Monday, October 4, 2010

Two books I'm going to have to get -- The Liberal Mind & The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life by Minogue.

The tyranny of good intentions.

An elegant essayist of the old school, Prof. Minogue advances his argument by small steps that can end abruptly in crisp revelation.

“I am of two minds about democracy,” he writes, “and so is everyone else. We all agree that it is the sovereign remedy for corruption, war and poverty in the Third World. We would certainly tolerate no other system in our own country. Yet most people are disenchanted with the way it works. One reason is that our rulers now manage so much of our lives that they cannot help but do it badly. They have overreached. Blunder follows blunder.”

Far worse, traditional democratic theory has been flipped upside down: “Our rulers now make us accountable to them.”

Count the ways.

“Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes or drinking too much. Most of these governments think we borrow too much money for our personal pleasures and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading bedtime stories to our children.

“Many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.

“Debt, intemperance and incompetence in rearing our children are no doubt regrettable – but they are vices, and – left alone – they will soon lead to the pain that corrects. Life is a better teacher of virtue than politicians and most sensible governments in the past have left moral faults to the churches.

“The point is that governments have no business telling us how to live. They are tiresome enough in the exercise of authority. They are intolerable when they mount the pulpit. Nor should we be in any doubt that nationalizing the moral life of the people is the first step toward totalitarianism.”

Actions are no longer morally wrong. The state determines what is “acceptable” and what is “unacceptable” – thereby constructing a new “language of authority” that enforces political morality even as it rescinds everyday moral inhibitions. People are encouraged to be “collectively dutiful and individually hedonistic.”

3 comments:

Defender said...

When freedom is an outright crime, only criminals are free.
There's a photo going around of Obama speaking to an elementary school class. In a suit, has his TelePrompTer, podium complete with presidential seal, and monitor speakers in a protective wall in front of him. In a classroom. At least W. needed only the school's own microphone so he could be heard across the gymnasium.
A need to impress eighth-graders? Or was it eight-year-olds?

Sean said...

Tick-Tock.

suek said...

The function of religion should be to establish ideals for human behavior, recognizing that most will not attain them (or they would be ideals set too low). The function of laws within a society are to establish the minimum behavior that the society will accept.
The behavior of most within that society will fall between the two outer limits. To have one standard alone is unacceptable - either it will be too high, in which case you have people being punished for being less than perfect - or it will be set too low, in which case the probability is that even less acceptable behavior will become the standard until total depravity is the norm.
For this reason, you cannot really have a society in which religion and law are completely separate - each has it's place. Additionally, it simply isn't possible to make enough laws to dictate all phases of human behavior without creating a system of laws that permits authorities to make everyone a criminal at some point - and the end result of _that_ will be total corruption, because authorities will be able to pick and choose who will be prosecuted for what - and will do so at their personal preference.