Political Integrity

2015/08/31 User:Jeff

Political Integrity

Integrity:

1. the quality of being honest and fair.
2. the state of being complete or whole.

So says Webster. The Third New International Dictionary goes a little deeper:

• an unimpaired or unmarred condition : soundness ;
• an uncompromising adherence to a code of moral, artistic, or other values : utter sincerity, honesty, and candor : avoidance of deception, expediency, artificiality, or shallowness of any kind ;
• a) the quality or state of being complete or undivided : material, spiritual, or aesthetic wholeness.

Integrity is pretty demanding. It requires 'uncompromising' adherence to a moral code or set of values, honesty, sincerity, and candor. This means that

• a person with integrity has a moral code that they understand and stand by with without compromise.

This needs a disclaimer. This does not mean that a person with integrity may never enter into a compromise. In government of a diverse society, the strain of competing interests may require compromise that violates both sides of an issue to some degree. In such cases the integrity of the parties to the compromise have not necessarily betrayed their moral code. The wise rule as they can, seldom as they would like. Politics is often an art of intelligent and effective compromise.

But that being said, a society that has powerful factions that are diametrically opposed to each other is going to have problems.

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