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The Political Order
331
Such an attitude makes it difficult for a nation to recruit as public
servants its most able citizens. As we have seen, however, the need of
man for some form of government is universal. Without it human life
would be “nasty, brutish, and short,” as Hobbes pictured it to have
been before the emergence of organized society.22 The provision for
some measure of order and justice is the most basic need of society,
and in a democracy the people undertake to make this provision them
selves through their representatives. In view of the importance of
the state and in view of the greatness of the debt which each individual
owes to it, those who are charged with representing the people in this
endeavor ought to be among the most capable and responsible citizens
which a democracy produces, and politics—i.e., “the business of
providing, maintaining, and changing government”—ought to be one
of the most honorable of all human endeavors.
Not only does the derogatory view of politics which we have been
considering make it more difficult to persuade able citizens to enter
government service, but it also overlooks the fact that corruption
in politics and government generally represents a reflection of com
mon practices in business and other relationships carried over into
government. Frequently the incentive for such corruption comes from
private citizens, especially from men in private industry who provide
the temptations to which government officials sometimes succumb.
Public officials do not corrupt themselves. As Senator Paul H. Doug
las remarks, “For every bribe-taker, there generally is a bribe-giver.
For ever public official who goes wrong, there is at least another pri
vate citizen who has helped him in that direction.”23 Corrupt legis
lators and public officials go hand in hand with corrupt private citizens,
and they reinforce each other. Especially at the national level, Douglas
maintains, the initiative is taken by private interests seeking to in
fluence or control government. Paradoxically, public opinion has
concentrated its indignation upon the guilty public officials and left
the equally guilty private corrupters relatively unscathed. This at
titude is essentially unfair and fails to get to the root of the problem.
As Douglas points out, in any moral indignation which is developed
and any reforms which are initiated, account needs to be taken
of the corrupter as well as of the corrupted and of the enticer as well
as of the enticed, and the former ought to be deterred and punished
as well as the latter.
22 Hobbes,
Leviathan
, pt. I, ch. XIII.
23 Paul H. Douglas,
Ethics in Government
, Cambridge, Harvard University
Press, 1952, pp. 22-26.