political theory and ethics....

[Peter Kropotkin]

the fact is that our laws, our political structure,
our budgets are ethical statements....

now this idea of politics being ethical goes all the way back
to Plato... and the entire Greek and Roman political
thought believed that the art of politics was an ethical action...
that politics and ethics/morals were one and the same...

elsewhere around here, I created a post that said, that
wondered about if the government were ethical..
can the government engaged in ethics/morals?
and how is government ethics/morals different than
our own individual ethics/morals?

as an individual I am legally not allowed to torture someone,
and yet the government/state has allowed itself that
particular right.... among other rights that are denied to
private citizens that the government/state allows itself..
among those rights are capital punishment, taxes, foreign policy,
to name a few rights the government/state gives itself
and denies to me...

but the question revolves around the basis of the government allowing
itself those rights that it denies me... why does the government have
the right to print money and I am not, why is the government allowed
to unilaterally murder someone and that right is denied to me?
under what theory is that allowed?

what is the justification for the government/state?

and under what principles does the state have rights that I do not have?

is the government/state obligated to act with the same morals/ethics
that I am forced to operate under?

by what right does the government/state have to force me to
give my consent to it? why should I give consent to a government/state
that is indifferent to my values and beliefs?

many questions and few if any answers...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

one of the failures of political theory/philosophy,
is the failure to go from present/today to tomorrow..
political theory/philosophy is unable to, as of now, to
know or predict the future.. it cannot be considered a science
until it can make predictions of the future..
just as science can today.... gravity, astronomy, chemistry can predict
the future.. whereas the ''soft'' sciences cannot.. history
cannot make any predictions, nor can economics, or
social studies, or philosophy and neither can political
science or political philosophy... that is the limitations
of those disciplines... they can look past and they can see
the present, but the future? nope...

Kropotkin