In Ancient Greece ethics was one of the great chapters in which thinking of the human being was divided from the beginnings of philosophy and since then ethics has an intimate connection with politics. The concept of ethics is also a narrowing linked to the people’s feeling, their way of living and their customs as the Greek root of the word (ethos) indicates, and has naturally evolved in its content, as these customs evolve throughout the time and history. Today’s ethics are in many respects profoundly different from the old ones, and the way of facing slavery is probably the most notable example of these differences which cover many other relevant aspects.
The ancients did not know, for example, any ethics of humanity, and one of their principles of virtue was to do evil to enemy peoples.
Within the politics the idea reveals two different concepts that coexist daily in the opinion of citizens and in the motivation of the action of politicians.
One is that politics is the commitment to the achievement of good common. The another one is that politics is the art and wisdom of attracting and keeping power stable doing good. In this view it means of gaining citizens support for the conservation and stabilization of power used in parallel with other equivalent valid media such as marketing, media control, clientelism, populism and even lies, violence and corruption. This is the concept derived from the most current interpretations of Machiavelli’s advice and is the one that best fits the conceptions of modern political science.
Both concepts are current in the world tending to prevail in general the realism of the second. Thus, among us, at the same time the most popular virtue of politics is the cleverness along with courage, brave or daring. Quality of which is born confidence in the politician as someone capable of properly directing the people with pulse and skill. However, the idea of good will always be present and important to make permanent criticism of pragmatism preventing the power to violate certain limits dictated by ethics even making concessions to many of postulations. And the purpose of the good, its search for politics, tends to gain hegemonic dimension in moments of crisis that undermine the ethical foundations of society generating real revolutionary moments that operate deep political-social transformations.
The relations between ethics and politics are mainly based on some aspects. A first field of relationship, which has always aroused more interest in the speculations and debates that are on the subject is the conflict between the principles of ethics and the reality of politics. Thus, ethics and politics have always had an intense dialectical relationship of conflict in the coexistence varying the terms and themes of this confrontation. Among these themes political lie has always been emphasized as a kind of aggression more acceptable to moral principles. Plato, for example, gave physicians and politicians the right to use the ‘useful lie,’ the one capable of acting as a drug on individuals and on polis in a state of illness. In modern times the polemic of lies and truth has centered around the concept of the ‘reason of state’ which originated in the relations of diplomacy between the monarchical states and extended to the governing relations-subjects signifying projects and information that had to be lying secretly in the most intimate circles of power.
The use of lies in political actions can also go beyond the set of cases that are characteristically derived from ‘reason of state’ and continue to have acceptance often even more consensual from the point of view of ethical criticism. By analogy, a justification could be invoked for such cases as a ‘reason of government’.
Donald Trump picks up his favorite tactic, which nevertheless almost never worked out for him: blackmailing the Democrat opposition for approval of strong-willed policies against immigration. The president said that he would be willing to force a budget stoppage of the federal government if Democrats did not approve the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico and other measures to restrict legal and irregular immigration. Republicans have a Senate majority, but they need the support of at least nine Democrats to pass budget laws which infuriates Trump greatly. A shutdown by the Administration implies that there are no resources for non-essential services and many civil servants stop working. First, he wrote on Twitter “I would be willing to close down the government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for border security which includes the wall”. The trustee again claimed that the authorities could hold undocumented immigrants longer than the current limits determined by the Judiciary and defended the end of the system of drawing for certain visas, passing to a meritocratic model.
After that he wrote ‘We need great people to come to our country”. After of surprising silence Trump returned to the charge with a flurry of incendiary messages among them reiterating his description of the media as ‘the enemy of the people.’ In threatening to stop the government, Trump returns to his most inopportune instincts and ignores the conservative congressional summit which prefers a controversial exemption of resources. The president again resorted to anti-immigration speech with the aim of satisfying his strongest base also evidencing his frustration at failing to fulfill his electoral promise to build a wall with Mexico. Originally, he said that the neighboring country would pay for the work. But the move can be very risky because a hypothetical shutdown at the end of this fiscal year.
Trump has asked Congress for $ 25 billion to build up the missing pieces of physical separation between the United States and Mexico. The wall became an electoral emblem of Trump’s demonization of irregular immigration. Meanwhile, all that the president has achieved so far has been 1.6 billion in the latest budget to renew current barriers, but not to build new ones. The Republican’s obsession is to show advances to his constituents in his crusade against immigration. He tried this with his policy of separating undocumented parents and children from the border, but he had to revoke it after provoking a huge controversy even within the conservative ranks.
To conclude, I feel like the walls of stone and cement that continue to be erected in the world reveal the inability to know how to live physically in freedom, while the invisible walls of the ideologies that separate us, sometimes even between friends and family, are built with the inability to dialogue and accept who is different…so…where is the ethic if there is no respect?