Politicians Sometimes Have A Duty Not To Listen to The Voters

I posted the following quote by Edmund Burke on a political Internet board once. I was immediately accused of being some liberal. Which is pretty laughable since Edmund Burke is one of the Fathers of Conservative thought.

I first came along this quote in the movie that was based on Musical 1776. In a scene one of the delegates of South Carolina is have a conversation with John Adams. The whole fate of Independence lays in the balance and this man is under some pressure from the people that sent him. He quotes part what Burke says below.

I keep hearing how calls to Congress on issue x like run 3 to one on a issue so the Reps and Senators must must votethat way. It is the Credit crisis today but on other controversial issues it is often the same.

Sometimes the public is right, sometimes they are misinformed, and sometimes just flat off wrong.

The one thing I can't stand is a poltician that takes a opinion poll on every issue and then proceeds to vote the way that will give him the most CYA

It is a delicate balance. I am not advocating that politicians just say screw off to the people that sent him there and their views are not important. However there comes times when a public servant MUST MUST have the courage to use his best judgment. So this quote sums up my view that twas posted on the Corner blog today at National Review Online.

Burke to the U.S. House [Peter Robinson]
A reader sends along a famous, and splendid, passage from Burke.

Burke didn't deliver the speech just a month before election day with letters to his office running a thousand to one against a bailout. But as members of Congress attempt to pick up the pieces, Lord knows, Burke is worth the re-reading.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion....

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,—these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.
09/30 02:39 AM