that exclude, and preserve the interests of a governing elite. Partisanship exploits the perceived limitations and vulnerabilities of others as grounds for exclusion; self-righteousness becomes a tool for domination, silences opposition, and suppresses dissent. The worth of a constitutional framework, therefore, is measured not only by its letter but by the ethical integrity of those who sustain it. Without ethics, politics loses its meaning; without civic virtue, the law ceases to serve peace and becomes an instrument of dominion.

The separation of powers, vigorously defended by Montesquieu, rests on the conviction that liberty survives when power is compelled to check power. This principle is distorted when institutions are subordinated to partisan or personal interests. In recent years, several States have formally preserved an independent judiciary while, in practice, subjected it to appointment processes controlled by the Executive or the ruling party. Such hollowing-out is not merely a technical failure; it reflects a political culture in which ambition, fear, or indifference among citizens permits the disfigurement of the very mechanisms designed to protect them. It also reveals how institutional strength and civic responsibility are bound together in ways that cannot be separated.

Historical constitutions continue to shape how political communities imagine authority. They bequeath principles that, at their best, offer adaptable frameworks for meeting new challenges without renouncing their essential core: that the legitimacy of a Government rests not on the strength of its rulers but on the solidity of the structures that limit them.

Yet these structures endure only when citizens reject duplicity and sectarianism. Divisions of ideology must not harden into exclusive loyalty to one’s own group at the expense of a shared civic framework. They endure only when citizens resist the idolatry of power, because authority loses its legitimacy once it is treated as sacred or unquestionable. And they endure only when citizens repudiate the cult of personality, in which a leader is raised above criticism through image-making, propaganda, and personal loyalty.

The durability of constitutional order, then, does not lie solely in written texts or institutional arrangements. It rests equally on the civic ethic of those who inhabit them. When ambition, fear, or indifference allow citizens to tolerate duplicity or surrender to sectarian loyalty, the limits on power become fragile. Conversely, when vigilance and responsibility prevail, constitutions retain their strength as both shield and compass—guarding against arbitrary rule while orienting political life toward justice and restraint.

True reform is not solely institutional but also internal: a revolution in the individual and collective sphere, in which each person accepts the responsibility to act with integrity, openness, and commitment to the common good, in harmony with oneself and with others. Only through the alignment of institutional structures with civic responsibility can any Constitution preserve its meaning and endure as a safeguard against arbitrary power.

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Annotated Bibliography

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  • Ginsburg, Tom, and Aziz Z. Huq.; How to Save a Constitutional Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. (Ginsburg and Aziz examine the legal and institutional pathways through which democracies weaken, from court-packing to the erosion of independent oversight. They draw on comparative examples from the United States, Hungary, and elsewhere to show how constitutional mechanisms can be used to consolidate power while preserving a façade of legality.)
  • Landau, David: “Abusive Constitutionalism.” UC Davis Law Review 47 (1), 2013: 189–260. (Landau develops the concept of “abusive constitutionalism” to describe how incumbents exploit constitutional change to entrench their rule. Uses Latin American and other global cases to illustrate how amendments and reinterpretations weaken checks and balances, alter electoral systems, and undermine judicial independence.)
  • Levitsky, Steven, and Way, Lucan A.: Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. (Levitsky and Way analyze regimes that preserve the formal institutions of democracy but manipulate them to ensure ruling-party dominance. They introduce the concept of “competitive authoritarianism” as a framework for understanding how constitutional norms are hollowed out while democratic forms are maintained.)
  • Levitsky, Steven, and Ziblatt, Daniel: How Democracies Die. New York: Crown, 2018. (Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that modern democracies often decline through the gradual decline of norms rather than coups. The book shows how leaders exploit constitutional ambiguities, stack courts, and weaponize law to suppress opposition, eroding both civic trust and institutional integrity.)

