Adrian wrote:Speech from last year by John Faulkner
Quote:Politics is as it is, not because of the nature of politics, but because of the nature of people.
To expect the practice of politics to be somehow nobler than your own workplace or community organisation, to expect politicians to be better and more virtuous than you yourself are, is to guarantee disappointment. If these are your criteria for a healthy democracy, you will inevitably conclude that the system is mortally sick. How else to react, but with anger, or with apathy?
Too many in our community and our media have precisely these unrealistic standards, combined with the weary cynicism of having seen so many fall short.
There's also the fact that things are going pretty well in Australia in terms of the average Joe's daily life. While that continues it's hard to get anyone particularly worked up about anything.
Hi Adrian
Read John Faulkner's speech. Still mulling ....
While I understand what he's saying, I'm not sure that I totally agree with him. (Well, not at this stage, anyway ...)
I'm thinking that it's not so unrealistic at all, really, to expect the politicians who we've elected to the highest & most important positions in the country to be more noble & virtuous than they they have been (of late, especially). I
certainly expect more of them than from community organizations, or my workplace, for example. They are governing for the whole population, after all.
I'd be
very surprised if there
wasn't wide-spread disappointment, anger (& despair, even) in response to the the disastrous mess that JH (along with Bush, Blair & co) has gotten us into. To me, it's not so much that I consider the
system is "mortally sick", more that I'm disillusioned by the
abuse of the system by some "leaders".
