The Essence of Politics

My Fellow Americans:

Many of us wonder what the essence of politics is but most of us don't really understand that politics is everywhere from the class setting to the local grocery store. Therefore with politics impacting every component of our lives, we have to become more aware of the issues that are important to the political arena and in turn start a chain reaction of more citizens becoming involved in the political process on all levels but especially the local level.

So in understanding what politics is than one must understand that politics is the study and conduct of decision-making power (who's got it, and who hasn't) at the inter-social and societal levels. Some even use the term politology to describe it. When politics are considered at smaller scales, e.g. within a profession, it is indistinguishable from applied ethics or specialist ethical codes.

However at whatever scale, politics is the rather imperfect way that we actually coordinate individual actions for mutual (or strictly personal) gain. What distinguishes the political from the ethical or merely social is a much-debated question. Most theorists would acknowledge that to be political, a process has to involve at least some potential for use of force or violence - politics is about conflict that is about much more than theory and fashion. To win a political conflict always implies that one has taken power away from one group or faction to give it to another. Most would also acknowledge that political conflict can easily degrade to zero-sum games, with little learned or settled by conflict other than "who won and who lost":

Lenin said politics was about "who could do what to whom" (Russian "Kto-Kogo" for "Who-Whom"). As political scientist Harold Lasswell said, politics is "who gets what, when and how." It also concerns how we resolve moral conflicts that are sufficiently serious that they constitute a risk of social disruption - in which case commitment to a common process of arbitration or diplomacy tends to reduce violence - usually viewed as a key goal of civilization. Bernard Crick is a major theorist of this view and also of the idea that politics is itself simply "ethics done in public", where public institutions can agree, disagree, or intervene to achieve a desirable culmination or comprehensive (process) result.

In addition to government, journalists, religious groups, special interest groups, and economic systems and conditions may all have influence on decisions. Therefore, politics touches on all these subjects.

Authors of studies of politics have both reflected and influenced the political systems of the world. Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, an analysis of politics in a monarchy, in 1513, while living in a monarchy. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published "The Communist Manifesto" in 1848, a widely-read and highly influential pamphlet that formed the basis for Socialism and Communism throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Today, much study of politics focuses on democracies, and how their form affects the decisions they make.

Other lines of political inquiry attempt to answer philosophical questions such as; is there a moral justification for government?, what is the purpose of government?, is there any possible empirical or more formal method for evaluating and quantifying ethicality and morality of human actions that could augment or replace religion or authority or political contention in deciding what political leaders "should" do? Also politics attempts to answer is there an objective way to evaluate the quality of a decision, policy, leader or party?

These are ongoing debates that are millennia old. As well as being influenced by these weighty matters, politics is also a social activity, and as such it is subject to the whims of fashion as any other.

Nonetheless, politics is what makes many of us who we are, what we are and creates what we do in most cases. Still in today’s time, many political analysts and authors of political books say that politics today has lost its soul.

“Americans are not a virtuous people,” Tocqueville wrote, “and nevertheless they are free.” More than a century later Richard Hofstadter evoked the same paradox: America is “a democracy of cupidity rather than a democracy of fraternity.” A society founded on the primacy of the private has become an exemplary republic, or respublica; the universal pursuit of individual wealth has produced a flourishing commonwealth. Locke is our civic prophet; liberalism our civic creed; the “invisible hand” our political, as well as economic, Providence.

This, at least, is the perennial myth of American historiography. It is currently under attack from several directions. The “republican” school (Bernard Bailyn, for example) has tried to displace Lockean individualism and enlightened self-interest from the center of 18th century American ideology, replacing them with a discourse of patriotism and civic virtue supposedly inherited from Continental theorists like Machiavelli and Montesquieu or from the English Dissenting tradition.

Now the “communitarian” school (e.g., Garry Wills) stresses the influence of Scottish moral philosophy on Jefferson and other Founding Fathers: in opposition to Locke’s psychology of possessive individualism, Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith posited an innate “moral sense,” a faculty of imaginative identification or “sympathy,” which they (and the Founders) considered the basis of political community.

While radical historians (e.g., Staughton Lynd) have followed Charles Beard and the Progressives in raising questions about the class allegiance of the Founders and have resurrected the pre-Marxist anticapicalist critiques of Paine, Thoreau, and many previously invisible lower-class radicals.

