{"id":25995,"date":"2015-01-27T01:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T06:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25995"},"modified":"2015-01-21T23:40:55","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T04:40:55","slug":"qotd-political-parties-and-principles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/27\/qotd-political-parties-and-principles\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Political parties and principles"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Normally, [the voters] are suckered. The political class \u2014 the class of politicians, senior bureaucrats, self-interested lobbyists, and all their paid flunkeys in media and elsewhere \u2014 are much cleverer than \u201cthe people,\u201d on political questions. \u201cThe people,\u201d for their part, may be individually cleverer than they, but not, as a rule, on political questions, which don\u2019t much interest the great majority of them. The political class have, in addition to whatever native smarts, plenty of experience manipulating \u201cthe people,\u201d and the contempt required to be ruthless about it. In a fully-fledged \u201cdemocracy,\u201d it takes little sophistry for the bad guys to win. But the term is relative, and should the good guys win, it will be another victory for the politicians.<\/p>\n<p>A few days ago, I found myself trying to explain this to a well-intended, rightwing person. He complained that the Conservative Party had turned its back on \u201cconservative principles.\u201d This struck me as an unfair allegation, for the party had never once in the history of Canada, whether at the provincial or Dominion level, embraced \u201cconservative principles,\u201d nor shown the slightest curiosity over what they might be. The purpose of a political party has nought to do with such \u201cprinciples.\u201d (This goes for all parties including, within five years of their founding, those founded on \u201cprinciples.\u201d) Rather it is to tax as much as they dare, and distribute the takings among their friends, while \u201cnation building\u201d \u2014 i.e. adding to the machinery of State. A party unclear on this essential \u201cprinciple\u201d of democracy (the one that defeats every other principle) might get itself elected by some fluke, but will not long retain power.<\/p>\n<p>David Warren, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidwarrenonline.com\/2014\/05\/26\/hapless-voters\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Hapless Voters&#8221;, <em>Essays in Idleness<\/em><\/a>, 2014-05-26.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Normally, [the voters] are suckered. The political class \u2014 the class of politicians, senior bureaucrats, self-interested lobbyists, and all their paid flunkeys in media and elsewhere \u2014 are much cleverer than \u201cthe people,\u201d on political questions. \u201cThe people,\u201d for their part, may be individually cleverer than they, but not, as a rule, on political questions, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53,41],"tags":[431,766,622,458],"class_list":["post-25995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-conservatism","tag-democracy","tag-ideology","tag-parliament"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Lh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25996,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25995\/revisions\/25996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}