"Robert A. Heinlein - Take back your Government" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

purposes. Towing fees for stolen cars, the allocation of gasoline tax monies
between city, county, and state, or the awarding of public utility franchises
are likely to be too "political" for discussion from the pulpit.
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 Instead church groups are likely to demand laws which prohibit practices
contrary to various religious codes of morals. A crooked political machine is
happy to oblige each church as such laws do not hamper the machine; they
help it-first, by providing new fields of graft and corruption, second, by
insuring the votes of the madams, bookies, etc., engaged in these fields, and
third, by obtaining support from the very church groups which demanded the
legislation.
If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of
contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any
such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I
do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over
such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in
doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by
anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws
without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of
sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils
you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to
prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well.
If your conscience requires that you support legislation of the type referred
to above, then you must realize that your overall problem of keeping honest
officials in office to enforce the laws is made much more difficult and that you
must work several times as hard and be much more alert if you are to have
an honest government.
As an amateur, unpaid, volunteer politician interested in certain reforms,
don't expect any real help from the churches even in accomplishing the moral
objectives of the churches, or you will be due for a terrible disappointment.
Women in Politics
We were told, when Votes-for-Women was new, that women would bring
higher moral standards and would eliminate the graft and corruption which
the nasty old men had tolerated.
Women have had an effect - they caused the installation of a powder
room in the Senate's sacred halls; they changed the atmosphere of
conventions from that of a prize fight to something more like a college
reunion, and they broadened the refreshments at political doings from a
simple diet of beer and pigs knuckles to a point where the menu now
includes ice cream and cake, little fancy sandwiches, coffee, and wine cooler.
The change in refreshments is a distinct improvement; I don't like pigs
knuckles. They have also brought political corruption to a new low.
Whoops! Easy, girls - please! Quiet down. There are exceptions to all
rules-you may be the exception to this one. That is for you to determine.
Judge yourself.
A great many women are willing to go to hell in a wheel barrow. Their
husbands may be politically just as dishonest but the gentle sex are usually
willing to sell out at a lower price. They go in for cut-rate corruption. If you file
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for office, or become the manager of a candidate, you will quickly be