Lord Acton on "Power Corrupts"

I doubt that THEY think it’s ‘bad things’ they want. As one of the Du Pont’s said at the time of the French Revolution, More evil has been done by poor logicians than by evil men intentionally doing evil.

This is why the President is constitutionally limited in his actions. And why a President who apologizes for not being an emperor gives me the creeps.

Why rely on old dead white guys to support the idea that power corrupts when we can use SCIENCE!

The Economist ran an article a few years back on a psychological study on this. An interesting aspect of the results is that people who believe they deserve their power are worse than those who feel their authority was illegitimate (the former group being rank hypocrites while the latter actually were overly submissive).

So one take away point is that people like Sean Hannity who talk about the sanctity of the office are helping to legitimize abuse of power which makes the problem of moral hypocrisy among the powerful even worse. This also confirms that the answer to the problems of politics can’t just be put the good guys in charge because once they feel like they legitimately should be in charge, they’re more likely to turn into jerks.

Professor Boudreaux recently had a great article related to this:
http://cafehayek.com/2013/01/bipedal-mammals.html

Contrast this quote with the aphorism: “You can’t make an omellette without breaking a few eggs”. I think Acton’s quote cuts through the essence of what power is and what it is not. We wish it be a calibrated amount of discretion necessary to for government to “do something about it”. It is more likely to be an on-off switch, that we turn on at our peril.

“If the worst tend to rise to the top then that’s a plus in favor of hereditary monarchy and aristocracy. Prevent the ability to rise by choosing those in power based on the random luck of birth.”

Well I used to think that’s how monarchies worked, Doug, but I’ve read so many stories of assassination and rebellion, of power seizures by military generals, lords, regents, eunuchs, princes, queens, bodyguards and so on, so it now seems that simple father-to-son inheritance of monarchy was regularly punctuated by butchery and the rise of new dynasties. What I like about representative democracy is that it creates a regular and peaceful way to change power; lose that and we’ll get less stability, perhaps, not more – and even more wicked and violent people grabbing at the throne.

I think of Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel, for example, who often talks about how he respects the office of the Presidency no matter who is President…

Hmm, that is not what Acton is saying. Acton is not arguing against the office of King or Pope, he is arguing against a notion that the office excuses the holder of responsibility for his actions, or that his actions are held to some other standard of rightness than the standard used for other men.

Acton was a devout Catholic and remained in good standing (despite his private qualms regarding infallibility). To think that with this he is making an argument against either office or authority generally misunderstands the man and his history. He thought he was making an argument *for* them, because the men that hold power needed to be held honestly to account at all times if legitimate office and legitimate authority were to be preserved.

Hello Mr. Henderson,

Its been a very long time. I communicated with you a ways back when some of your articles appeared in the Financial Post side of the National Post. Despite Mr. Corcoran’s efforts, the paper has decidedly moved far to the left. Lamentable.

I see you were once a fellow Winnipegger. You left at a very good time. As you probably know, the place hasn’t grown much since then for obvious reasons.

There is a very simple solution to Lord Acton’s admonishment. It is contained in the proof below.

Enjoy,
Gary Marshall

There is a very simple answer to government squander and corruption, as well as the deterrent effect of Taxation. if one can find the flaw, I shall be more than happy to give him $100,000 for the trouble.

The US Government, any government, is in deficit to the full amount of its expenditures because it generates none of the revenues to defray them. It merely confiscates them, or borrows them leaving another to settle up. In short, it merely hands the bill for everything it does to someone else. So the US Government deficit is actually nearing $4 trillion.

Nobody cares whether the full $4 trillion is wasted. They only seem to care about the wastage caused by borrowed money, which is slightly above $1 trillion. How truly sad that none seem to put as much energy into discovering how much wastage can be found among the taxed funds so badly expended, which is the bulk of it.

Money taken from productive purpose, whether taxed or borrowed, and put to unproductive purpose is money wasted. And that wastage that commands so much of the nation’s resources makes us all the poorer, deprives us of worthy innovations, deprives us of greater supply of desired goods.

So what must one do to stop this ever growing monster that has infected, perverted, and harmed every other nation on this earth?

Well, the answer will not come with Taxation, the forced surrender of one’s earnings and property.

Why have a government that spends $4 trillion, most of it wasted, when you can have a government that spends about $1.2 trillion, all of it spent for worthy returns? That $1.2 trillion and accruing interest will cost the nation nothing because in adding a $1.2 trillion dollar debt and accruing interest to the national debt, one will also add a $1.2 trillion dollar asset and accruing interest for the nation.

In other words, its a wash. A nation will have a government expending with profit in mind, and one will live in a nation in which one’s property is never confiscated, never again expended for the most absurd purposes imaginable.

Enjoy the proof I gave in my comment on one of Tamney’s articles at Forbes (under the nick of economart). The proof begins:

The costs of borrowing for a nation to fund public expenditures, if it borrows solely from its resident citizens and in the nation’s currency, is nil….

@ThomasL,
To think that with this he is making an argument against either office or authority generally misunderstands the man and his history.
I agree that it would show a misunderstanding on my part if that is what I had written. But it isn’t. I didn’t say that Sean Hannity agrees that there should be a President. Almost everyone does. What I wrote is that Sean Hannity respects the office of President. That’s quite different.