Mr Ebou Jallow,
    Your points raised were very apt and lucid with regard to Realpolitik and
the essence of Machiavelli's controversial ends and means methodology in
political and social theory. It did make up for the job left undone by my
earlier posting in many respects as to how ethical and unethical
Machiavelli's Realpolitik was and still is. I was just plain knackered and
braindead and not at my lucid best last night.
    However, concerning the ethical bit on Realpolitik, I wish to bring it to
your attention and else that contrary to what cynics on both sides of
ethical/morality divide suggest/point out, Machiavelli was "never in denial
of ethics values" and conduct in public life by insisting on ethical dualism
in Statecraft. The most radical and shocking interpretation of Machiavelli
comes from Isaiah Berlin in an article called "The Question Of Machiavelli",
in The New York Review of Books, 4 November 1971. In this article, Berlin
argued that:"what is shocking about Machiavelli's political theory is not
it's denial of ethical values [he argues that Machiavelli possessed a
pagan/atheist morality based upon the idea that the state itself an ethical
standard of value] but it's assumption that there exists a multiplicity of
ethical standards that are mutually exclusive of one another. Political
ethics, Berlin posited further, is different from, and exclusive of,
Judeo-Christian/religious ethics. This laid the foundation of what was to
become the modern secular Liberal State.
    At any rate, the Gambia is or professes to be a modern Liberal secular
state at least according to her 1997 constitution which draws so much from
what I have just mentioned above. This doesn't mean a negation of ethics in
governance. Rather different ethical values "mutually exclusive" of
private/religious ethics and to pinch a phrase from you, the state operates
on a "moral prudence" basis in order to live up to the plurality that society
really is in modern times. To expect the state or political life to conduct
itself in the same line as private and religious life, is an act in naivety
and ignorance. The modern secular Liberal State is the arbiter of the
plurality that we live. It cannot have neat, tidy and clear-cut moral/ethical
standards engraved in stone. It's ethical standards are dictated by different
forces most important of which is it's survival as the arbiter of pluralism
that collectivity lives individually in modern times.
    For the sake of political expediency and in the preservation of the
state's role as arbiter of our private different strands of ethical values,
the Gambian opposition need to join hands and let Machiavelli's Realpolitik
be the leading light to navigate the way forward in the storms that have
engulfed our national vessel as it sails the high seas of political
uncertainty. The means of Realpolitik to the ends of decency and respect
again in the Gambia is not a negation of ethics but an attempt to bring that
lost ethical value back to the Gambian State which is bordering and
progressing along the lines of arnacho-reactionary tendencies. Realpolitik
might not be the best word in some of us political lexicons, but it's essence
and prudence in these harrowing can never be overstated.
Hamjatta Kanteh


hkanteh

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