(no subject)

[chess]

I've been finding out lately that a disturbing number of you are conservatives/Tory supporters of some stripe or another. Being somewhat of a flaming red socialist myself, I'm interested in how you guys justify the belief that the rich ought to get richer and the poor ought to fend for themselves that seems to be the Tory standpoint to me...

Comments

Re: Slightly more concise definition

[lockymclean.livejournal.com]

The purpose of government then is *whatever government does*.

This is a circular definition, and somewhat postmodernist, which is dangerous when you come to classify certain policies as good/bad government. On that basis, you couldn't criticise the German Nazi Party of the 1930s and 40s for anything they did because the purpose of government was whatever they did, and they had a mandate (albeit a dubious one) from the population to carry out those atrocities. By analogy, it's saying that it's fine for the purpose of a cue ball to be placed in a sock and be used as an offensive weapon, if someone chooses to use it that way.

What I am trying to get at is that government should be purposive rather than reactive, and should be able to hold itself and be held to certain absolute principles of good government. The population may disagree on what those principles should be because our judgment is only human, but once they are vaguely ascertained it should be a question of constructing policies and evaluating them against the principles of good government, with allowance for naturally different life perspectives.

If you have reactive government, then you could say that it is fine for the purpose of government to be receiving bribes or abusing power for personal gain because "that's what government does". The democratic control argument begins to break down when the parties and the media misrepresent the facts, dumb down politics into a popularity contest, and try to label certain voting trends as "uncool" or "trendy".

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.