All Government Action Requires Vision

Political science is a great misnomer that disguises the true nature of the art of ruling. It pretends that politics is an objective science that can be examined using the same boundaries of knowledge as the physical sciences. However, politics bears a great burden that will forever separate it from the natural sciences: it is impossible to act politically without some concept of how the world should be. A failure to recognize this fact lets governments act according to the values of those in charge while justifying their actions as practical. People must vigorously question the vision of those in charge to ensure that they support the end goal of however the government is reshaping the world. 

Whether in elections or when justifying their actions, politicians are quite content to focus on how they should act rather than the reason for that action. In an attempt to cater to all voters, they keep any positive vision for the country close to the chest. Those who can freely say what they believe and want for the country are able to inspire far more people than the Mitch McConnells or Kamalas of the world. The administrative class would do anything rather than break up their practical vision of government and be forced to claim any sort of universal truth or values. The USSR and other radically oppressive regimes often justified cruelty and inefficiency through a lack of discussion of anything but practicality. Mere practicality does not exist, because no action regarding humans can be done without some ultimate goal. Citizens are rarely presented with a vision that they can agree or disagree with, they are merely sold on the merits of various solutions to pressing problems. 

The government must have a positive vision for life insofar as it acts. If a government strictly does road maintenance and controls the military, they are required to have a far less robust vision for life than a government that controls healthcare, schools, and public morality. First of all, this should be a powerful argument for small government, because the vision for life that can be agreed on by most of the nation is extremely small. However, the denial of this fact has led to numerous contradictory and negative outcomes. For example, a government who claims that they seek efficiency in road infrastructure has potential to actually hurt their citizens if they continue to build on infrastructure designed in the past by someone with different goals than the current regime. They can reinforce poor suburban or city living patterns if they fail to consider what type of life they think would be best for their citizens. They are not required to enforce every ramification of their vision, but they must have some understanding of the life they want for citizens wherever they choose to act. While making choices about the relative merits of city and suburban living is one of the difficult tasks of road planning, the process of state education brings up infinitely more fundamentally ethical questions. Pretending that the only purpose of education is to prepare children to work and increase GDP is a convenient explanation that allows bureaucrats to mask their very present and value based ideas of how a child should be raised. Acting like any field is an objective science that can be solved rather than a series of human choices based upon an underlying idea of what is right has allowed a large amount of rudderless progress forward to an uncertain end.

Rather than letting politicians or government agencies get away with pretending they are strictly practical, we must evaluate policies and politicians based upon their underlying end goal. If they have an undiscernable vision for the world, their actions can only secure consensus if conditions remain the same. However, agreement on vision rather than specific actions will allow for politicians who can respond to crises and new situations in a satisfactory way. If there’s a policy they put forward without a clear reason, they must be questioned to determine whether their vision is different from those who elected them. Politics is not an objective science, but rather it always rearranges the world which it governs according to the values of those who practice it. All government action is based upon values, and it is far better for those values to be clearly espoused rather than hidden under the guise of technocracy or practicality. The difficulty of securing consensus to any one vision of the world, and the inability of government to act without a vision means that the government’s interference in national life should be greatly limited.