(imagine politicians in office and not candidates)
Of course Thompson would illustrate many more people in this cartoon. With more people involved, Thompson argues that it is harder to find out who is responsible for moral consequences. There have been many ways to hold our politicos accountable, some being the rank of a politician's position held, or everyone in an institution. Thompson refers to these as hierarchical and collective models.
Here as in our previous articles our class has read, Thompson tries to simplify the principle of dirty hands. Thompson recognizes that there is no definite simple answer to this principle. He challenges Weber and Kant to prove his point. Thompson infuses our modern political environmental to view dirty hands as not a black and white issue. He responds in some way to the group discussion that we had on Tuesday the 27th. It is not that there are dirty hands or not, or that they are inherent in politics, but that the situation, level of responsibility, and context all play a part.
Thompson has a response to Nagel saying af course public and private morals will differ. Thompson comes to the conclusion that, dirty hands are not inherent. They can be clouded by the system we presently have with bureaucrats, and although personal responsibility is not the perfect answer to dirty hands, it is in fact the best availible option.
I am inclined to agree with Thompson , as I have until now resisted Walzer, Calhoun, and Nagel. I agree with Thompson that just because someone is in a high office deosn't make them automatically responsible for screw ups. (i.e. Obama taking over the economy from the management of G. W. Bush) I think we often hold politicians accountable for things they have no control of such as previous policy decision or the current economy. Thompson also pleases me by acknowledging the roots of problems, he rests judgement on personal responsibilty. As in the case of the Bay of Pigs tragdey. How easy is it to say that oh, politics just creates messes and anyone who wants to be president will douse his/her hands in filth. But, why do we not hold our politicians to their personal responsibilty? Modern case in point. Faulty C.I.A. intelligence got us into an unlawful war. True, and there were leaders at the top who to this date, have not assumed their personal responsibility. I do not think that all presidents will fall into a trap of faulty intelligence, for they each posess individual and personal responses. I guess history will be the judge. I am hopeful that history will look beyond the many hands to the few that are dirty.
I guess the point to remember in terms of your Iraq war example is that you need to examine the situation and not put your trust all in one person. It's sort of relevant to what we talked about in the first day of class about people putting blind faith in Obama because of what he says he can do(or promises to do). In this case, assuming G.W. is not trying to play the ignorance card, he would still be at fault for relying solely on the information gathered from one source. Many hands is interesting because it really has endless routes, endless people to blame, and endless excuses. My question is with the problem of many hands, and even dirty hands, what are we looking for? Are we looking for punishment, or acceptance of a blame verdict? Or is it merely to clean our own hands of the filth we don't want to take responsibility for?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that we have for a long time been want to hold someone accountable for mishaps in government. Thompson recognizes that we do live in a world of middle men and bureaucrats. Take for example the Hurricane Katrina example. Was it the Army Corps., or Mayor Hagen, the head of FEMA? Depending how one looks at the situation any one of those individuals may be held accountable. But the basic principle here is that Thompson thinks personal responsibility is the best way to describe the Katrina tragedy.
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