The Virtue of Restraint
Art of Governing - Restraint
“Be Bold!” the Minister or Department Head cries out at you. “We need boldness, not caution. Where is the vision!” Such statements shouted in the privacy of boardrooms are the skilful bureaucrat’s nightmare. They usually harbour some terrible mistake, misconception or vast waste of resources. They reflect a valorous intent to crash through or crash. Most often they are a sign of desperate lack of control.
The skilful bureaucrat will temper such calls with restraint. They will not countermand the call for action, big and hairy and grandiose. They will however hesitate and question. They will pause to question whether hasty presumptions have been made. They will appraise the contending forces, and choose to be a stone in a stream of water. They will imagine the consequences of a charge of the light brigade, and they will find temperate but strong words to restrain the imposition of political will on an opponent who will outlast the charge.
Restraint has long been a cardinal political virtue. It can go under other names. Moderation in all things. Comity. Temperance. Chesterton fences. Judgement. It is a dimension of all these virtues. Restraint does not seek to be the boldest, the best and the first. Restraint seeks compromise and accommodation fo diversity. It avoids the theatrical demonstration of outlandish progress. Restraint allows a government to keep its society together, and recognises that in the political world you cannot have one thing without its opposite.
Event - The Mar-A-Lago Raid
This week’s headlines have featured a notable case when restraint has been thrown to the winds. The FBI sent a team to raid former President Donald Trump to recover, so it claims, inappropriately held Presidential records. Whatever the merits of the case, the action is disproportionate to the issue, and, not for the first time, the FBI has chosen to jump a Chesterton fence. Previous Presidents have had disputes with the archivists on the precise allocation of the records they keep in their personal and public archives. No previous President has been raided in an overly theatrical way, including rummaging through the clothing of the First Lady.
There may well be justification for the raid. At the time of writing the full details of the search warrant are not known. However the consequences of breaking convention and throwing off restraints on aggressive legal action against political opponents are clear. There is now widespread alarm at the state of political and legal instiutions in America. Former Democratic Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard has said:
“Regardless of how you feel about Trump, this FBI raid throws fuel on that fire of distrust and sets a dangerous precedent that reduces our government to being no better than a banana republic, where dictators see federal law enforcement as their own personal goon squad.”
Restraint is a virtue of governing. It is time we brought it back.
Book Recommendation
This week I read Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time: the uses of history for decision-makers (1988). I will be talking more about their methods in the Burnign Archive podcast this week. However, it is a timely reminder of the value of history in cultivating restraint and caution in decision-makers. They recommend a careful examination of the mental analogies with the past people draw on in taking action in government - such as the apparent mental model of Trump as a tyrant against whom any action is justified, whatever its impact on legal norms. Of their approach they say:
“That our suggestions about procedure stress question-asking and presumption-probing mitigates, we think, any charge of Machiavellian indifference to the morality of government. If our approach prompts an alternative charge of encouraging conservatism in expectation, caution in conduct, so be it.”
Some conservatism in expectation among today’s governments would temper the bold ambitious missions - the Zero-X visions - that besiege today’s citizens. Some caution in conduct would protect us all from grand errors and misguided crusades.
Podcast/Videocast Recommendation
I highly recommend the latest episode of the Jordan Petersen podcast that features an interview with philosopher and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist on his vast and fascinating, The Matter with Things. McGilchrist talks about the different kinds of truth produced by left and right brain activity, and the restitution of intuition and imagination against the cruder forms of behavioural economics.
A Page from History
In Civilisations (2000), Felipe Fernandez-Armesto describes civilization as a prcess of adapting the environment, and takes the reader on a tour through all the environments of the world and the many civilizations that have adapted to their niches. In the section “The Gardens of Clouds” he describes the security offered to highland civilizations by the mountainous fastnesses and teh capability to extract resources from dominated lowlands.
“The world’s great highland civilizations… sustained this measurable form of superiority for centuries or millenia, with few interruptions. The repeated dark ages of Andean civilization cannot be linked with any evidence of conquest from outside. The Mesoamerican highlands were vulnerable to infiltration by peoples from the deserts to the north - of which the Aztecs may have been the last; but such invaders were usually conquered in their turn by the seductive nature of highland culture.” (p. 275)
I talk more about Fernandez-Armesto’s ideas on the many cradles of civilization in episodes 55 to 58 of my Burning Archive podcast.
The Gifts of Literature
I am learning Russian, and am reading from time to time the poetry of the Leningrad/St Petersburg poet Elena Shvarts in a bilingual edition. Here from “Birdsong on the Seabed” is a line evocative of all who participate in the infinite conversation.
Sing, perched on the bony arm
Of a drowned man, sing
Of his life’s path, of a candle he once lit.Спой, вцепясь в костяное плечо,
Утопленнику про юдол,
Где он зажигал свечу.
What is Happening in My Writing World
I wrote the introductory essay for my collection, From the Burning Archive, and started the final layout editing and cover design. I will likely release the e-book first and then the paperback, since there is some more finickiness in production of the printed book.
I will be recording the next episode of The Burning Archive podcast on how citizens can use history this week after a small delay. Check out prior episodes, including episode 65. What are the Lessons of History?
You can buy my collected poems, Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems, 1996-2020 at Amazon and other online retailers.
And, in general, I am preparing for my pivot to life as an independent author - and retired government official - from November 2022. I will keep you posted on developments and how you can support me. Please share this newsletter with people you think might like it.