The Well-Fed Scoundrels

LIBERTY OR DEATHWIRE! ⬩ COMMENTARY

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Author’s Note: I have spent years writing about the systems that shape our lives. This time, I ask the reader to set aside the machinery for a moment and consider the people beneath it. A child cannot eat a policy announcement. A lonely elder receives little comfort from a favorable quarterly report. Somewhere between our grand ambitions and our ordinary obligations, we have allowed too much to pass without protest. I offer these words in the hope that we might recover the habit of caring—and the backbone to insist that those entrusted with power do the same.

With Eternal Vigilance,
Andrew B. Raupp ✍️

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If a man hired a steward to care for his household, and returned to find the pantry empty, the children frightened, and the steward wearing a finer coat, he would scarcely require a committee to explain his misfortune. Yet when the household is a nation, we are told the matter is exceedingly complicated.

The empty pantry remains a useful fact.

We have grown remarkably patient with polished frauds who explain why ordinary people must endure what they would never accept for themselves. There is always an emergency requiring more obedience, a worthy cause requiring another payment, some magnificent future requiring the surrender of the present. Meanwhile, the well-fed scoundrels arranging the sacrifice take considerable care that none of it falls upon themselves.

Their genius for discovering what others can do without is inexhaustible.

I propose that we interrupt their deliberations with a few rude questions. Can a person who works an honest week afford food, shelter, and a little security for the family? Can someone who falls ill receive proper treatment without losing the home in which recovery ought to occur? Can we protect a child from abuse even when the accused possesses money, influential friends, and a reputation others find convenient to preserve?

These questions are plain enough. The evasions ought to embarrass us.

Consider the ease with which men discuss war when their own sons have other engagements. A minister may approve a campaign before luncheon; the mother whose son is killed must live with that decision for the rest of her days. She will mark the birthdays he never reaches and imagine the family he never has. Long after the speeches have ended and the maps have been redrawn, his chair will remain empty at her table. Before we applaud another grand strategy, let us inquire whether its authors have counted that cost—or merely calculated how conveniently it can be borne by strangers.

There is a cowardice peculiar to power: the courage to command what one would never consent to suffer.

And what shall we say of the rogue who purchases influence, wraps his appetites in the language of public service, and expects gratitude for returning a fraction of what he has taken? A charitable inscription upon a building cannot settle an account with the people injured beneath its foundations. Wealth deserves no exemption from judgment. Neither does office, fame, ancestry, nor the ability to speak pleasantly while behaving abominably.

How much must a man possess before he can bear to let another live in peace?

Surely the sick have suffered enough without being made to feel expensive. Surely the elderly have earned companionship without proving their usefulness. Surely a frightened mother deserves practical help, and a child deserves defenders whose courage survives an introduction to someone important.

We shall all, if we live long enough, need kindness we cannot repay. The swaggering fool who forgets this has mistaken a temporary advantage for a superior species of humanity.

But we must examine our own accounts as well. Corruption receives assistance from every citizen who excuses a useful liar, applauds a profitable cruelty, or forgives in an ally what he condemns in an opponent. We cannot keep rewarding the conduct and profess astonishment at the result.

Let us withdraw that assistance. Demand honest records. Defend the person being wronged. Refuse the convenient falsehood. Make service answerable to those being served. Give our children something sounder than instructions for surviving our mistakes.

For all this scrambling after dominance has a rather ordinary destination. The powerful will die. Their titles will pass to other men, their fortunes to other hands, and their portraits will hang before people who scarcely remember why they mattered.

The child they harmed still has a life to live, and that life deserves our protection, our patience, and our resolve.

Let our strength be measured by the wrongs we set right and the people we help to stand again.

We have been given a brief custody of the world and of one another. Let us meet that duty with clear minds, stout hearts, and hands willing to do the work. The inheritance we owe our children is a world made more humane by our courage, more just by our conduct, and more difficult for the next scoundrel to corrupt.

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