In the service of democracy

Abstract

The notion of service can encompass much more than the basic duties of obedience, loyalty, trust, and courage directed solely to some higher secular authority. It can also encompass a duty to a “common good,” a “good society,” a “public,” or a people. If public service is to be viewed as an integral component of our democratic political system, the ethical-moral values of faith, hope, and love must be recognized as the critical impulses which energize a life dedicated to the service of democracy. But such an approach is very different from the current focus of democratic ethics. In particular the love ethic inevitably moves on a collision course with many of our basic canons of public sector management such as the concept of formal, institutionalized, bureaucratic authority, the notion of detached, dispassionate, objective neutrality, and the almost absolute emphasis placed on rational, routinized, programmed behavior. To labor in the service of democracy is to recognize that all of us are called, in one ...