Excerpt
POLITICS is the lifeblood of a democracy. The lifeblood? That is not the prevailing view. On all sides we hear and read snickering references to politics. It is often scorned, even treated as a dirty word or accepted as a necessary evil in a world dominated by greed and ambition.
We hear a congressman or governor dismissed with “he's just a politician”; a speech may be described as “just political rhetoric”; we sneer at “a quick political fix”; we remind ourselves with a shrug that “this is an election year.”
We do ourselves a substantial disservice when we misunderstand and underrate a process that in fact serves us so well that it is indispensable. Just what are the functions and responsibilities of the political process?
The tasks of politics
In a democracy politics has two major tasks, and from these flow a hundred and one incidental chores. The first major task is to create political parties. Gilbert …
Footnotes
Philip M. Glick, an attorney at law, 116 East Melrose Street, Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815, was an author of the original soil and water conservation district state-enabling legislation. This article is based on the Fifth H. Wayne Pritchard Lecture, which he delivered during SCSA's 37th annual meeting in New Orleans, Lovisiana.
- Copyright 1982 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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