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"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO, DL (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902), known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Bt from 1837 to 1869 (Bt. (baronet) title of nobility, which ranks above a knight and below a baron; one who holds the title of baronet (in Great Britain) and usually referred to simply as Lord Acton, was an English Catholic historian, politician, and writer. He was the only son of Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton and a grandson of the Neapolitan admiral John Acton. 

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

It is very sad to notice that a significant number of people, in a democracy (unnecessary to say that after the power has been taken by the communists or socialists, elections are no longer an issue) vote on candidates that make the promises that best suit their personal needs, NOT TAKING IN DUE CONSIDERATION what is good for the nation. As we live in a nation, this procedure may become extremely dangerous. This kind of people usually has only three concerns in mind.
In the case of a woman, less common, I must say, her only concerns are SHE, HERSELF and HER.

And a selfish male of the species Homo Sapiens has, as his main preoccupation, HE, HIMSELF, and HIM.

In fact, that is perfectly understandable in a country where most people are barely able to spell their names, as it happens in Terra Brasilis.

If everybody is interested only in his own welfare, things will not work out. Instead of a society, we will have a group of enemies living together, something similar to what we see every day of the year in our traffic. It is simply impossible to establish a civilized society based on such idea. Things get much worse when our representatives think in the same way. It is the old story regarding the differences between a politician and a statesman.

"A politician thinks about the next elections — the statesman thinks about the next generations".
James Freeman Clarke .

This idea reflects, in some way, the differences between left and right. There is a hypothetical situation that reflects this idea in a very explanative way:

Two ships were sailing the ocean in very bad conditions.

In one of the ships, the captain (a man with leftist ideas) was extremely concerned with the welfare of its passengers and crew, despite the fact that the structural conditions of the boat were extremely bad.

On the other ship, which was also in a very bad shape, the captain (with a rightist bias) was more concerned with the structure of the boat, and encouraged both the crew and the passengers to save water and food, and to work hard to fix the leaks and the sails. The passengers of the first boat took for granted that the ship would make it to the next port and didn't do much to improve the conditions of the boat, despite the fact that a small number of passengers tried hard to do something in order to improve the conditions of the ship.
The final result was that the first ship sunk after a couple of days and everybody drowned (like in the Caribbean paradise of the Castros' Brothers). The second ship, where the choice was to work hard to keep the boat afloat and to save water and food, finally arrived safe and sound at his destiny.

The lesson: uneducated persons are much more likely to make wrong choices because they are more interested in their immediate welfare and that may be fatal for them. Just imagine if Cubans in 1958 had waited only a few more months for the fall of Batista (he did not have the support of the United States anymore and his fall would take place in a matter of months) they would not have to endure the longer lasting dictatorship the world has ever known, led by the false democrat known as Fidel Castro. Anyway, who would imagine that Fidel Castro would transform himself into a much worse dictator than a hundred Fulgencios Batistas?

May God bless the island of Cuba with the removal of the Castros' Brothers from power, as soon as possible.

Dixi

Roberto Henry Ebelt é professor, escritor, produz uma coluna semanal para o Jornal do Comércio de Porto Alegre deste 2001 e é diretor do curso HENRY'S BUSINESS ENGLISH desde 1971.

Seu mais recente livro, O QUE VOCÊ DEVE SABER ANTES DE ESTUDAR INGLÊS, pode ser encontrado nas livrarias Disal, Cultura e SBS ou à rua Hoffmann, 728 em Porto Alegre.

E-mail: roberto@henrys.com.br
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