Then there are revisionists who all dispute the centrality of liberalism in the history of American political thought. So John Diggins, in “The Lost Soul of American Politics”, rereads that history and attempts to vindicate the traditional liberal, or Lockean, paradigm—but with a twist. Where other historians have mainly seen the influence of Locke’s doctrines —materialist psychology, property rights, ethical individualism—Diggins sees also a Christian legacy—the Calvinist tenets of innate depravity, inescapable guilt, work as a “calling,” the sovereignty of individual conscience. According to Diggins, it is this Christian pessimism, not just Enlightenment skepticism, which answers the familiar question: why did the ringing rhetoric of the Revolutionary period issue in the cautious conservatism of the Constitution?

In pursuit of America’s Calvinist soul, Diggins threads his way through key texts—“The Federalist”, John Adams’s “A Defense of the Constitution”, Cooper’s “The Bravo”, Melville’s “Billy Budd”, Lincoln’s speeches, Henry Adams’s “Mont-Saint-Michel & Chartres”—looking for Old World shadows. There are a good many, it turns out, and in this strain of melancholy and self-doubt Diggins finds what he calls a “Niebuhrian corrective” to current, overly cheerful assessments of the American heritage. As Diggins recognizes, there is something problematic about intellectual history on this scale: three appendixes anticipate methodological objections from his colleagues. But other readers, methodologically innocent or indifferent, will be at least intermittently intrigued.

Unfortunately, many of Diggins’s speculations are barely visible through the murk of his style. “The Lost Soul of American Politics” is marred by much clumsiness (“Once we see the Calvinist foundations of liberalism, the gospel of ‘free labor’ that Lincoln espoused as the essence of liberty, we are in a better position to see why in American intellectual history liberalism could carry the seeds of its own condemnation, particularly in its fostering of capitalism, as ends came to absorb means, wealth to replace work, and the mere possession of things to replace the making of products as the nation threatened to sink into a morass of materialism”), obscurity (“Today, when America seems to be awash in a ‘culture of narcissism’ and Emerson’s doctrine of ‘self-reliance’ has dropped from the ‘Oversoul’ to the underbelly, Tocqueville’s fears of ‘the passionate and exaggerated love of self have made the demands of the ‘Me’ the first priority of politics”), and even bad grammar (“There was no place for sin, evil, and guilt in Jefferson’s Christianity, as there would be for Henry Adams, Melville, and Lincoln”).

But suspended throughout, like beacons in the fog, are passages of limpid or luminous, sprightly or sonorous prose by Jefferson, Madison, Cooper, Emerson, Melville, Henry Adams, and others (including this timely quote from Lincoln: the Republican Party is “for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar”).

“Democracy,” said John Dewey, “begins in conversation.” Even through Diggins’s static, we can sometimes hear Jefferson arguing with Montesquieu, Emerson with Locke, Henry Adams with Tocqueville, Thoreau with everyone; and this is, momentarily, exhilarating.

Thus when it comes to politics, it is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live. As such, it is an essentially social activity, inextricably linked, on the one hand, to the existence of diversity and conflict, and on the other to a willingness to co-operate and act collectively. Politics is better seen as a search for conflict resolution than as its achievement, as not all conflicts are, or can be, resolved.

Politics has been understood differently by different thinkers and within different traditions. Politics has been viewed as the art of government or as ‘what concerns the state’, as the conduct and management of public affairs, as the resolution of conflict through debate and compromise, and as the production, distribution and use of resources in the course of social existence.

There is considerable debate about the realm of ‘the political’. Conventionally, politics has narrowly been seen as embracing institutions and actors operating in a ‘public’ sphere concerned with the collective organization of social existence. However, when politics is understood in terms of power-structured relationships, it may be seen to operate in the ‘private’ sphere as well.

A variety of approaches have been adopted to the study of politics as an academic discipline. These include political philosophy or the analysis of normative theory, an empirical tradition particularly concerned with the study of institutions and structures, attempts to introduce scientific rigor through behavioral analysis, and a variety of modern approaches including the use of rational-choice theory.

