Bureaucracy

The encyclopedia get its wrong. It defines bureaucracy as "a professional corps of officials organized in a pyramidal hierarchy and functioning under impersonal, uniform rules and procedures." Bureaucracy, of course, is comprised of as many un-professionals as are possible to muck up any good idea. The best idea appears to be that of natural law as espoused by Edmund Burke. The encyclopedia gets it right when it explains Burke’s thoughts about "the emotional and spiritual life of man as a harmony within the larger order of the universe. Natural impulse, that is, contains within itself self-restraint and self-criticism; ... It follows that society and state make possible the full realization of human potentiality, embody a common good, and represent a tacit or explicit agreement on norms and ends. ... The political community acts ideally as a unity."

When a bureaucracy takes over, the time for good ideas ends. In 2008, bureaucracy gets 300 billion dollars for a farm subsidy bill for unworthy welfare recipients. A prospective teacher from Arizona is ‘giving up the ghost’ because he doesn’t want to be part of "this failed bureaucracy" called public education. Incompetent teachers, working in an incompetent bureaucracy perforce will turn out incompetent students into an incompetent society where natural impulses have been squashed. Natural laws don’t have a fighting chance. No personal self-criticism arises from a bureaucracy; no independent creativity results from its unnatural teachings.

The encyclopedia merely supplies definitions and facts (as accurately as possible). What will rational men and women do with them? First we must find those individuals for whom the examined life is worth living.