I think that it is a very strange time that we live in where the Prime Minister of the day, who apparently purports to profess being a Christian, would go on national television of a morning and openly day that not only should we not have an independent corruption commission but that the whole notion of virtue itself is wrong.
If everything you know is wrong; black is white, up is down and short is long and everything you thought was just so important, really doesn't matter any more, then why exactly should we place any faith at all in the instrument of democracy or government? I would at very least hope that government tries to maintain some kind of veneer of civility.
Perhaps naively, I like to hold onto the notion that rational good can be achieved at large by the exercise of virtue. I think that even before you arrive at a conclusion like Jeremy Bentham's idea of utilitarianism that the greatest good for the greatest number of people is itself a good idea, I think that there should at least be an agreement that moral fitness, goodness, and trying to be upright, has some attainable form.
This perhaps takes us way way back in the history of thought, and back at least as far as Aristotle and beyond. His ideas about virtue theory have less to do with following a set of rules and more to do with being good in the first place. If we can focus on being good people and doing good to others, then doing good and doing right, that is both being virtuous and being virtuous, will follow; both effortlessly and automatically.
Aristotle tied this in with the idea that a thing in order to fulfill its proper functioning, should do what it is supposed to do. If a thing does what it is supposed to do then it is a good thing. Likewise, if a thing fails to do that which it is supposed to do, then it is a bad thing.
This ties in with natural law theory which assumes that nature itself has given us the tools in order to do good and be good. I will confess that as a Christian, I find this deeply vacuous as I think that this base assumption is deeply flawed and I have a whole kosmos of evidence to show that people are selfish and self-interested.
"Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors."
- Seneca
"The first point of justice is that none should do any mischief to another."
- Cicero
"Love your neighbour as yourself."
- Jesus
"Do not do to others what you would not have done to you."
- Confucius
"If it is hateful to yourself, do not do it to another."
- Mohammed
One of the lessons which both governments and individuals need to learn is that doing good and being good is hard. Doing good to and for one's self, at the expense of common decency, at the expense of other people, and what is evidently a shared morality across many cultures, is easy.
I know that this is going to sound idiotic to people but the very existence of law itself is the imposition of some kind of morality upon the actions of people. If it were not, then people would pursue anything that they saw fit and by whatever means they think they can attain it. What this says to me is that we need independent referees, law teachers and enforcement, to bring us back to old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to look upon, lest we be found out.
That is the reason why I suspect that the howling chorus of knavery which has railed against the voluntary resignation of a Premier this week, finds even the suggestion of a Federal ICAC so hateful. It would find things and suddenly, there would be consequences for their knavery.
What do we expect from our governors and leaders? We expect the same things that we find so difficult to do in ourselves - to act justly, to show mercy and compassion, and to exhibit civic philos to everyone in commonwealth.
If a thing fails to do that which it is supposed to do, then it is a bad thing. If our parliament is charged with the responsibility of making laws for the peace, order and good government of the commonwealth but it doesn't even want to be scrutinized for knavery, then what? When good people are in charge, the people are made happy but when knaves can get away with anything, the people groan.
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