Still the study of politics is scientific to the extent that it is possible to gain objective knowledge about the political world by distinguishing it between facts and values. This task is nevertheless hampered by the difficulty of gaining access to reliable data, by values that are implicit in political models and theories, and by biases that operate within all students of politics.

Therefore the concepts , models and theories are the tools of political analysis, providing the building blocks of knowledge. However, they are only analytical devices. Although they help to advance understanding, they are more rounded and coherent than the unshapely and complex realities they seek to describe. Ultimately, all political and social inquiry is conducted within a particular intellectual framework or ideological paradigm.

In language terms, politics is cause of all mankind and how to make society better for all humans through legislation. Benjamin Franklin once said, “’Tis a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own.” Well that is exactly what the essence of politics is about. It is about standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. It is about speaking out against injustices and it is about creating laws that give an equal playing field for all to abide by.

However Winston Churchill once said, “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.” To a degree that is right as well because sometimes in politics we have so many restrictions or regulations that hinder people to achieve success. Therefore politics is not about simply creating more regulations for the sake of it but it is about creating laws that will create opportunities for equality and justice for all.

For far too long, we as a nation of people have depended on government to solve the problems of the present by understanding the past in order to create a better future for all. This is what the essence of politics is about. The essence of politics is merely the ability for us as a people to understand our government and to use it to master life and to create a better future for future generations to strive and succeed.

“What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals,” said Thomas Jefferson. This is what politics is about because no law should be created that doesn’t improve the livelihood of the individual as much as it improve the livelihood of society. Still politics is just not about government but it is about life. It is about looking around our own communities and understanding who are the key stakeholders, who are power brokers and who are those who impact the day to day lives of hundreds of thousands of people in our own areas of residents.

If democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers as Aristotle says than who are the indigent in our own cities, towns and states. Is the religious leaders, business leaders or civic leaders? Who are the leaders since we the property owners are not rulers according to Aristotle. This is the question when it comes to politics. However we can’t believe that we as the property owners, the renters and just ordinary Americans or people are not the rulers of our own communities, towns, cities and states. We are the ones who control the livelihood

When it comes to politics it is not about the haves and have not’s but it is about people giving a darn about their own prosperity and the prosperity of others. Politics is not about the left vs. the right or Democrats vs. Republicans. Politics is not about being a liberal, conservative or moderate but it is about caring about our society, caring about our nation and most of all caring about improving the lives of the less fortunate, the underprivileged, the youth, the elderly and all Americans as much as you care about yourself and your own families.

Ronald Reagan once said, “You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.” Well Barry Goldwater said it best when he said, “I would remind you that extremism in the defiance of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Therefore the true nature of politics is not about ideology but it is about liberty and freedom for all. The freedom to obtain opportunities through equality and justice that for some decades elude some people in society but this is what politics can give if done correctly.

It is through politics that we can change some of the unfairness and mistreatment that we as a society experience. However politics through government will not solve everything but politics through us as a people can. Now we might think that politics only exists in the form of government but the truth of the matter is that politics exists in everything we do. From the prices in a grocery store to the taxes we pay on certain goods to the roads we drive on to the money given to schools, it is all through politics that these things exist. Even when we lobby to get a recreation center built in our neighborhoods for youth or a stop sign at the end of our block to prevent people from spending, we are using politics to do so by us lobbying. Lobbying or advocating for something is a form of politics and it is a form of relationship building in order to achieve a goal for the greater good of most of society if not all of society.

Mahatma Gandhi said it best when he said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” This is what the advocating or lobbying for a cause is all about. It is about fighting for what you believe in despite those who might think it is a silly cause or those who may think your cause is not necessary. Politics is about believing in a cause that is greater than self and working to achieve it by not demeaning others as your opponents might do but by being wise enough to listen to the opposition and to have a rebuttal to their questions or statements but at the same time articulating the message of the cause in a way that all people can understand and relate to no matter what it is.

This is what politics is about and this is why when George Orwell said, “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” He was speaking to those of us in society who understand that the power of today rests in understanding the past in order to improve the present so that the present can create a greater future for all. This is what politics give us as a people. An opportunity to improve the present while understanding the past is what politics gives us in life but most of all it is the ability to know that through present legislation we can impact the future for the better if we apply the legislation currently.

