The majority of posts on the ACED Blog discuss what citizens and/or officials should do. That may seem strange. In general, normative considerations are excluded from political discussions. Eric Lewis in the NYT touched on this while writing about torture: “When torture becomes another political choice, the debate becomes an empirical one about whether it works.”
Torture is a good leading example because most people probably still find it morally objectionable. Nevertheless, as Lewis showed it has entered the realm of political discussion. If we can see how something as deplorable–and almost universally objectionable–as torture transforms into something political, then realizing that other political choices may also have moral “consequences” should not be difficult.
Of course, moral considerations should inhere in every decision, and the fact that we must be reminded that this includes political decisions exemplifies the failures of ourselves and our leaders. Why politics and morality have diverged probably could never receive a fully satisfying treatment even in a dissertation-length work; on the other hand, you could more or less hit the nail on the head by ascribing self-interest as the root cause. For sake of brevity, lets merely assume the latter.
We already assume politicians are self-interested. The concept of Machiavellian leaders still thrives, we routinely call leaders of at least one party or the other corrupt, and leaders themselves acknowledge the influence of elite interests (which have influence because of what they can give to those in power). We still say “power corrupts,” that money is power, that there is too much money in politics, etc. Thus, it is well known and widely accepted that officials are self-interested and make decisions based on that; proving it doesn’t deserve much effort (which I haven’t given, sorry for being a little lazy).
In other words, we have a political norm, captured by Machiavelli’s The Prince, that anything goes in politics. We see it in smear campaigns and attack ads, gerrymandering, interest-group PACs and lobbying organizations, and–as already mentioned–the quotidian discourse about and by politicians. Politics is about the end game: winning an election, getting a particular measure passed, or defeating one. The concrete “victories” count almost without regard to the means used to achieve them.
It should not be surprising where this mindset leads. When people justify morally “bad” acts as political necessity, politicians become torturers and/or torture enablers, war criminals and warmongers, corrupt corporate shills. For example, the drone attacks by the U.S. under President Obama have likely killed hundreds of civilians – a Democrat will justify this to you. And their argument will appear to have some merit because it will be all about pragmatism, ignoring completely the moral duties of the President and ourselves as human beings.
The fact remains, though, that we cannot escape our moral obligations (if you believe that humans carry moral duties). You cannot justify immoral acts based on political expediency. If a President of the United States orders drone attacks that will likely kill innocent people in a foreign country, and they in fact are killed, to appease his or her military staff, corporate donors, and undecided voters…. S/he still killed innocent people! Almost everyone would agree that I should not kill someone for the money in their wallet even if I could make better use of it. But the United States President not only can kill almost whomever for votes and dollars, but he is expected to do so and defended for doing it. This is the inevitable consequence of carving out morality from politics.
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