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Originally Posted by Khartoun2004
You want to see corruption look at some South American governments or Russia. Unconstitutional laws are not being passed, laws are not being circumvented...
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There's a huge difference between not trusting your government because they are a bunch of moronic retards... and having a truly corrupt government that murders people for the fun of it or because someone disagrees with them.
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but you are not going to be hauled off by secret police and shot in the back of the head in a field somewhere for voicing your opinions. That is true corruption ...
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I'm not saying that our government doesn't have issues, but the laws are still followed and we still have our rights. That is not the case in a lot of places. China is a hugely corrupt place, Sudan... I don't think I need to explain why Sudan is a corrupt government. Russia is pretty corrupt look no further than Putin.
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Lot of quotes, I know, but I think you pack too many 'virtues' into the word corruption which don't have much to do with it.
Corruption is operationally defined as the misuse of entrusted power for private gain. (that's not my own definition, but the one of Transparency International, and it encompasses bribe, venality, acceptance and granting of undue advantage by a public official). Illegal killings, brutality etc., though regularly connected with corruption, are not corruption. In that sense mentioning Putin as corrupt is a little bit bold, unless you see (original) macchiavellianism as corruption. In fact Putin and Medvedev are some of the few Russian politicians who actively
fight corruption.
On the other hand, the case with lobbyism is not so simple as you want to depict. From the moment you change a law or the bill of a law to the advantage of some interest group in order to get the agreement, you are already in the middle of the morass of corruption, no matter whether "...the system is working the way it was designed to work", if it's legalized or even anchored in the constitution - it is corruption. Strictly taken, it's not even necessary that anything in that direction is done. The fact alone that a lobbyist takes a public office, which makes it possible to cause inequality of competitors, is enough to abet corruption regardless of whether there has been some irregularity or not.
Needless to say that corruption is an integral part of
every government, every political practice
everywhere on Earth. It is impossible to govern without a certain amount of corruption. The fact, that in the USA this is done quite transparently and is openly accepted by law, makes their approach to the problem the most honest one of the western democracies. The real concern and the touchstone for a government is - what remains for the people? The end justifies the means.