This column summed up my feelings on politicians.
Where have our best ideals gone?
It is customary in our days to put down politicians as many put down lawyers, only with more seriousness. Politics is supposed to be inherently corrupt. Every politician has to be a liar, cheat, thief and one who seeks only raw power over other people.
This perception is not far off the truth, although there are examples, here and there, of people who aspire to a career in politics because they see it necessary for some to guard the principles of justice that ought to govern life in human communities. At least that is how some, a few, start off on such a career, only to slowly replace this honorable motive with the more expedient one of catering to whatever will currently please the majority of voters.
Is this all necessary? It does appear so, when in the face of every upheaval, tragedy, calamity, or disaster the bulk of politicians jumps to the occasion with proposals for regimenting our lives. They usually want to do something and this is largely because their principles are not firmly held in the first place and their constituency acts like scared little babies screaming for parental help. I discount entirely the alleged reason given, namely, that that is what politicians are for, to save us all from bad things. No, that is not their job.
What has happened to the people of this country, which used to be called the leader of the free world? Even though it had always had some spots on the historical record, it is clear that its ideals, expressed in the Declaration of Independence (and, somewhat confused, included in the Bill of Rights), were unimpeachable.
So how come we can have local county, state and national election campaigns in which not one major candidate, with some real chance of winning, even mentions individual liberty any more?
Some of it is due to the fact that even initially there was more rhetoric than substance supporting the ideals of the U.S. system. More importantly, the convictions backing up those ideals were not clear. For example, while we were supposed to have the right to our own lives, to our liberty and pursuit of our happiness, millions even years ago didn't seriously believe that one?s life is one?s own, that liberty is the highest public good or, especially, that pursuing one?s own happiness is an honorable goal.
Some of the growing neglect of these ideals is the result of the fact that America?s institutions of learning have themselves been in the hands of government, with many of its professionals having little serious regard for the ideals in question. They, after all, are beneficiaries of institutions that operate by violating individual rights on several fronts: For instance, compelling parents to send kids to and making everyone pay for schools not of their own choosing. Higher education is peopled with professors who live from taxed funds, who take weekend courses on how to obtain government support for their work, and who mostly promote disdain for U.S. ideals because they rely on philosophies that give their own complicity in statism credibility.
In short, the intellectuals, those professionals who explore and develop ideals, are against the American system of individual rights and want a government that puts them in charge, following their main leader in human history, the philosopher Plato, with his advocacy of the ideal state.
Without intellectuals doing their part to keep alive certain ideals, it is no wonder that highly ?educated?- for which one can often read ?indoctrinated? - constituency just does not send politicians into office who believe in limited powers for themselves. Instead we have people like the current line-up of viable presidential candidates who preach the politics of state aid for everything, thus undermining the politics of government as the protector of our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Tibor R. Machan
Professor
Chapman Univ. |
