Ideas
According to Crick, the ideologically driven leader practises a form of anti-politics in which the goal is the mobilisation of the populace towards a common end—even on pain of death. Mao Zedong of China said, "Power grows from the barrel of a gun," and Joseph Stalin of Russia said, "The Pope? How many battalions does he control?" Such views, in Crick's estimation, are anti-political, because the speaker seeks to overcome any ethics of his constituency with the threat of violence.
The "political virtues" were an important feature of Crick's classic book, In Defence of Politics; he saw them as an alternative to "ideology" or any "absolute-sounding ethic". They included but were not limited to:
- Prudence
- Conciliation
- Compromise
- Variety
- Adaptability
- Liveliness
Read more about this topic: Bernard Crick
Famous quotes containing the word ideas:
“Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“For later in the vast gloom of cities, only there you learn
How the ideas were good only because they had to die,
Leaving you alone and skinless, a drawing by Vesalius.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)