David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

libertarian

Illegal bribes mean a politician is corrupt, but the legal things he does are just as immoral

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Every time an elected official is arrested for corruption, the media and other politicians point pious fingers at the individual, distancing themselves from the guy in the expensive suit taking the perp walk. That misses the point. It’s not just the individual who’s to blame. The statist system itself is immoral.

Let me be clear. Politicians such as Jack B. Johnson deserve scorn, but not just for the things they do that are illegal. The legal things they do are just as bad. Until he was arrested, Johnson was the chief executive of the county government in Prince George’s County, Md. During his eight years as the county executive, he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for steering development to favored companies. Nobody will ever know the total that he took.

When things such as this happen, the politicians supporters are hurt and feel betrayed. And newspapers go into overdrive to start covering the story after it’s too late. (In this case, the Washington post has quite a collection of stories documenting various aspects of the case.) But why does no one in these stories question the system that’s at the root of it? Why doesn’t anyone question why a government official has the power to decide who gets to build what?

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Primitive instincts: Why do we keep falling in love with politicians?

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I have a confession to make. Up until the day he resigned in 1974, I was a fervent supporter of President Richard Nixon, because I thought he was a victim of political opponents and the liberal media. Of course, I was a mere kid at the time, but I was still a True Believer of the worst kind.

When Nixon resigned on Aug. 8, 1974, I finally accepted the truth that had been right in front of me for a long time. I sat down and wrote the letter you see here and it ran on Aug. 18 as a letter to the editor in The Birmingham News. The paper had no way to know it was running a letter from someone who couldn’t even vote for years to come.

I don’t bring this up just to point out my own gullibility — although there’s that, too — but to point to something painfully common. People have a natural instinct to trust politicians that they agree with. They have a tendency to accept almost anything from the ones they like, even though they hold their enemies to a much different standard.

I thought about this again Tuesday as embattled U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) admitted that he did indeed engage in “inappropriate behavior” with women he’d met online. As Republicans attack him and Democrats pointedly refuse to defend him, it’s pretty clear that the only question is how long it’ll be before he resigns.

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People who invoke ‘fairness’ generally just mean, ‘Do things my way — or else’

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One of the most insidious tools in the collectivist toolbox is the one called “fairness.” When someone in a political or financial situation tells you to “be fair,” you generally need to hold onto your money really tightly.

Fairness is one of those concepts that we learn as children and that everybody can agree is a good thing. The problem starts when some people get the arrogant notion that they should be the artibers of what’s fair — instead of the people who would otherwise be on the two sides of a mutual agreement.

People also use the word to intimidate people into agreeing with them. An example that irritates me is that of some non-profit organizations — most notably United Way, in my experience — pre-define the amount of money they say you should give to them as your “fair share.” I refuse to give to an agency such as that, and I’ve had a couple of confrontations with bosses in the distant past when they tried to intimidate me by saying that I was keeping a department or a company from having “100 percent participation.” This type of thing is implied extortion in which your boss and an agency collude to take money out of your pocket. But at least it’s still your choice in that case.

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