week 13 post 1
‘Star wars” is the ultimate conservative morality tale, by Craig Shirley and Scott Mauer
Star wars swept the country in 1977, and changed the way movies were made forever
There was a reason for that success: The movie was hopeful. It was clear. It was different. It was real. It was upbeat
Lucas, decades after its release, admitted to the Boston Globe, “I love history, so while the psychological basis of ‘Star Wars’ is mythological, the political and social bases are historical.”
The 1970s in America, compared with the social revolutions of the 1960s and the Reagan revolution of the 1980s, was an abysmal decade
Vietnam had escalated under President Lyndon B. Johnson, but it was failing under President Richard M. Nixon. Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned, only for Nixon to follow suit after one of the worst political scandals of the 20th century
President Gerald R. Ford’s term was forgettable. Oil prices rose. Iran was acting up. There was stagflation, a seemingly impossible scenario of simultaneous stagnation and inflation in the economy
President Jimmy Carter, who came to Washington in 1977 to clean up the bureaucracy and the United States, became that which he most feared: a pessimistic, bureaucratic politician, not against the system but part of it
By 1977, the Soviet Union was agitated, and it appeared, by most measures, that they were winning the Cold War. Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev took a strong tone against the West and against capitalism, especially in keeping their hold on occupied Eastern Europe.
“We will bury you,” Khrushchev had proclaimed in 1956. Two decades later, many feared that he was right.
A sense of doom was always around the corner and always prevalent
And then along came “Star Wars.” It was a story of a young group of independent rebels fighting against an oppressive, collectivist empire for the freedom of the galaxy
The former government was even known as “the Old Republic.” The Force is a hint of Judeo-Christianity as a unifying agent for goodness, and “a New Hope” screams conservative optimism
The militarized Galactic Empire was ruled with an iron fist by a Politburo and an emperor. Its main tactics for unity and stability were enslavement, fear, death and destruction, especially with its new planet-killing weapon
Its uniforms of masked, bright-white armor destroyed any sense of identity; a soldier was simply a number
They were a small, motivated force who learned they could defeat a large, unmotivated force. It was George Washington against the British Empire
It was no less than the Cold War in space. The Soviet Union still had its grip on Eastern Europe, violently suppressing any sort of rebellion or call for reform.
No matter how many times revolutions against the Soviets failed, though, there was still that renewed call for freedom for the people of Eastern Europe. The United States knew that call, and moviegoers recognized it, too. “Star Wars” showed that that call was not worthless, not simply a fool’s errand.
The phrase “may the Force be with you” is the ultimate statement of individuality, of American conservatism
I object to this statement, I think its a call to unify in a way that is typically liberal
In “Star Wars,” there was no moral ambiguity for the audience. We knew the good guys, we knew the bad guys. Only Han Solo, the smuggler, could be considered morally gray, but even he had a good heart
That is exactly what Americans and all people of the free world wanted. It was a clear message that good can and does prevail in the face of evil. It was a message that republics win over collectivist oppression
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dft/files/political_ethics-revised_10-11.pdf
Political ethics revised, the harvard international encyclopedia of ethics
Political Ethics of Process
To what extent are politicians permitted to take actions that would otherwise be wrong? Ethics requires political leaders to avoid harming the innocent, but it may also obligate them to sacrifice innocent lives for the good of the nation
Although similar problems arise in professional and corporate roles (see e.g. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS), they are likely to be more extreme or more frequent in political life. The scope and structure of modern politics multiply the occasions on which they arise, and magnify the consequences that they produce
The ethical problems that public officials confront arise from two general features of public office—its representational and its organizational character
For the sake of those for whom officials act, the duties of office may permit and even require officials to use force, lie, keep secrets, and break promises in ways that would be wrong in private life.
These and worse violations of our shared moral principles create what is known as “the problem of DIRTY HANDS.”
The problem originates in the world of kings and princes, who for reasons of state transgressed the conventional morality of their time (Parrish 2007). MACHIAVELLI provided the classic formulation. The problem reappears in our time most dramatically in the dilemmas that revolutionaries confront, as in JEAN-PAUL SARTRE’s play that gives the problem its modern name.
More recently, some political theorists have suggested that the leaders of established democratic states may have hands that are no less dirty
n, Michael Walzer (1973) argues that “a particular act of government may be exactly the right thing to do in utilitarian terms and yet leave the man who does it guilty of a moral wrong.”
Must do wrong to do right on a large scale?
Consequentialism and deontology
Consequentialists object that if the action is justified, then the politician is not guilty of anything
Deontologists object that if the action is truly wrong, the politician should simply not do it.
In the context of a democracy, the question is not what citizens should do to the leader but what citizens and the state should do to compensate the victims of the decision, or how citizens can hold leaders accountable for decisions that are legitimately made in secret
This is COMPENSATORY JUSTICE (LEADERSHIP ETHICS;PUBLICITY)
“when the end is good…it will always excuse the means” (Machiavelli 1883, Bk. I, ch. IX).
Can we really justify torture with this reasoning, does one good and one bad cancel out
The more common view is that whether the means are justified depends on several different factors including, but not limited to, the value of the end
For example, in judging whether political deception is justified, we should consider the importance of:
the goal of the deception; the availability of alternative means for achieving the goal;
the identity of the victims of the deception (other officials, other governments, all citizens);
the accountability of the deceivers (the possibility of approving the deception in advance or discovering it later);
and the containment of the deception (its effects on other actions by officials)
Lying, manipulation, and deceit, make it impossible for citizens to make a true collective judgement about the other wrongs of government
Should a representative follow the will of constituents or the dictates of conscience?
the constituents do not have a single will, and representatives have many different responsibilities
How to we ensure the protection of a collective will
the difference between individual and institutional CORRUPTION (Thompson 1995).
the demand for greater transparency rests on a recognition that democratic accountability requires public officials not only to act in the public interest but also to show that they are doing so
The organizational nature of public office creates the second general set of problems for the ethics of process—difficulties in ascribing RESPONSIBILITY
, it is difficult even in principle to identify who is responsible for the results. This is known as “the problem of many hands.” (Thompson 2005:11-32)
Two general approaches to this problem have been prominent. The collectivist approach (holding only the organization itself responsible) is more common in the philosophical literature
Is it the society or those in charge who are responsible
It is claimed to have two principal advantages: if we target only the organization, we have identified an agent that we can hold responsible without unfairly blaming individuals, and also the agent that has the greatest capacity to provide compensation and undertake reforms
However, even if collectivities are regarded as moral agents just like persons (and what that means seems obscure), it is still the individual members of the organizations who suffer the consequences that follow from the ascription of responsibility, and individual officials who will have to respond
Other theorists have argued that with some modifications in the standard criteria of responsibility, the individualist approach (holding individuals responsible for collective outcomes) can be preserved (Bovens 1998; Thompson 2005:11-32, 33- 49)
To reject an excuse of ignorance, for example, we do not have to show that a public official should have foreseen the specific act of particular subordinates. It is sufficient that the official should have known that mistakes of the kind that occurred were probable
Critics have raised objections to the whole enterprise of political ethics
Politics takes place in a rough-and-tumble world where individuals and nations pursue power in their own interest. If politicians are to be effective in this world (especially in international relations), they cannot be bound by rules that would constrain this pursuit.
The idea that ethics puts limits on the pursuit of power
A second group of critics object that political ethics focuses too much on particular policies and policymakers, and thereby ignores the causes of larger injustices, which lie in the structure of society and government
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