Occasionally adding corroborative details to add verisimilitude to otherwise bald and unconvincing, but veridicous accounts with careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination.
Showing posts with label Niccolò Machiavelli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Niccolò Machiavelli. Show all posts
A commenter, Mark W. of Queensland, on Andrew Bolt’s column, “Crap Applause”, wrote:
I spoke to our local federal MP [...] she said to
me, off the record that the carbon tax is the craziest idea her
government has ever come up with, she added, I don’t why they are going
ahead with it, I can’t understand their logic. Then she said, there are
many who are quietly objecting to it however there was not a lot she
could do. I will not mention her name publicly as that would be terrible
for her as she is a good person, and she worked hard to get elected [...].
No, she is not “a good person”. Any elected representative who publicly supports an irrational policy though privately considering it crazy (whether from motives of party-solidarity or tribalism or for any other reason) or who publicly condones incompetent government whilst privately condemning it or who “worked hard to get elected” but, once elected, fails to represent electors is not a good person.
[T]here was not a lot she
could do[.]
On the contrary, she could, for a start, say publicly what she thinks.
In Queensland (supposing Mark W. was speaking of a local MP in Queensland) only two of the Labor MHRs are female: Mrs Yvette D’Ath (representing Petrie) and Ms Kirsten Livermore (of Capricornia). I have written to both these representatives, and I shall report any response I receive.
UPDATE II (17 July): Some, at Andrew Bolt’s blog, question whether I should advocate that politicians on all sides of politics be honest. Of course, I do. Would that mean that I’d support Malcolm Turnbull’s crossing the floor of Parliament on a matter of principle? Of course, it would. If Malcolm Turnbull were an honest, upright man, however, I suspect that he too would oppose a tax on carbon dioxide.
The motto of Beaconsfield Primary School (or, when I attended, Beaconsfield Area School) was esse quam videri—“to
be rather than to seem”—which might be derived from either Cicero’s
“virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt”* or
Sallust’s description of Cato the Younger, “esse quam videri bonus
malebat”† or, perhaps, both. For a ruler’s necessity to put appearance above reality, Niccolò Machiavelli reverses this phrase, in The Prince, to videri quam esse: a prince must seem but not be a man of principle.
When I suggested
above that a Member of Parliament (who privately maligns the stupid
‘carbon’ tax though publicly praising it) was not a good person, I did
not say that she therefore had to act rightly. I wish she would, but I
should not expect her to act with any more principle than our
pragmatically mendacious PM does. I wrote that she could easily say what she thinks, but that does not mean that I expect her to do so or that I am unaware of the reprisals a renegade parliamentarian may suffer.
* “Few are those who are as gifted with virtue as they wish to seem.” De Amicitia, 98.
† “He preferred to be rather than to seem good.” Bellum Catilinae, 54.6.
UPDATE II (17 July): Some, at Andrew Bolt’s blog, question whether I should advocate that politicians on all sides of politics be honest. Of course, I do. Would that mean that I’d support Malcolm Turnbull’s crossing the floor of Parliament on a matter of principle? Of course, it would. If Malcolm Turnbull were an honest, upright man, however, I suspect that he too would oppose a tax on carbon dioxide.