The only race I cared about particularly was the local sheriff, where Iraq war veteran Doug Farmer carried the day. He becomes the first Republican sheriff in Jackson County in a hundred years, or right at it. All the candidates came to the fire department to talk to us, and all but him said the same thing: 'Drugs are the biggest problem, and if you vote for me I will seek additional Federal resources to tackle that problem.' Farmer said, 'Drugs are the biggest problem, and they're being sold out of the same houses they've been sold out for years. We know where they are, and we know who is doing it. Vote for me and I'll go walk across their porch, knock on their door, and run them out of town or send them to prison if they won't stop.' We'll see if he does what he said he would do, but if he does he has the right kind of courage for the job.
Offices like this are a kind of honor, and honor is properly the reward of virtue. One ought to award the honor of the office to the person who has the specific virtues that office requires. The problem with our nation is that instead our system has devolved into awarding offices of honor to those who prove they are adequately corrupt to keep the money train going. People move up to higher offices not because of their demonstrated virtues, but because of their demonstrated capacity to make the money flow. Here was an exception, and a chance to award an office according to the virtues that merit it. Hopefully he will do well; hopefully, we might find more chances to award offices in the proper way.
1 comment:
I think you are right to focus on the rewards for proper virtues. Even when we are not rewarding corruption, we are sometimes rewarding a type of education that is status-conferring, rather than useful for a particular task. It may be fine in other contexts. To be sheriff is to have a good sense when to be bold and when to be patient, when to stress justice and when to stress mercy. However much theory one has on such subjects, practice in observing and making the consequences of such decisions being made is the main training for those. The military is not the only place that has that, but it is one. Nor does it infallibly train its members to exercise that judgement properly, but it still has natural consequences operating more than most fields.
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