i43 politics and morality 求指教 求互改

i-twigUID: 2856642

43. to be an effective leader, a public official mustmaintain the highest ethical and moral standards.

Everyday’spolitical news abounds with such information as politicians pandering forvotes, waffling on tough issues, their sex scandals, extramarital affairs orillegitimated children. The public on the whole hereby tend to hold a negativeattitude toward them and show intense concern and stress on public officials’moral character. But people then may exaggeratedly or even wrongly concludethat morality play an indispensable and significant role in the exercise ofpolitical power.

First ofall, it is too harsh a requirement for politicians to take both a politicalposition and a moral position. Morality, by definition, is ground rules for asociety that almost everyone in the society agrees on. Namely, a moralproposition is only really moral if at least 90% of people in the society arein favor of it. However, a political leader intends to appeal to a particularconstituency, which, in democracy, means that any percentage more than 50%, forinstance, 51%, is enough. In consequence, an idea or behavior which isfavorable and supported in the political realm may hardly satisfy all thesocial moral expectation and it would be less effective and almost impossiblein politics if political leaders endeavor to satisfy all the members insociety.

Meanwhile,the moral quality and judgment are in nature personal and private thing, whichunfortunately be over- expanded and exaggerated on public affairs, especiallywhen facing celebrities like politicians. Mass media like newspapers, in orderto catch readers’ eyes, usually pay too much attention on public officials’off-work life such as their marriage life and then make moral judgment, which notwithstandinghave nothing to do with their works. So a wall between private and public isessential for everyone, of course including public officials. It is not merelya problem of morality and politics, but also a protection to privacy.

What’smore, politicians’ moral character people always concerning are not necessarilyaffects their job performance. Bill Clinton, for example, still maintainedextraordinarily high approval ratings for the job he was doing as President,even though was charged by the improper sex relationship with Monica Lewinsky.You may doubt that this is not exactly private immoral behavior, after all,Lewinsky was a White House intern, but we can still draw the same conclusionwhen make even a cursory review of other past Presidents’ private life andtheir political performance. Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, LyndonJohnson and John Kennedy all had extramarital affairs. Thomas Jefferson, manybelieve, fathered children by one of his slaves. But all these can never erasethe incredibly significant contributions they have made to the development ofAmerican society. That is why I appeal for an independent evaluation on thepoliticians.


Overstresson politicians’ morality, which I have to point out at last, will in turn leadto an illusion of strong morals. As we know, in order to please voters whoexceedingly value moral quality and to capture the vote, politicians willpossibly pretend to exemplify the morals and present a pleasing and ethicfacade. But just turn on the TV, you can easily get the truth if carefullycomparing the difference between what and how they actually did, and theprevious resolutions, promises, fiery and passionate speeches they had made.Therefore, evaluating a politician mostly by his morality and ethics sometimesseems too naïve and superficial.

Based onthe above analysis, we can conclude safely that exaggeration of morality inpolitical realm is not reasonable. But it does not mean that politics can existwithout morality; otherwise, defalcations and corruptions may easily come intobeing if a political leader does not have the fundamental moral character todistinguish the right from the wrong. What really and urgently we need to do isto avoid confounding public officials’ political position with moral positions,and set up separate evaluation standard, in public and in private, in jobperformance and in social life, in special political occasions and in everydayactions, so that to judge a public official objectively, impartially andrationally.

anniehalUID: 2716032

功底很好。。呵呵。第一段好多生词阿。。
然后，说下我的一点意见~第二段讲protect privacy是对的，但文章的主旨是moral亚，像贪污这种也是immoral的，但与privacy就无关了了。
感觉这段站不住脚跟。。
第三段例子用的很充分~~恩~我搬回去了，哈哈！
个人意见，仅供参考。。呵呵

i-twigUID: 2856642

2# anniehal
嗯，哈哈。
明白你的意思，
我主要想表达morality-private 和politics-public的观点，
我再改一改吧～～～
谢谢啊