JaylieWoW
07-03-2007, 09:12 AM
Republic to Empire
by Charley Reese
www.lewrockwell.com (http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese374.html)
There is no such thing as a flawless politician. We should never expect perfection in anything involving human beings. But there very much is such a thing as character, and that's where we've gotten careless in our choice of leaders.
The foundations of character are honesty, courage and fidelity. An adulterer who is unfaithful to his wife is hardly likely to be faithful to his oath of office. John F. Kennedy was an adulterer and a playboy, but he was the first president to be marketed like a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste. It becomes more and more difficult these days to distinguish between accomplishment and image.
To get even an idea of a person's character, you have to look at his whole life, not just the public image. People rarely, if ever, change their character after adolescence. Hopefully, they will grow in knowledge and perhaps wisdom, but most people remain the same people they always were as far as character is concerned. Self-indulgent cowards don't become brave stoics.
Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, discovered that the hellish experience didn't change anybody. Those who were bad remained bad, and those who were good remained good. I suppose the question for us today is, Have we lost the ability to distinguish between good and bad?
It is interesting about the psychiatrist's analysis of the Holocaust survivors, which begs the question, are people born bad or do they learn to be bad?
Just thinking out loud, not drawing any conclusions. However, I think this article rightly says something about "the way things are".
by Charley Reese
www.lewrockwell.com (http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese374.html)
There is no such thing as a flawless politician. We should never expect perfection in anything involving human beings. But there very much is such a thing as character, and that's where we've gotten careless in our choice of leaders.
The foundations of character are honesty, courage and fidelity. An adulterer who is unfaithful to his wife is hardly likely to be faithful to his oath of office. John F. Kennedy was an adulterer and a playboy, but he was the first president to be marketed like a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste. It becomes more and more difficult these days to distinguish between accomplishment and image.
To get even an idea of a person's character, you have to look at his whole life, not just the public image. People rarely, if ever, change their character after adolescence. Hopefully, they will grow in knowledge and perhaps wisdom, but most people remain the same people they always were as far as character is concerned. Self-indulgent cowards don't become brave stoics.
Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, discovered that the hellish experience didn't change anybody. Those who were bad remained bad, and those who were good remained good. I suppose the question for us today is, Have we lost the ability to distinguish between good and bad?
It is interesting about the psychiatrist's analysis of the Holocaust survivors, which begs the question, are people born bad or do they learn to be bad?
Just thinking out loud, not drawing any conclusions. However, I think this article rightly says something about "the way things are".