To many people on the outside, the two political parties may look rather the same. A close examination and dissection of their streams of thought and the different fruit they produce when in government proves that they are in fact very different.
I am noticing things currently happening under this government which resemble closely the legacy of the Labour government of the 1970s and 1980s. There is the beginning of the breakdown of law and order. It becomes expedient for the government to let laws be broken so as not to displease people and to be able to provide political patronage to certain blue-eyed boys and girls. A reading of newspapers this week is peppered by this attitude. The traffic wardens' prerogative to issue citations potentially bringing them in conflict with the police. The discovery of over a hundred nets for bird trapping before the official spring hunting season even opens and without any police enforcement. The issuing of several permits by the Planning Authority in ODZ areas, even sanctioning some after they were actually built. Senior politicians interfering in executive police duties in order to prevent persons peddling hard drugs from being charged. The reduction of funding to local councils so that community action is decreased by the local council and disproportionally increased by politicians of the central government. The Labour Party breaking its own Party Financing Laws. Giving public land to blue-eyed boys on the cheap. An atrocious ministerial code of conduct. A fruitless and unrealistic family policy. A very tangible lack of equity, the letter of the law consistently being applied differently to what the spirit of the law dictates. The list is endless.
The Labour Party gets its inspiration from the empirical politics of the UK. What is important to them are the tangible political assets that can be felt by the senses such as political favours and money. Anything beyond that is political cannon fodder. Empiricism is the forerunner of modern subjective ethical political theory. There is no concept of the objective political good of the nation but a politics that is consequentialist for the few. The ends justify the means. A politics built on the concept of act utilitarianism where one does what one narrowly suits one best or at best a rule utilitarianism where one considers the greatest happiness of the greatest number but not necessarily the good of the whole community. We see the development of an existentialist government where essence (the intrinsic nature of things) is unimportant and what is important is letting anyone do what they like in their present circumstances in order to win votes.
Nowhere is there a commitment to do what is right. To what is good, to an objective assessment of the common good, to an actual empowerment of the people's fulfilment.
The Nationalist Party has different roots. It is inspired by a continental outlook of value politics. That is, a politics that ultimately looks at a country's common good. A common good that is objective which is not vested in the good of an individual but that of the community, a communitarian outlook. The conceptual outlook a PN government uses when in government is one based on objective analysis of what best suits the nation, not small groups of individuals. Theories based on Natural Rights, theories based on the Law of Reason that is natural law. Theories based on the ethics of Virtue, meaning to habitually look for good in what we do; Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance being the main virtues of several other positive ones. Theories based on the enlightenment principle of Kant's maxims for a categorical imperative. Man is endowed with reason which he can use to find and apply the common good. Kantian maxims have always formed the basis of PN policy of duty. Act as if you were legislating for everyone! Act to treat human beings always as ends and never as merely means. Act as if you were a member of a kingdom of ends. All these objective ethical systems have always proved to be the prowess of any PN government. These are all theories that actually show our rational grasp of Eternal Law outside which there really is nothing.
I think that we will better succeed in politics if besides the normal political banter, the PN had to start emphasising these values which form the essential nature of what Everyman wants from politics. It needs to show more that we are different from the PL in government and that our value system is much better for our country that the PL's.
The PL does not make an effort to look clean because it knows it is not. It simply tries through its media, to make others look as sooty as it is itself. People think that governments are won by personal favours. Nothing is further from the truth and with this in mind; we ourselves should make a better effort to point out that the PN is different. That it has an interest in fair economics, in social justice, in a sustainable environment, in a fulfilling health care system, in an empowering educational system, in the application of equity in the way all laws are upheld, in a national peace borne out of justice and fairness for all. It has an interest in seeking to solve issues for the country such as the traffic problem. It would promote an objective family policy which works and promotes the real good of the family. Corruption should of course figure when considering criticism for this government which has betrayed the public trust by the very visibly corrupt way it is doing things and behaving in a way that tries to intimidate and buy off any opposition. The PN should however definitely not stop there but look more towards defining and actualising the objective good!
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