March 6, 2007
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Politics and Morality
Politics has been called the "Art of Governing". If this is true, then politics had better be conducted according to the moral precepts of the governed society or the "art" becomes tyranny - or worse.
The problem lies in both the nature of the political process and the nature of morality. If the culture has rigid moral standards accepted by almost all of its members, then most politicians would be morally upright and all honest politicians would be moral and there would be no problem. The dishonest politicians would be pretty obvious and fairly easy to weed out.
The problem in our National culture is partly the problem of any Democracy.
A democracy has certain basic agreed-upon precepts. among these are:
1. The concept of equality of worth and the equality of the worth of all citizen's opinions.
2. In our democracy, the presence of elected representatives responsible to those who elected them
3. The concept of direct election to replace representatives who no longer have the confidence of the electorate with those who the electorate approves and believes has their best interests at heart.
4. The concept of Majority rule with consideration of the rights of the minority.In a multi-group society, such as ours, partly the problem is of Moral interpretation.
There are conflicting intreprtetations of "What's moral" that have been around for centuries - hence the problem.
Conflicting moral interpretations are notoriously hard to reconcile and politicians depend on some agreed-upon basis for consensus.Government in a Democracy is supposed to be mainly by consensus, which means basic agreement on policy and basic agreement on the actions of the government, even by those who originally opposed the policy or action.
The job of the politicians is to act to reach that consensus or as close to it as possible and to persuade the opposition to accept the democratic majority's polities and actions.In our democracy the multiplicity of views and interpretations of moral truth makes the job of the consensus building and persuasive politician extremely difficult. In practice, all citizen's opinions are NOT of equal worth and it is fairly easy for the unscrupulous political leader to organize a sizable group to support his agenda, even though it is basically immoral. If the majority wants to ignore the rights and feelings of the minorities, they often find it easy to "re-define" moral principles to support their decision and it is almost impossible to slow or stop these actions.
Even though the government may lose the confidence and support of the majority of citizens, they still may have years of their elected terms to serve and they may feel no responsibility for the hostile electorate. As the government is made up of politicians, all politicians may be (and often are) tarred with the same brush.As the electorate splits into smaller fractious groups, often with many conflicting ideas, the politicians representing other groups are often despised and regarded with suspicion, making any consensus building less and less likely.
Situations like this make the job of politician less and less attractive to those would be most likely to perform the job best. Nowadays, becoming a politician in America demands a remarkable amount of dedication or alternatively, a massive ego.
Comments (8)
You wrote: Conflicting moral interpretations are notoriously hard to reconcile and politicians depend on some agreed-upon basis for consensus. My question is, what do you think that agreed-upon basis is? What should it be? Why?
Traditionally, the basis for any agreement is a shared value system. the American Basic Value system, which I have written about many times, is fairly simple, short, and direct. It is the definition and interpretation which demands constant upgrading and makeovers as we progress. Often values are interpreted in such a way as to cause a value conflict e.g. the American fundimental value of individual liberty vs the fundimental belief in human equality. Should a person have the right to exploit another just because he is in a position to do so?
Wouldn't you say economic and religious factors also contribute to our "democracy" not quite being up to par with the standards?
I'm not sure what you mean by "standards", but surely religious sect differences contribute to the value interpretation differences.
Some modern, in my opinion rather unscrupulous, politicians have managed to "capture" some religious groups as a handy and fairly docile base for their political agenda. There is some evidence that this alliance is unraveling as the religiously-oriented voters discover that their political "Friends" are more concerned with their own political power than they are with the wishes and needs of their constituents.
Just coming around to say hello I feel bad when i get lazy with comments and I wanted to let you know I always appreciate your comments and your time. Las time we talked you wife was getting better and getting ready to cook again so was that good??
Interesting what all can be explained with the notion of relativity. Moral relativitism [the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect absolute and universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances] would mean that the problem you refer to ("the fact that politics has, at its base, the concept of compromise leading to consensus") is not a problem at all.
Suppose I lived with a society of cannibals (given the society was not all eaten up), and a politician said... 'stop eating your neighbors'. The politician neither eats nor encourages anyone to eat anyone else. According to moral relativism, that politician would be in the wrong.
So if politics has, in fact, "at its base, the concept of compromise leading to consensus", then wouldn't that mean that the political is moral?
And I had a decent weekend :], thank you for asking!
Another part of the politics vs morality question is that of the Lobbyist. These professional (most of them) advocates for special interest groups have a lot of political clout as they help representatives make political and legislative decisions both by providing expertise and information about pending legislation and political help in the form of financial contributions to political party and election funds.
Their input is more-or-less regulated and often provides a sort of moral dilemma for elected representatives who don't want to appear to be "bought" but do want to respect their backers and be reelected.
What would the best solution to this problem be, government-funded elections, restrictions on lobbyist access or contributions, or some other action?
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