Category: Philosophy & Ethics
The question has often been asked, what is the animating principle of different forms of government, for each, it is assumed, has its own principle. In other words, what is the general idea which inspires each political system?
We have sought very conscientiously, and democrats themselves have sought very conscientiously, to find remedies for this constitutional disease of democracy. We have preserved...
8. Chapter 8I have already compared this, our desire to worship incompetence, to an infectious disease. It has attacked the State at the very core, in its constitution, and it is not surpri...
12. Chapter 12What remedies can we apply to this modern disease, the worship of intellectual and moral incompetence? What is, as M. Fouillee puts it, the best way of avoiding the hidden rocks...
7. Chapter 7Here we find incompetence spreading its influence by the logical necessity of the case. There are other quarters in which it grows by a sort of contagion. Have you ever noticed...
1. Chapter 1The question has often been asked, what is the animating principle of different forms of government, for each, it is assumed, has its own principle. In other words, what is the...
2. Chapter 2And what is the result of all this? The result, which is very logical, very just from the democratic point of view, and precisely that which the democracy desires and cannot do...
4. Chapter 4Democracy, in its modern form, encroaches first upon the executive and then upon the administrative authorities, and reduces them to subjection by means of its delegates, the le...
5. Chapter 5The truth of my contention is proved by the fact that nowadays all our laws are emergency laws, a thing that no law should ever be. Montesquieu advised people to be very chary a...
10. Chapter 10The contempt for efficiency is carried far even in the liberal professions and in professional customs. We all know the story, perhaps a mythical one, of the judge who said to a...
3. Chapter 3Will efficiency then, you may well ask, when driven out of all public employment, find refuge somewhere? Certainly it will. In private employments and in employments paid by pub...
9. Chapter 9If the worship of incompetence reverberates with a jarring note through our domestic morals, it has an effect hardly less harmful on the social relations of men in the wider the...
6. Chapter 6This is not all. The law of incompetence spreads still further, either by some process of logical necessity or by a sort of contagion. It has often been made the subject of merr...