Is Politics Insoluble?

118 / Henry Hazlitt
the whole, a higher quaUty of leadership, and more compro-
mise and conciliation, than the American presidential system.
The presidential system, transplanted to Latin America, has
worked badly and often disastrously. It has led to military dic-
tatorships which a parliamentary system could have avoided.
Yet a parliamentary system itself is only a virtue to the
extent that public opinion is sound. It is the most efficient
technical instrument yet devised for reflecting and enacting
public opinion. When public opinion is corrupted, it most
promptly enacts the corruption. So the parliamentary sys-
tems of Great Britain and West European countries enacted
the welfare state, which attempted to provide security for
everybody from cradle to grave, and in that attempt brought
government improvidence, deficits, onerous taxes, inflation,
capital consumption and destruction, and reduced liberties
and living standards.
On the other side, however, all civilized countries have
built up through the centuries a body of law and legal prece-
dents protecting the rights of the individual. These have con-
tinued to be respected through many changes of governments.
Such legal protections have gone far to preserve or restore
social peace and order.
So while we may doubt that a truly "ideal" government
will ever be designed, or "scientific" political institutions ever
developed, we need not abandon the effort to improve them.
But we must be prepared for setbacks and discouragements
for as far ahead as we can see.
1. Freedom at Issue (New York: Freedom House, 1984).