Cynicism and the state

The Globe and Mail (Canada) ^ | May 30, 2011 | NEIL REYNOLDS

[Alex Murphy]

[SNIP]

Born in 1533, Montaigne lived through the massacres and mayhem of France’s Wars of Religion. The child of a wealthy Catholic father (his grandfather made a fortune in the herring trade) and a wealthy Jewish mother, he grew up as a skeptical Catholic with Protestants as companions and associates.

Surveying the barbaric excesses of his time, he came to believe that the state was mostly an institution in which pride and ambition contested for power – yet, nevertheless, enforced an elemental discipline. It was this discipline alone that separated mankind from savage butchery.

[SNIP]

When evil and barbaric acts occur, liberals ask: How could this have happened? (How could Dominique Strauss-Kahn do such a thing?) Conservatives ask: What did you expect? (Why didn’t it happen sooner?)

[SNIP]

As Jane Jacobs argued in her quiet little 1992 masterpiece Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics, widespread cynicism persists because people judge politicians by the wrong moral code. Governments are inherently military in purpose and in execution. In Systems of Survival, Ms. Jacobs posits two universal codes of conduct – one applicable to commerce, the other to politics. She argues that people have mixed these codes to the point that moral confusion abounds everywhere.

[SNIP]

“I used to think of government – meaning good government – as the major force at work in the civilizing process,” Ms. Jacobs causes one her Socratic characters to observe. “Now I’m inclined to think of government as essentially barbaric – barbaric in its origins and forever susceptible to barbaric actions and aims. Don’t get me wrong. We need it. But now I see government as being incapable, on its own, of civilizing itself.” From this perspective, the cynical Montaigne and the idealist Jacobs are in complete accord.

[Alex Murphy]

Born in 1533, [Michel de Montaigne, the 16th century French essayist] lived through the massacres and mayhem of France’s Wars of Religion. The child of a wealthy Catholic father (his grandfather made a fortune in the herring trade) and a wealthy Jewish mother, he grew up as a skeptical Catholic with Protestants as companions and associates.

Surveying the barbaric excesses of his time, he came to believe that the state was mostly an institution in which pride and ambition contested for power – yet, nevertheless, enforced an elemental discipline. It was this discipline alone that separated mankind from savage butchery....

....As Jane Jacobs argued in her quiet little 1992 masterpiece Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics, widespread cynicism persists because people judge politicians by the wrong moral code....“I used to think of government – meaning good government – as the major force at work in the civilizing process,” Ms. Jacobs causes one her Socratic characters to observe. “Now I’m inclined to think of government as essentially barbaric – barbaric in its origins and forever susceptible to barbaric actions and aims. Don’t get me wrong. We need it. But now I see government as being incapable, on its own, of civilizing itself.”

[caww]

As one moves up the rank and file in business, corporation and politics, one generally can see that crime, power, and money are equally so as at the bottom. Difference is the closer to the top the more deceptive and hidden. Thugs at the top and bottom.

[foreshadowed at waco]

What Ms. Jacobs calls the commercial moral syndrome combines these attributes: Business people shun the use of force, require voluntary agreements, respect contracts, demand honesty, prize efficiency and invite dissent. Her guardian moral syndrome combines these: Politicians respect hierarchy, demand loyalty, take revenge, discourage dissent and accept the use of deceit in pursuit of political tasks.

Maybe this explains why conservatives like business and liberals adore big government--freedom vs fascism.