Trouble is, we call politics a game, but it isn't one. There is no referee, and the teams make up the rules as they go along. You can't cry foul or offside in politics. Almost anything goes.
Interpretation
Politics operates without clear rules or oversight, making it unpredictable and often chaotic.
In this quote, Michael Ignatieff highlights the complexity and often tumultuous nature of politics, emphasizing that there are no universal rules or authorities to ensure fairness. Unlike a game with a referee, political actions and decisions are often subjective, leading to a landscape where anything can happen without accountability.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the challenges of political reform in a class on political science.
Genocide is not just a murderous madness; it is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics - one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.
Commerce has changed the ethics of citizenship and the incentives for national service. America now buys private contractors - we used to call them mercenaries - to do the country's fighting.
Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral use of force eventually forfeits international legitimacy and domestic support. Desert Storm demonstrated the political necessity of coalition warfare.
Communism may be over as an economic system, but as a model of state domination, it is very much alive in the People's Republic of China and in Putin's police state.
Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, 'Those who can, do, those who can't, teach,' forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.
How do you keep war accountable to the American people when war becomes invisible and virtual?
When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
If you had to work in the environment of Washington, D.C., as I do, and watch those men who are so imprisoned and so confined by their eighteenth-century thought patterns, you would know that if anybody is going to be liberated, it's men who must be liberated in this country.
A wise nation should cultivate a political spirit that allows opponents to cooperate without fearing an automatic execution from their core supporters. Who knew that the real rogues in American politics would be the ones who dare to get along?
If the people fail to vote, a government will be developed which is not their government... The whole system of American Government rests on the ballot box. Unless citizens perform their duties there, such a system of government is doomed to failure.
Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.
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