In a recent post, Ross Douthat invokes “cynicism” to justify not being bothered by McCain’s dishonesty. This is a fairly common use of the word “cynic”–roughly, someone who approves of gross mendacity at home and murder abroad. This use of the word is a relatively new one; somehow, “things are bad, so everything is permissible” has replaced “things are bad, so stick it to The Man.” The second really is how the term used to be defined, it comes from an ancient Greek philosophical school whose founder allegedly told Alexander the Great to get out of the way, because Al was blocking the sun. History aside, there’s no reason to think we can hold people a standard only if they’re already meeting it.
In recent days, Douthat’s favorite quote seems to have become:
If you are in politics for “uplift” you are in the wrong business. Obama learned about politics from reading Saul Alinsky, not Chicken Soup for the Soul. Can we grow up and talk about politics as the enterprise of obtaining and exercising political power?
You can forgo “uplift” only as long as you have politicians interested in exercising their power in a genuinely useful way. Politicians who use their power to bombard us with nonsense deserve the boot. To do otherwise is to abandon sane self-interest for power-worship.
Yeah, I’ve seen that, too. (And in Canada as well as the US.)
It also confuses the fact (if it’s a fact) that politicians are motivated only by the pursuit of power with the justification of what they do as part of that pursuit. Motivation and justification are closely related, but not in that way, surely.
ADHR, you may be right about naitonal level politicians but I doubt it. Power is a large, probably the largest, motivator but it is not the sole motivator. A person who makes a career out of running municipal area offices for example could cite a sense of community or personal duty but they are still politicians. We have had leaders of the past and would-be leaders today who are not moved by love of power but by conviction of ideology.
The old anarchist canard that only the power hungry seek office and therefore government is inherently corrupt is also false. By making it necessary to appease the people (rather than the special interests) then the interests of both the politicians for power and the people for responsive governance can be appeased. Checks and balances, more voter control, and a more diverse political spectrum all act to bring the desires of the politician for that office (no matter how that desire originates) in line with the desires of the people.
In other words just because many politicians seek only power doesn’t mean the system can’t work.
Well, I didn’t say it was a fact — I actually questioned if it was a fact. My central contention was that the justification for what politicians do — if there is one — must differ from what motivates them. The claim that so-and-so is motivated by power is not an excuse for their actions.