| | Some man is good enough to govern another man with that other's consent.
How good must one man be in order to govern another with that other's consent?
Does any good man govern another with or without that other's consent?
Is there a correlation between amount of goodness and amount of governance, so that at some level of goodness, one man becomes absolutely qualified, and that as goodness increases, so does governance? Is there a limit on that. I mean, would Buddha or Confucius (who were not divine) meet a very high standard for near-complete but not total governance. (Total governance would require perfection.)
What about Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the other slave-owners who governed. Were they not good enough to govern their slaves, but good enough to govern free people? How does that work? I mean, if they were good enough to govern some men by consent, then how were they not good enough to govern others without it? I mean, surely, they also governed women of their time[*] who could not vote or own property. The basic question is that if they were not good enough to govern their slaves, what made them good enough to govern anyone?
What is govern-ment? Is it the administration of res publica, the public thing(s), such as roads, schools, ports and harbors, libraries and museums, or is it moral oversight that prevents parents from denying education or healthcare to their children? If I do not consent to the operation of public schools, does that invalidate the credentials of school administrators? But if I change my mind, and agree that they are fit to rule, how does that change their nature from "not good enough" to "good enough"?
[*] The rights held by women over time and place have not been universal, or universally denied. Long before any federal constitutional amendment, women owned property and voted in local elections, both in the American states, as well the United Kingdom and other European countries.
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