Comments on: Public Service

By: Roach

Roach — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:08:15 +0000

Both guys suck in an incredibly obtuse way that has little respect for America’s usual defining excellence: Freedom, Free Markets, Free Society, Individualism and Eccentricity. It was easier to make these distinctions in the Cold War when anything like Obama’s speech would have been compared to Soviet Communism, but now it’s said without notice or much criticism.

By: conradg

conradg — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:45:31 +0000

I don’t quite get Manzi’s point – it seems based on resentment, rather than on anything Obama has said. I don’t think Obama is suggesting that he is THE model for public service, just one of many. As is McCain. The advantage Obama has is that it his is fairly common and based in social realities, where’s McCain’s is almost unique and not one anyone would desire to repeat. Many might choose military service, but no one chooses to be a prisoner in a POW camp. In that sense, McCain’s appeal is self-referential – no one can actually relate to it, so we end up merely admiring McCain himself for his courage in the face of terrible bad fortune. WIth Obama, there’s simply the overcoming of more ordinary forms of adversity, and also overcoming forms of temptations that could have steered him away from public service. So it’s something people can relate to personally, which is why people are “inspired” by Obama’s example, but “admire” McCain’s.

I certainly do think that Obama is trying to place public service above self-serving high-end careerism, I just don’t understand why this is considered wrong. One doesn’t have to be for one, and against the other, to see one as more valuable or desireable than the other. If everyone chose public service and no one chose to become investment bankers, yes, we’d have a problem. I think we can deal with that when it arises. For now, the problem is in the opposite direction. Not enough highly talented highly capable people from the best schools are choosing public service. That’s the audience Obama was addressing. He’s an example of someone from that world who did, so he’s a good model of the good that can come from it, not just for others, but for oneself.

What I really find odd, however, is the number of supposedly “Christian” moral conservatives who find something wrong with emphasizing and valuing service to others above service to oneself. What exactly is Christianity as a moral values system for human relations but a redirection of energies away from self and towards others?

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:16:08 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Jim. You’re right that you do talk about McCain having the same problem. I should have noted that in the post.

We all hope for statesmen who could do that, but I don’t think this is the year when we will discover any.

By: Jim Manzi

Jim Manzi — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:50:47 +0000

Daniel:

I don’ think that I disagree with what you’ve written here. While I was reacting to Obama’s speech, I think that I was unambiguous in the post about the point that McCain has a different version of the same problem. I don’t expect that a typical (liberal or conservative) politician would transcend his or her own experiences, but I hope that a statesman would.