Politics: Not an End in Itself

“As such, politics has eclipsed its primary purpose—namely, to provide the means by which people can seek out and, in turn, live good lives, lives that have nothing to do with politics.”

This June, Cato Institute’s Aaron Ross Powell wrote, “I’m suspicious of people who have few or no interests outside of politics [b]ecause the only reason we should be interested in politics at all is to figure out how to make it so we someday no longer need to be interested in politics.” It is a passage reminiscent of John Adams’ oft-quoted “I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy,” a sentence the future president would write in a 1780 letter to his wife, Abigail.

Powell’s statement comes at a time when many of us are quick to sense that politics has become far too present and intrusive into our daily lives. It has seeped out of the areas to which it should be confined, now coloring nearly every facet of society, from ballet to professional baseball. As such, politics has eclipsed its primary purpose—namely, to provide the means by which people can seek out and, in turn, live good lives, lives that have nothing to do with politics.

Just as in a healthy society, one does not see soldiers stationed on street corners (the military seeping out of its barracks and bases and inserting itself into the daily affairs of the society that its placement elsewhere exists to protect), a well-functioning state is similarly free of its politics being ever-present and all-consuming.