Politics as a Tool: Shaping Society for Good

If we’re going to have a fruitful conversation about how to be “good” when it comes to how you approach politics, and what it means to do politics “well,” it’ll be helpful to start with asking, “What is politics for?”

For our purposes here, let’s treat “politics” as being the activity (or activities) we engage in for the purpose of directing the government to take or not take certain actions. If we think of government as a tool, then, we can think of politics as the way we put that tool to use. The government does things on its own, of course. Legislators pass laws, regulators create regulations, police enforce laws, and so on. Every day, they go to work and take actions without us using “politics” to direct each and every one of them. They exercise their own independent judgement.

Still, in democracy at least, those legislators, regulators, and police are broadly guided by what we, the people, want. We vote for our leaders and, ideally, they act as our representatives, or act in our interests as we have expressed those interests through politics. “Ideally” because, well, it doesn’t always work out that way. But let’s set that qualifier aside for now, because at the moment we’re talking about ideas, not back rooms.

So “politics” is how we tell the government what to do, but that’s not the whole of what politics is for, because we need to have an answer to the follow-up question of “So what?” If you’re reading this, you’re the kind of person who, I wager, puts quite a lot of thought into politics, and I further wager that you’re not doing that simply because you care about what the government is up to in isolation. Rather, you want to accomplish something in the world.

Put another way, “Why do we have government, and thus politics, in the first place?” That’s a very big question, and one smart people have been arguing about for at least as long as we have written records of smart people arguing. Thus I’m not going to try to give a complete answer here, but instead gesture in the right direction, because I don’t want to get bogged down, but also because it’s not necessary to if the goal is to uncover a politics for good people.

The easiest and, I think, most broadly correct answer is that the government is a tool for shaping, coordinating, and protecting society and the people who make it up. It’s not the only tool we have for achieving these aims, and using it does not mean setting those aside, but it is a powerful one and, unlike most of the alternatives, it’s comprehensive. Government can at least plausibly attempt to reach anywhere we might direct it, and it brings certain features to bear that give it heft. Namely, the government can tell you want to do, and if you disobey, it doesn’t have to ask you again. It can instead punch you or shoot you or threaten that it’s going to punch or shoot you. This makes it rather more persuasive than, say, your local church group, which also acts to shape, coordinate, and protect. And your church group also operates at a much smaller scale, reaching a much smaller slice of society.

Thus what politics is for is directing this powerful and comprehensive tool to the right ends. It’s how we make sure the government is doing what it ought to do and isn’t doing what it ought not to do. And politics is how we decide, as a citizenry, the content of those “oughts.” Is making war on that foreign land something the government ought to do—or not? Is paying for a new football stadium something the government ought to do—or not? When you or I vote, or put up a yard sign, or argue about policy at the pub, or write a political newsletter, we are giving our opinion of what those “oughts” should entail and we’re using the mechanisms provided to us to attempt to persuade the government to agree with us.

With this clarity, we can now begin to explore what it means to use politics well, and what it means to be good while doing so. We can ask, “How would a good person approach political engagement?” and “What does a good person believe the government ought to do?”