When servants go uncivil

Edward Lear, Uncle Arly.

Brooks's column, "When Governments Go Bad", begins with a quote:

Government, Clinton Rossiter once wrote, is something like fire: “Under control, it is the most useful of servants; out of control, it is a ravaging tyrant.”

This is however an awfully carefully pruned version of what that humblest of American New Conservatives actually said in his Conservatism in America: The Thankless Persuasion (1955): [jump]

"Limitations, diffusion, balance, representation -- through these techniques, the Conservative seeks the influence of majority rule. He is deeply concerned about the potential tyranny of the unrestrained majority. While he knows no better way of making political decisions in a modern community, he insists that the majority be cool-headed, persistent and overwhelming, and that it recognize those things it cannot do by right or might.

"Government, in the Conservative view, is something like fire. Under control, it is the most useful of servants; out of control, it is a ravaging tyrant. The danger of its getting out of control is no argument against its extended and generous use. Held within proper limits, government answers all [the following] purposes..."

(There's no e-book and the GoogleBook is under a snippet view and I can't get it to tell me what those purposes are.)

My bold type there, just to note that if Rossiter were alive today he'd be another liberal, God help us all, and Brooks would be keeping an arm's-length away from him. Brooks isn't even vaguely interested in this argument at the moment—he leaps clear across the two-part metaphor (through a ring of fire and the chains of servitude!) from the idea of government as tyrannical majority to the idea of government as servant, and he wants it to be, well, servile:

you want government workers to be acutely aware of the ambiguous and perilous nature of their position. You want them to have a heart full of affection for the people they serve. They should regard the people as a mentor, respecting their wisdom, grateful for their trust and longing to serve them with deference and respect.....[, but] who are aware that they probably went into government in part because they have a desire to shape and help other people, and that this desire comes with its own form of immoderation.

He's talking about government by Jeeves, the perfectly unobtrusive gentleman's gentleman, whose only care, except on Thursdays, is for my comfort, whose only desire is for my delight, who selflessly and tirelessly collaborates with me so I can be my best possible me, except, you know, with perhaps a wee tendency to think he knows what I want better than I know it myself. Like once when I wanted to wear the shrimp-colored cummerbund with a mess jacket...

You want government workers who are alert to their own tendency toward bossiness; who ladle out their power carefully, gram by gram; who are aware that they are not really as benevolent and disinterested as they seem to themselves.

"And these hallucinations? How long have they been going on?"

"Halluci-... oh, you mean about me being benevolent and disinterested? Far back as I can recall, really. Nearly everybody has them, where I work."

"Really?"

"Only they're not aware of it, of course. Only a few of us realize what black-hearted dirtbags we really are underneath, so it's a big responsibility, trying to keep it under control."

What it's about, evidently, is the Scandals. On the one hand nobody has yet found a way of pinning them on Obama directly, but on the other hand, there is no precedent in history for a US government possibly using the IRS to intimidate political opponents, or spying on journalists' communications, so it must be Obama's fault somehow. Especially if one of them turns out to be serious in some way that is not yet wholly evident to me.

It was exactly the same with the shrimp-colored cummerbund. I will not go so far as to suggest that Jeeves's lip curled when he regarded that garment, but it certainly did alter its normal angle by some degree. "I'm afraid it doesn't suit you, sir," he said.

"But, dash it, Jeeves!"

Well, he had some leverage over me at the moment, owing to an affair involving my aunt Agatha, a horse named Lindy Lou, and a misdirected shipment of smoked sprats, and I was obliged to let him have his way. It ought to be unconstitutional.

Or perhaps it already is, according to the theory expressed by Gary Pruitt, head of AP:

“We don’t question their right to conduct these sort of investigations. We just think they went about it the wrong way. So sweeping, so secretly, so abusively and harassingly and over-broad that it constitutes, that it is, an unconstitutional act,” he said. (Raw Story)

L. Leslie Brooke, Frontispiece for The Jumblies and other Nonsense Verses by Edward Lear. Gutenberg, 2011.