From Albert Jay Nock, “The Politician’s Opinion of You,” The American Mercury, December, 1936

Edmund Burke, probably the greatest British statesman of all time, once wrote a letter to the Duke of Richmond, criticizing his political associates. He said they were good routineers, first-rate on pushing legislation, strong on winning elections, but no good whatever “on that which is the end and object of all elections, namely: the disposing our people to a better sense of their condition.”

In the language of the street, that seems to be distinctly a new one on us. We never heard that candidates and campaign-managers were supposed to do anything like that, or that elections were held for any such object. Burke’s idea was that the true purpose of an election is to make the people look themselves over and see what sort of folk they actually are, and where they actually stand; and the business of candidates and campaign-managers and politicians generally is to help them do that. His complaint was that his fellow-politicians did not seem to get that idea. He said in some bitterness on another occasion that as things stood, the main business of a politician was “still further to contract the narrowness of men’s ideas, to confirm inveterate prejudices, to inflame vulgar passions, and to abet all sorts of popular absurdities”; and as things stand with us, that is precisely the main business of a politician now.

In the light of the recent election, it might be a good thing for us to put these two sayings of Burke side by side, and think them over. Did our politicians do anything that would enable us to get a better understanding of our actual condition as a people? Not a hand’s turn; not even with regard to our economic condition. On the contrary, they did everything they could to mislead and confuse our understanding, for party purposes. Did they do or say anything to enlarge our ideas, to soften our prejudices, to allay our vulgar passions and discourage our absurdities? Nothing; on the contrary, they justified Burke’s complaint in every particular. Consequently the election has left us with our understanding of our own condition as incorrect and distorted as their best efforts could possibly make it. No wonder Henry Adams said he was going to the Fijis, “where the natives eat one another, and perhaps may eat me, but where they do not have any Presidential elections.”

(The complete series of Nock’s essays for The American Mercury can be found at JAYS).