Even though the danger is comparatively slight, is not this a good enough reason for a decent citizen to stay away from the dirty business?
It all depends on the way you look at it. If it was worthwhile for your son, or your husband, or you yourself, to fight in a foxhole, on the high seas, or in the air, then it is worthwhile to protect the victory by a moderate additional risk. This can be the "moral equivalent of war" the philosophers talk about.
Politicians and Political "Scientists": There is actually no reason why political scientists should not know something about politics and some of them do. I am sorry to say that most of them whom I have met did not; they made sorry fools of themselves the first time they stepped from the classroom into the vulgar hurly-burly. Some of them had basic horse sense, learned from their mistakes, buckled down and became real political scientists. Others did not.
This is not an attack on the late Brain Trust, nor on educated men getting into politics. If there was ever a crying need in any field for trained, intelligent men, imbued with the scientific spirit, that field is government
Unfortunately many of the men who describe themselves as political scientists are neither political nor scientific.
Politics is a tag for the way we get things done, socially; many of them have only an academic knowledge of how we, the American citizens, conduct our affairs.
"Science" is a word with a definite meaning. It refers to a body of organized knowledge derived by a particular method. In brief that method consists of observing specific, individual facts, trying to find relations between them, setting up hypotheses, then checking those hypotheses by observing more pertinent facts. Under this method of investigation all scientific knowledge is founded on field work and laboratory work.
In some fields the basic facts can be observed on the campus, as in physics or chemistry. In others the scientist must regularly go to where his phenomena exist, because they can't be carried to the campus, as in geology and stratospheric research - if he is to learn anything new about his subject and not simply chew over what other men have said.
Is it not obvious that in order to study politics scientifically it is necessary to spend a lot of time where politics is going on?
I have at hand a letter from a friend of mine who is a professional political scientist, with all that years of post-graduate training in one of the most famous schools can give him. However he has had no experience in active politics. He writes:
"Do you think experience or practice in politics essential to an improvement in political interaction? I am a believer in empiricism in most things but believe that much more can be accomplished by scientific methods than by experience in government. That is, I feel that a man might be an effective partisan all his life, but end it with no greater ability to accomplish desirable political changes than in the beginning."
The above paragraph exhibits such complex confusion that I hardly know where to start. Let us begin by conceding that a man may be a very effective field worker in politics and still not do any good in the long run if his work is not enlightened by information and
understanding in current affairs, history, economics, sociology, and many other things. Politics is the broadest of human subjects and we have dealt only with one narrow field of it herein.
But how can a man hope to "accomplish desirable political changes" if he is not experienced in the mechanisms by which political changes are brought about? For that matter will he know a desirable political change when he sees one, unless he has rubbed shoulders with the crowded millions off campus?
But note the orientation, note how he contrasts "empiricism" and "experience" as being the opposite of "scientific methods." The sad fact is that all of his degrees and training have not exposed him to the basic idea of the scientific method. All scientific knowledge comes from experience, experience as concrete as careful observation, careful measurements, and careful experimentation can make it. "Empiricism" is a word with several related meanings; in scientific methodology it is usually used to refer to an early stage in an investigation when the observer has too few facts too inaccurately observed to permit him to make more than rough generalizations as his hypothesis. Politics is largely at the empirical stage because of its extreme complexity. Empiricism is appropriate to politics; no other scientific approach is possible.
Unfortunately, other approaches are possible; one is the method of armchair speculation of the philosopher. It is the classic method in this field, used by Plato, Aristotle, Spencer, and Marx - and the work of each is vitiated by it. They might as well have spent their time debating how many angels can dance on the point of a needle. But the method is still popular!
Is it too much to hope that some day someone will found a school of government which will include as one of its required laboratory courses active field work in at least one campaign? And then perhaps to require something as strenuous and unacademic as serving a term in a county committee, or running for office, or managing a campaign, or undertaking to lobby a bill through a state legislature, before awarding graduate degrees which entideaman to refer to himselfasapotitical scientist?
I feel wistful about it. Honest-to-goodness trained men could do so much good in public life if only we had a few more of them. Afterthoughts and Minutiae:
Don't put campaign literature in mailboxes other than through the matis. Postal regulations forbid it.
There is a small duplicating set available suitable for postal cards, which costs about a dollar. Sears Roebuck used to have them and probably does now. It uses mimeograph ink and a hand roller. Gelatine duplicators, hectograph-type process, and looking like a child's slate, may be had for three or four dollars in sizes which will take either postal cards or standard business stationery.
Unpredictable coincidences can play hob with a carefully planned campaign, leaving you nothing to do but laugh it off and forget it. I happened to pick the year to run for office that found the Nazi Sudetenland Fuehrer in the headlines; his name differs in spelling from mine by one letter!
In making a committee report it is diplomatic to say "your committee" instead of "the committee."
The difference between a caucus and an ordinary majority action is parallel to the difference between the Constitution and the laws which are made under it. A constitution is an agreement-to-agree-in-the-future, along certain lines and to serve certain known ends. So is a caucus. This may make it easier for you to explain it to the uninitiated.
Anti-handbill ordinances, anti-bill posting ordinances, and ordinances which forbid street-speaking and park-speaking without a permit should be opposed by all persons and parties devoted to democracy and freedom, as the avenues these ordinances close off are historically the only ones available at times to the poor and unpowerful. I am aware that it is a nuisance to have your doorstep littered with throw-away pamphlets, but it is still more of a nuisance to be thrown into a concentration camp. Democracy is worth a few nuisances.
Clubs should never have nominating committees; it is subversive of democracy. A motion to close nominations is never in order and should not be entertained. The proper procedure is to let a period of dead silence intervene, after inviting further nominations, then announce that they have closed. Be lenient in allowing laggards to slide home. Let them appeal to the floor if they wish.