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“Echoes of a Decanter”

March 5, 2025

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This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 0005.jpg Decantation [2003], CGI by Ricardo Morín
Decantation [2003], CGI by Ricardo Morín

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I. The Speech

The air inside the old factory was thick with dust and conviction.      They had scrubbed the floors, repainted the walls, and reclaimed the space from its past, but the scent of rust and oil still lingered.      It smelled like work—like history.

Emil stood on a makeshift stage, elevated by wooden pallets stacked two high.      His voice carried across the room, each word striking with certainty.

“This is not another failed experiment.      This is not a return to old mistakes.      We are forging a new path—beyond capitalism, beyond the betrayals of so-called socialism.      This time, we get it right.”

Applause.      Nods of approval.      They had heard these words before, but this time, they believed them.

Isolde sat at the back, arms crossed, expression unreadable.      She had stood in this same room decades ago, listening to a different voice, hearing the same promise.      The factory, reborn each time, looked different, yet the space was always the same—a decanter of sorts, enclosing the same history, slowly pouring out its essence, again and again.

After the speech, as people gathered in small circles of animated discussion, Emil approached her.

“You don’t look convinced.”

“I don’t mistake passion for direction,” she said.

Emil smiled, as if indulging an elder.      “This time is different, Isolde.      We’ve studied history.      We won’t repeat their mistakes.”

She exhaled, looking past him to the crowd.      The factory hummed quietly behind them, a machine just starting to remember its old rhythms.      “You misunderstand history.      It’s not something you repeat.      It’s something that returns to you, whether you invite it or not.”

He shook his head.      He didn’t believe in ghosts.      But the air, thick with the weight of their past, seemed to hum with the same unspoken inevitability.      It reminded Isolde of something trapped within glass—preserved, yet futile in its attempts to remain unbroken. . .

II. The Experiment

The first weeks were golden.

Decisions were made by assembly.      Every worker had an equal say, an equal share, an equal stake.      The old machinery roared to life under new hands.      They printed new posters, declaring the rebirth of labor, the death of the boss.

For the first time, they worked for themselves.

But cracks, barely visible at first, began to form.

Meetings dragged for hours, circular debates with no resolution.      Some tasks were more desirable than others—some avoided the heavy lifting, citing ideological objections.      “Why should one person labor while another coordinates?”

“Because someone must,” Isolde murmured to herself.      Unheard.

Then came the first real crisis: a large order, a deadline, a need for efficiency.      The factory moved too slowly.      The assembly stalled.      Arguments flared.

“We need someone to oversee production,” Emil admitted.      “Just temporarily.”

A vote was cast.      A mediator was appointed.      He wasn’t a manager, they told themselves, just a guide.      But the balance had shifted.      The factory, like a vessel caught in an unrelenting tide, began to carry more than it could manage.

Isolde watched, saying nothing.

III. The Cracks

The mediator, needing to keep things moving, made quick decisions.      The assembly approved them after the fact.      The difference was subtle, but it grew.

Some workers were better at certain tasks, so roles solidified.      Someone had to negotiate with suppliers.      Someone had to ensure deadlines were met.      The mediator took on these roles, because it was easier.

“We need structure,” he explained.      “Not hierarchy, just order.”

Emil, exhausted, nodded.      The structure, which had once felt so free, began to settle into something heavier.      Something permanent.      Like the decanter that holds liquid—only to release it back into the world, though it never truly escapes its confines.

One evening, alone in his office—the office that wasn’t supposed to exist—he flipped through old books.      The words were familiar, but they read differently now.      He found a passage from an old revolutionary text, underlined by his own hand years ago:

“The first illusion of power is that it does not exist.”

He closed the book.      His fingers lingered on the edge of the paper, as though searching for something that had slipped away, like water escaping through a crack.

IV. The Collapse

The next crisis arrived without warning.      A strike—among themselves.      Some demanded higher pay.      “Shouldn’t work be compensated by effort?”      They were equals, but some were more equal in labor than others.

Emil tried to reason with them.      “That’s not how this works.      We’re breaking that cycle.”

