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Reverie, v. 3, issue 3, whole 10, September 1940
Page 2
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2 Reverie GOVERNMENT AND THE CITIZEN E. A. EDKINS NO TRUTH is more certain, no truth more widely side-stepped by the average citizen, than the fact that we get exactly what we deserve from the form of government we choose to set up. If we do not like it, we can change it; that is we could change it if we were individually informed and collectively determined to have our way. So, the causes of bad government arise from the defects of the individual,--his weakness, selfishness, dishonesty, cowardice and indifference. He wants someone else to do his social thinking and to make his political decisions; he wants to be undisturbed while he is safe-guarding his personal interests. Ostensibly he chooses his various representatives; what really happens is that he votes with little knowledge of the candidates and with none whatever of the small group of professional politicians who selected them. Unless the candidates thusse lected are unusually rugged, honest and capable, the terrific pressures to which they are immediately subjected are too much for them to withstand. Patronage debauches them; compulsions from their electorate on the one hand and their legislative associates on the other soon break down their resistance, and they become rubber stamps or downright grafters. And why not? Here is the pork barrel, and there are their constituents, clamoring not only for necessitous Federal aid but for all they can grab, and to hell with all the other cities, counties and states of the so-called Union. Examining these
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2 Reverie GOVERNMENT AND THE CITIZEN E. A. EDKINS NO TRUTH is more certain, no truth more widely side-stepped by the average citizen, than the fact that we get exactly what we deserve from the form of government we choose to set up. If we do not like it, we can change it; that is we could change it if we were individually informed and collectively determined to have our way. So, the causes of bad government arise from the defects of the individual,--his weakness, selfishness, dishonesty, cowardice and indifference. He wants someone else to do his social thinking and to make his political decisions; he wants to be undisturbed while he is safe-guarding his personal interests. Ostensibly he chooses his various representatives; what really happens is that he votes with little knowledge of the candidates and with none whatever of the small group of professional politicians who selected them. Unless the candidates thusse lected are unusually rugged, honest and capable, the terrific pressures to which they are immediately subjected are too much for them to withstand. Patronage debauches them; compulsions from their electorate on the one hand and their legislative associates on the other soon break down their resistance, and they become rubber stamps or downright grafters. And why not? Here is the pork barrel, and there are their constituents, clamoring not only for necessitous Federal aid but for all they can grab, and to hell with all the other cities, counties and states of the so-called Union. Examining these
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