study guides
study guide for superdomain04a ["Government"]
Material from: Phulwani, V. (2016). The poor man’s Machiavelli: Saul Alinsky and the morality of power. American Political Science Review, 110, 4, pp. 863-875.
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1. Know whether or not society is founded on a contract. Know whether or not no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it. Know whether or not, regardless of whether a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. Know whether or not considerations to aid [the social actor’s] judgment, exhortations to strengthen his will, may be offered to him, even obtruded on him, by others; but he, himself, is the final judge.
2. Know whether or not there may be proofs of any amount of folly, or want of personal dignity and self-respect; but they are only a subject of moral reprobation when they involve a breach of duty to others… Know whether or not the term duty to oneself, when it means anything more than prudence, means self-respect or self-development; and for none of these is any one accountable to his fellow-creatures. Know whether or not it makes a vast difference both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him, whether he displeases us in things in which we think we have a right to control him, or in things in which we know that we have not.
3. Know whether or not it is impossible for a person to do anything seriously or permanently hurtful to himself, without mischief reaching at least to his near connections, and often far beyond them. Know whether or not, if by his vices or follies a person does no direct harm to others, he is nevertheless injurious by his example, and ought to be compelled to control himself… Know whether or not George Barnwell murdered his uncle to get money for his mistress, but if he had done it to set himself up in business, he would equally have been hanged.
4. Know whether or not whenever there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that of morality or law, or the other way around. Know whether or not, if grown persons are to be punished for not taking proper care of themselves, [the author] would rather it were for their own sake, than under pretense of preventing them from impairing their capacity of rendering to society benefits which society does not pretend it has a right to exact.
5. Know whether or not, if society lets any considerable number of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame for the consequences. Know whether or not, if there be among those whom it is attempted to coerce into prudence or temperance, any of the material of which vigorous and independent characters are made, they will infallibly rebel against the yoke. Know whether or not the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place.
6. Know whether or not there is parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it. Know whether or not nothing in the creed or practice of Christians does more to envenom the hatred of Mahomedans against them, than the fact of their eating pork. Know whether or not the people of all Southern Europe look upon a married clergy as not only irreligious, but unchaste, indecent, gross, disgusting. Know whether or not there are still in this country large bodies of persons by whose notions of morality and religion these recreations are condemned.
7. Know whether or not there is confessedly a strong tendency in the modern world towards a democratic constitution of society, accompanied or not by popular political institutions. Know whether or not, in many parts of the Union it is really difficult for a person possessing a very large income, to find any mode of spending it, which will not incur popular disapprobation. Know whether or not it is known that the bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry, are decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good. Know whether or not all matters relating to thought, opinion, conscience, appear to me, [modern man] says, “to be without the sphere of legislation; all pertaining to social act, habit, relation, subject only to a discretionary power vested in the State itself, and not in the individual, to be within it.”
8. Know whether or not “social rights,” the like of which probably never before found its way into distinct language — being nothing short of this — that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought. Know whether or not abstinence on one day in the week, so far as the exigencies of life permit, from the usual daily occupation…is a highly beneficial custom. Know whether or not the notion that it is one man’s duty that another should be religious, was the foundation of all the religious persecutions ever perpetrated, and if admitted, would fully justify them.
9. Know whether or not, now that [the Mormons] have been chased into a solitary recess in the midst of a desert, many in this country openly declare that it would be right…to send an expedition against them, and compel them by force to conform to the opinions of other people. Know whether or not [the author] cannot refrain [from noting the] language of downright persecution which breaks out from the press of this country, whenever it feels called on to notice the remarkable phenomenon of Mormonism.
10. Know whether or not no one has a deeper disapprobation than [the author claims] to have of this Mormon institution [polygamy]; both for other reasons, and because, far from being in any way countenanced by the principle of liberty, it is a direct infraction of that principle. Know whether or not [the author] is aware of any community has a right to force another to be civilized. Know whether or not [the author] cannot admit that persons entirely unconnected with them ought to step in and require that a condition of things with which all who are directly interested appear to be satisfied, should be put an end to because it is a scandal to persons some thousands of miles distant, who have no part or concern in it. Know whether or not, if civilization has got the better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under, should revive and conquer civilization.
"As Below, So Above"