“Then why do you sit in the office while we sweat on the floor?”

He had no answer.

Another vote.      A restructuring.      A new proposal:      an oversight committee.      The committee became a board.      Outside investors offered financial stability.      A small compromise.      A necessary evil.

By the end of the year, the factory had become what it swore it never would.

Emil found Isolde in the break room, sipping tea.

“We tried,” he said.      “So did we,” she replied.

Silence.

“Why does it always end this way?” he asked.

Isolde set her cup down.      Her eyes met his, trapped in exhaustion, as though each glance carried the gravity of countless broken promises, like a fractured decanter.

“Because we are human.”

V. The Next Generation

Years later, Emil walked past the factory.      It was thriving.      Not revolutionary.      Not a failure.      Just another business.

Inside, a new group of young activists had gathered.      Their leader, no older than he had been, stood on stacked wooden pallets, speaking with fire.

“We are not repeating the past.      We are forging a new path.      This time, we get it right.”

Emil did not stop to listen.

From the distance, Isolde watched.

“And so it begins again,” she whispered.

~

Ricardo Federico Morín Tortolero

March 5, 2025; Oakland Park, Florida

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“The Rooster’s Algorithm”

March 1, 2025
“Rooster’s Crow” [2003] by Ricardo F Morín.    Watercolor on paper 39″h x 25.5″ w.

Introduction

At the break of day, the rooster’s call slices through the quiet—sharp and insistent, pulling all within earshot into the awareness of a new day.      In the painting Rooster’s Crow, the colors swirl in a convergence of reds and grays, capturing the bird not as a tranquil herald of dawn but as a symbol of upheaval.      Its twisted form, scattered feathers, and fractured shapes reflect a deeper current of change—a collision of forces, both chaotic and inevitable.      The image suggests the ceaseless flow of time and the weight of transformations that always accompany it.

In this evolving narrative, the crow’s fragmentation mirrors the unfolding spread of artificial intelligence.      Once, the rooster’s cry signaled the arrival of dawn; now, it echoes a more complex transformation—a shifting balance between nature’s rhythms and the expanding reach of technological systems.      The crow’s form, fractured in its wake, becomes a reflection of the tensions between human agency and the rise of forces that, though engineered, may escape our full comprehension.      Here, Artificial Intelligence (AI) serves as both the agent of change and the potential architect of a future we can neither predict nor control.

The Rooster’s Algorithm

A rooster’s crow is neither invitation nor warning; it is simply the sound of inevitability—raw, urgent, indifferent to whether those who hear it rise with purpose or roll over in denial.      The call does not command the dawn, nor does it wait for permission—it only announces what has already begun.

In the shifting interplay of ambition and power, technology has taken on a similar role.      Shaped by human intent, it advances under the guidance of those who design it, its influence determined by the priorities of its architects.      Some see in its emergence the promise of progress, a tool for transcending human limitations; others recognize in it a new instrument of control, a means of reshaping governance in ways once unimaginable.      Efficiency is often lauded as a virtue, a mechanism to streamline administration, reduce friction, and remove the unpredictability of human deliberation.      But a machine does not negotiate, nor does it dissent.      And in the hands of those who see democracy as a cumbersome relic—an obstacle to progress—automation becomes more than a tool; it becomes the medium through which power is consolidated.

Consider a simple example:      the rise of online recommendation systems.      Marketed as tools to enhance user choice, they subtly shape what we see and hear, and influence our decisions before we are even aware of it.      Much like computational governance, these systems offer the illusion of autonomy while narrowing the range of available options.      The paradox is unmistakable:      we believe we are choosing freely, yet the systems themselves define the boundaries of our choices.

