The scrupulous and the reptilian

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views November 29, 2004]

Whatever its merits as an operating assumption in positive political analysis, the proposition that the people who wield political power are just like the rest of us is manifestly false. Lord Acton was not just expelling breath when he said that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Nor did he err when he observed that "great men are almost always bad men"--at least if "great men" denotes those with great political power.

Among the most memorable lines in Friedrich A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom is the title of chapter 10, "Why the Worst Get on Top." Hayek was considering collectivist dictatorships when he noted that "there will be special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous" and that "the readiness to do bad things becomes a path to promotion and power." But the observation applies to the functionaries of less egregious governments, too.

Nowadays, nearly all governments, even those of countries such as the United States, France, or Germany, jokingly described as "free," provide numerous opportunities for ruthless and unscrupulous people. . . . Decent people, virtually by definition, do not seek to exercise political power over their fellows. The mystery is that so many citizens continue to admire and defer to the reptilian wretches who rule them.

Of all the accounts of political leadership I have read, most of which obsequiously endorse the myths propagated by the master class itself, the best is anthropologist F.G. Bailey's Humbuggery and Manipulation: The Art of Leadership. Bailey gets right to the point by noting in his preface that "leaders and gangsters have much in common." Of course, political leaders are much more ambitious than gangsters. The latter are content to take your money, whereas the former, besides taking far more of your money, have the effrontery to violate your just rights whenever their convenience dictates and even to anticipate your gratitude for their compassionate devotion to your welfare. . . .

Honorable people, taking a wrong turn and blundering into positions of political leadership, would last no longer than a nun in a brothel. If ruthless rivals did not displace them at the earliest opportunity, the scrupulous people would soon remove themselves in disgust. People who lack pugnacity do not succeed as prizefighters; people who lack a talent for lying, stealing, and if need be, abetting homicide do not succeed in modern politics. As Bailey puts it, "Leaders are not the virtuous people they claim to be; they put politics before statesmanship; they distort facts and oversimplify issues; they promise what no one could deliver; and they are liars."

-- Robert Higgs; excerpted from his book, Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society. Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent Institute and editor of its scholarly quarterly journal, The Independent Review.

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