Still the as Thomas Jefferson said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” This is what politics gives us because from time to time, we lose many good people in society but their lost should not be vain because we should continue to fight for the causes they fought for or use their lives as reasons for us to fight for equity, equality, and fairness. Then there is the opportunity of us as a people to elect people to political office who meet the needs of us the people while getting rid of people who don’t have the best interests of us the people or have become corrupt while being office. This is how the tree of liberty can be refreshed as well as molding others to lead the causes of the present as well as the causes of the future.

“Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning,” said Benjamin Franklin which is why it is our actions now that should be looked upon as what our future will be like. If we don’t take the necessary steps to create future leaders in our communities, our towns, our cities and our states than what will the future be without the proper molding of leaders?

Our actions today is what will determine the future along with our words but words alone without action will not make our present better or our future any more greater. This is why the essence of politics is about creating future leaders for not just the future but creating future leaders to lead the present.

No longer can the nature of politics simply be engraved in the thoughts and beliefs of the past. This is why the actions we take today alone with the words we chose will create the type of future that we want future generations to enjoy. So our actions must aimed toward obtaining liberty for all in this great nation. As JFK said, “…we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

This must be the attitude that guides our actions and this is why politics gives us this opportunity to do so. Still if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear as well as what they don’t want to hear. Sometimes in politics, some of us have to bear the tough task of speaking the truth while it may not be widely accepted, it is necessary for us as a society to understand what realities we are facing as a nation.

Nonetheless it is this belief that makes us understand who we are and what we are. It is the truth that should guide us to understand that the federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution while leaving much of liberty, justice and equality in its rearview mirror which we cannot allow to happen.

Thus we must continue to use education as a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed at. Education is the passport to success but we must use it to our advantage as a people to help others and to create opportunities for the less fortunate, the underprivileged and the sick. We must use our education as a chance to engage others who usually don’t agree with us to understand our causes as well as why collaboration is needed to find common ground solutions to many of the issues plaguing our society.

As President Franklin Roosevelt once said, "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can be sure it was planned that way." Therefore we as a people must understand that if nothing happens by accident and if every that happens is planned than we the people need to be on the inside of planning it so that we can guide the solutions to improving everyone’s life or at least a majority rather than a select few.

Thus when Robert Novak said, “Always love your country — but never trust your government! That should not be misunderstood. I certainly am not advocating civil disobedience, must less insurrection or rebellion. What I am advocating is to not expect too much from government and be wary of it power, even the power of a democratic government in a free country. Ours is one of the mildest, most benevolent governments in the world. But it too has the power to take your wealth and forfeit your life. ... A government that can give you everything can take everything away.” That is the true essence of politics, us as a people being active in it to understand what our government is doing and how we as a people can counter what they are doing when it doesn’t impact the majority and support our government when they are doing what is best for the majority.

The essence of politics is activism and participation to do things to improve the present but to also improve the future. The essence of politics is not simply being reactive to the problems that occur unexpectedly but it is about being proactive to deal with problems before they occur but knowing that it could happen. The essence of politics is engraved in community activism but it is more so engraved in our hearts and souls as people. The essence to know what is right, what is wrong and working to make sure everyone understand that, abides by it and lives by it. The essence of politics doesn’t rest in a government that works for a select few but it rests in a government that works for all people.

WE the people are the essence of politics, we live it, we eat it, and we sleep it. We all participate in politics each and every day regardless if we like it or not. No matter what we do on a day to day basis, it is at least one thing that we are involved in that is based off of some type of political legislation or government program. This is why no matter how much we try to escape it, we must understand that politics is in everything that we do and it is us.

WE the people are the essence of politics and that is why no matter what new political ideology is created or what new political leaders emerge, politics always will be within each one of us.

WE the people are politics now and forever. We are the essence of politics and we are the engines of innovation that drive political circumstances, opportunities and chances for us to engage in.

WE the people are politics and its essence is us whether we like it or not.

WE the people are the driving force to politics; today, tomorrow and forever. We the people always will be the essence of politics and we must understand that, live by that and grow as a people if we are to improve our present and create a better future for all.

WE the people are the essence of politics.