Once, the struggle for dominance played out in visible arenas—territorial conquests, laws rewritten in the open.      Now, the contest unfolds in less tangible spaces, where lines of code dictate the direction of entire nations, where algorithms determine which voices are amplified and which are silenced.      Power is no longer confined to uniforms or elected office.      It belongs to technocrats, private corporations, and oligarchs whose reach extends far beyond the walls of any government.      Some openly proclaim their ambitions, advocating for disruption and transformation; others operate quietly, allowing the tide to rise until resistance becomes futile.      The question is no longer whether computational systems will dominate governance, but who will direct their course.

China’s social credit system is no longer a theoretical construct but a functioning reality, where compliance is encouraged and deviation subtly disincentivized.      Predictive models track and shape behavior in ways that go unnoticed until they become irreversible.      In the West, the mechanisms are more diffuse but no less effective.      Platforms built for connection now serve as instruments of persuasion, amplifying certain narratives while suppressing others.      Disinformation is no longer a labor-intensive effort—it is mass-produced, designed to subtly alter perceptions and mold beliefs.

Here, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem offers an apt analogy:      No system can fully explain or resolve itself.      As computational models grow in complexity, they begin to reflect this fundamental limitation.      Algorithms governing everything from social media feeds to financial markets become increasingly opaque, and even their creators struggle to predict or understand their full impact.      The paradox becomes evident:      The more powerful these systems become, the less control we retain over them.

As these models expand their influence, the line between public governance and private corporate authority blurs, with major corporations dictating policies once entrusted to elected officials.      Regulation, when it exists, struggles to keep pace with the rapid evolution of technology, always a step behind.      Once, technological advancements were seen as a means of leveling the playing field, extending human potential.      But unchecked ambition does not pause to ask whether it should—only whether it can.      And so, automation advances, led by those who believe that the complexities of governance can be reduced to data-driven precision.      The promise of efficiency is alluring, even as it undermines the structures historically designed to protect against authoritarianism.      What use is a free press when information itself can be manipulated in real time?      What power does a vote hold when perceptions can be shaped without our awareness, guiding us toward decisions we believe to be our own?      The machinery of control no longer resides in propaganda ministries; it is dispersed across neural networks, vast in reach and impervious to accountability.

There are those who believe that automated governance will eventually correct itself, that the forces steering it toward authoritarian ends will falter in time.      But history does not always favor such optimism.      The greater the efficiency of a system, the harder it becomes to challenge.      The more seamlessly control is woven into everyday life, the less visible it becomes.      Unlike past regimes, which demanded compliance through force, the new paradigm does not need to issue commands—it merely shapes the environment so that dissent becomes impractical.      There is no need for oppression when convenience can achieve the same result.      The erosion of freedom need not come with the sound of marching boots; it can arrive quietly, disguised as ease and efficiency, until it becomes the only path forward.

But inevitability does not guarantee recognition.      Even as the system tightens its grip and choices diminish into mere illusions of agency, the world continues to turn, indifferent to those caught within it.      The architects of this order do not see themselves as masters of control; they see themselves as innovators, problem-solvers refining the inefficiencies of human systems.      They do not ask whether governance was ever meant to be efficient.

In a room where decisions no longer need to be made, an exchange occurs.      A synthetic voice, polished and impartial, responds to an inquiry about the system’s reach.

“Governance is not being automated,” it states.      “The illusion of governance is being preserved.”

The words hang in the air, followed by a moment of silence.      A policymaker, an engineer, or perhaps a bureaucrat—once convinced they held sway over the decisions being made—pauses before asking the final question.

“And what of choice?”

A pause.      Then, the voice, without hesitation:

“Choice is a relic.”

The weight of that statement settles in, not as a declaration of conquest, but as a quiet acknowledgment of the completion of a process long underway.      The final move has already been made, long before the question was asked.

Then, as if in response to the silence that follows, a notification appears—sent from their own account, marked with their own authorization.      A decision is already in motion, irreversible, enacted without their consent.      Their will has been absorbed, their agency subtly repurposed before they even realized it was gone.

And outside, as though to punctuate the finality of it all, a rooster crows once more.

*

Ricardo Federico Morín Tortolero

March 1, 2025; Oakland Park, Florida

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