{"id":5649,"date":"2017-03-28T19:20:11","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T19:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/03\/28\/le-mieux-est-lennemi-du-bien\/"},"modified":"2017-03-28T19:20:11","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T19:20:11","slug":"le-mieux-est-lennemi-du-bien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/03\/28\/le-mieux-est-lennemi-du-bien\/","title":{"rendered":"Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Attributed<\/a> to Voltaire. "The better is the enemy of the good."  Supposedly from the earlier Italian Il meglio \u00e8 nemico del bene<\/em>, attested since 1603. (Wikipedia) The thought is perhaps better captured by "The best is the enemy of the good."  <\/span><\/p>\n

In an imperfect world it is folly to predicate action upon perfection.  Will you hold out for the perfect spouse?  Then you will remain alone.  And if you yourself are less than perfect, how can you demand perfection in others? <\/span><\/p>\n

Politics is a practical business: it is about the gaining and maintaining of power for the purpose of implementing programs and policies that one believes to be beneficial, and for opposing those whose policies one believes to be deleterious. It's about winning, not talking. It's not about ideological purity or having the supposedly best<\/em> ideas; it's about gaining the power to implement good<\/em> ideas, ideas that are implementable in the current configuration of suboptimal circumstances. The practical politician understands that quite often Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, <\/em>the better\/best is the enemy of the good. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Never Trumpers and the conservative opponents of the American Health Care Act displayed a failure to understand this important principle of practical politics.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Dennis Prager in his latest column<\/a> explains why.<\/span>  <\/p>\n

Practical politics as opposed to what? As opposed to the effete and epicene<\/a> political salon talk of Bill Kristol and George Will.  Erudite and entertaining but useless in stopping the leftist-Islamist juggernaut. <\/span><\/p>\n

The main external threat to civilization? Radical Islam.  The main internal threat? Leftism. That the latter is in cahoots with the former makes for a nasty synergy. Prager:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Conservatives who voted for Trump believed that defeating the Left is the overriding moral good of our time. We are certain that the Left (not the traditional liberal) is destroying Western Civilization, including, obviously, the United States. The external enemy of Western Civilization are the Islamists (the tens or perhaps hundreds of million of Muslims who wish to see the world governed by Sharia), and the internal enemy of the West is the left. What the left has done to the universities and to Western culture at the universities is a perfect example.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Related articles<\/p>\n

\n
<\/a>Civil Courage<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Politics and Ridicule in a Post-Consensus Age<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>The Left's Hatred of Conservative Talk Radio<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Rachel Dolezal, the Black White Woman<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Why the Left Will Not Admit the Threat of Radical Islam (Revised and Expanded)<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Is Leftism a Religion?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attributed to Voltaire. "The better is the enemy of the good."  Supposedly from the earlier Italian Il meglio \u00e8 nemico del bene, attested since 1603. (Wikipedia) The thought is perhaps better captured by "The best is the enemy of the good."  In an imperfect world it is folly to predicate action upon perfection.  Will you … Continue reading “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien<\/i>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}