Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good."
Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Obama, who has proven that he is a disaster for the country, got in in part because of conservatives who could not abide McCain.
Politics is a practical business. It is always about the lesser of evils, except when it is about the least of evils. It is not about being ideologically pure. It is about accomplishing something in a concrete situation in which holding out for the best is tantamount to acquiescing in the bad. Political choices are forced options in roughly William James' sense: he who abstains chooses willy-nilly. His not choosing the better amounts to a choice of the worse.
Michael Sullivan comments:
His not choosing the better amounts to a choice of the worse.
I've never been able to entirely accept this. When this topic comes up I frequently like to cite a favorite passage from the Republic with a different viewpoint:
Then there remains, Adeimantus, only a very small group who consort with philosophy in a way that's worthy of her . . . Now, the members of this small group have tasted how sweet and how blessed a possession philosophy is, and at the same time they've also seen the madness of the majority and realized, in a word, that hardly anyone acts sanely in public affairs and that there is no ally with whom they might go to the aid of justice and survive, that instead they'd perish before they could profit either their city or their friends and be useless to themselves and others, just like a man who has fallen among wild animals and is neither willing to join them in doing injustice nor sufficiently strong to oppose the general savagery alone. Taking all this into account, they lead a quiet life and do their own work. Thus, like someone who takes refuge under a little wall from a storm of dust or hail driven by the wind, the philosopher--seeing others filled with lawlessness--is satisfied if he can somehow lead his present life free from injustice and impious acts and depart from it with good hope, blameless and content.
--Republic (496a-497a)
BV responds:
Thanks for that beautiful quotation. I sympathize very strongly and I myself abstain from political action except for voting and blogging. But even when I blog my main concern is theoretical: I want to understand the political as such. For example, the statement supra that "Politics is a practical business" is a theoretical statement.
And I agree with Plato that if one has a contemplative nature, a theoretical bent, and loves truth above all, then it would be a mistake to waste one's talent in the insane arena of lies, hypocrisy, pettiness and all-round bullshit that we call politics.
But here's the thing: if one is threatened in one's very existence, one has to respond. If leftists take over the country, that cannot be good for you and me with our values. So at some point one has to get involved and do one's bit to beat back the opposition. How much and at what point are personal decisions.
One should also consider the passage in the Laws where Plato says something to the effect that when good men abstain from involvement in politics they end up being ruled by evil men.
And in the Apology, Socrates, faced with execution, does not flee Athens, giving the reason that he owes something to the State and its laws. Along these lines one might argue that staying informed, voting, and the like are minimal civic duties. After all, have we not greatly benefited from the political and social arrangements that we have enjoyed all our lives? Do we not owe something to our country? Are we not ingrates if we take for granted that we should have peace and security and prosperity while doing nothing to defend it and pass it on?I don't expect liberals to understand gratitude, but we are not liberals.
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