Choosing to be a Politician

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I'm a student at the Universtiy of Cincinati and I just finished an interinship with the Friends of Sherrod Brown Campaign. The greatest thing about it was that it gave me time to reflect on what I wanted to do.......You can have all the talent in the world for something but if you don't have any desire it goes nowhere. To me one should want to be a politician not for personal gain but because you seek to make the country in which you live a little bit better than it was when you first got into office.

That sounds laudable. Unfortunately, being a politician gives one the power to control other people or at the very least intrude into their private business. Such power often corrupts the best of people. If we should be politicians then all of us should be politicians. In ancient Athens the 6000 or so Athenian males with political rights were chosen by lottery to service on the various councils, juries and legislation committees for a limited period of time. If one's name was chosen he was obliged to serve, just like jury duty today.

Pick the politicians by lot, let them serve for brief periods and then recycle them back into the private parts of society.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 01 Dec 2012, 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ruveyn, I agree with you. That's why I encouraged Mayor Bloomberg to set up the Independent Lottery Party(ILP). The ILP would have candidates selected from persons who meet minimum requirements and show interest in serving. The ILP would provide an alternative to the two gangs we now have. At worst the ILP could provide protest candidates to the two gangs.

Ancient Athens had its experience with party politics. It lead to two Oligarchical Putsches, one of which involved students of Socrates (Alcibiedes and others). When the Democracy was restored in 401 b.c.e. the leaders of the Democracy movement went into get-even mode. One of the victims was Socrates, the philosopher who was blamed for encouraging the oligarchy particans to a violent takeover and the imposition of a tyranny (the Tyranny of the Thirty). Socrates was found guilty of impiety and "corrupting the youth of Athens" a fancy name for fomenting an insurrection. Socrates was found guilty and ultimately sentenced to drink poison. Read the -Critias- and Socrates' -Apology- by Plato.

ruveyn