During the first 2019 election
debate, the ITV moderator asked the leaders of the two main political parties
whether the truth mattered in this election. The UK Prime Minister, somewhat
flustered, answered that, of course, it did. He was right: truth matters in
that politicians and the media do whatever they can to manipulate it.
Mahatma Ghandi once said that “truth
never damages a cause that is just”. You have to wonder why, in their
pursuit of political advantage, politicians so often ignore this.
Inspired by Machiavelli, “let
the prince win and maintain his State; the means will always be judged
honourable, and will be praised by everyone”, the trend today is towards
the expedient destruction of norms and ethics and the advancement of narrow
political interest masquerading as public good.
All that happens nowadays - the
perversion of democratic processes, brazen political lying, authoritarian
governance, the extra-judicial punishment of regime critics and whistleblowers
as a means to deter others, the gagging of free speech, is countenanced on
utilitarian grounds. “Exitus acta probat”![1]
The ”ends justify the means” strategy
of our rulers, or doing bad things for “the greater good”, has serious
problems though: what a ‘good end’ is is quite subjective and can hide very
selfish ulterior motives. Who decides what is ‘good’ [2]-
and whether that has not been judged on the basis of flawed logic or from a
partisan standpoint - how it is measured and at what time scale that ‘good’ was
perceived? Could you have taken everything into account? Are ends arrived at by
unethical means, really an achievement? Presuming your wish for the ‘good end’
is based on some moral notions of what constitutes goodness, how then can the
immoral acts, committed in its pursuit, be justified without rendering all your
assessments fallible?[3].
Are there no alternatives? Every
one of our actions triggers a multitude of possibilities, each of them a cause
for further actions, each of them with their own series of contingencies, none
of them perfectly predictable, and so on[4].
Along these endless event chains there is the chance of doing the right thing
at every step as you come across it. As the future cannot be forecast with
complete certainty, how can you say that the ‘end’ – a probable end - justifies
the immorality of your current actions? One can be much more certain of the
immediate harm than of the more distant goal since means are always easier to
control than the ends that one only hopes for.[5]
Furthermore, as the ‘end’ that you envision is not likely to be the end, but
just an intermediary point, there is no guarantee that you will not require
more unethical means to reach your goals further down the line. To claim
otherwise is a very narrow view of the world, a view in which there is no
chance of random events or the risk of the present evils snowballing into the
future.
A philosopher once said that
typical of utopian thinking is the simplification of the world, the removal of
its contradictions, and thus also the removal of the means that help society to
deal with contradictions – a condition of all progress*.
The consequentialist approach in
today’s politics thus fails on both ethical[6]
and pragmatic grounds.
The rulers of our State are
cutting bigger and bigger corners and in doing so they are treating individuals
(I refer here, in particular, to dissidents and whistleblowers) as “superfluous
appendages”[7], fair game
in the field of political warfare or mere instruments that exist only for the
benefit of their political schemes, which they label as the ‘greater good’.
The UK needs reminding that
sacrificing innocent people for ‘good’ political ends is the ideology of
terrorists; it was the pretext used by communists and fascists to justify their
slaughter of millions of innocents; it was the barbarous practice of primitive
societies trying to placate their gods. It was the thinking of slave masters.
The State’s obligation not to
treat people as a means to an end is based on the sanctity of human life and each
person’s right to dignity[8],
which is an absolute human right and not subject to utilitarian considerations[9].
Any action that injures human dignity is therefore an abuse of power.
What is more, as others have
already argued, the breach of this obligation damages the great principle of
justice which demands the punishment of the criminal, not of the innocent, a
principle that has been affirmed since ancient times: “the harm-doing must
be directed at the wrongdoer, not at the innocent”[10]
Breaching the right of one person[11]
to be treated fairly damages the rights of everyone in society[12].
Then there are also the long-term losses relating to the weakening of our trust
in justice and democracy upon which everybody’s ‘good’ depends[13].
The manner in which the UK, for political reasons, denies some whistleblowers[14] the dignity due to persons as ‘ends in themselves’ - impermissible in any circumstances - is especially wicked when there are more appropriate alternative ways of satisfying those reasons, albeit some that would require more effort, less self-interest and less cowardice on the part of our ruling elite. They, who impose sacrifices upon others, never seem willing to make sacrifices themselves.
Without respect for the
individual we don’t live in a liberal democracy and, to maximise happiness,
humanity has not devised a better system. Without the protection of individual
rights, freedoms and liberties, we slide towards authoritarian extremes[15],
where human beings become expendable.
In an age when the gratification
of most comforts comes at the click of a button, there is growing impatience
with the circuitous routes, marked-out by reasonableness and convention, toward
the achievement of political goals. Yet, the shortcuts are more taxing
still…and, most often, irreversible. As John Milton once wrote, “darkness,
once gazed upon, can never be lost.”
______________________________________________________
[1]
Ovid, Heroides
[2]
“The end cannot justify the means for the simple and obvious reason that the
means employed determine the nature of the ends produced”, Aldous Huxley
[3]
Nagel, War and massacre
[4]
“There is no single end to our actions, plural effects flow from every
action” John Dewey
[5]
V.V. Kokko
[*]
[6]
Moral principles themselves can be justified pragmatically
[7]
Theodor W. Adorno
[8]
Breaches of an individual’s right to dignity are acts that are intrinsically
evil and, as such, they are always wrong.
[9]
An inalienable human right even in times of war, which cannot be removed by
another man or even by a majority
[10]
See Socrates and Leon of Salamis
[11]
In sociology, Karl Popper wrote that individuals constitute the basic unit of
analysis
[12]
“Basic rights should not be regarded as constraints on the pursuit of
collective interests. Violating such rights always damages the common good.”
Robert P George
[13]
“If the
government becomes
a law breaker, it breeds contempt for the law, it invites every man to become
law onto himself, it invites anarchy” R.M.B,
Senanayake
[14]
John Locke, the founder of classical liberalism wrote: “no one ought to harm
another in his life, liberty, or possessions.”
[15] Under the
despotism of one or under the tyranny of many
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