Do Our Public Servants Feel Our Private Pain?

Do Our Public Servants Feel Our Private Pain?
China Post Editorial
by Bevin Chu
August 16, 2009

"I feel your pain."
-- Bill Clinton, remark made during presidential campaign, March 16, 1992

William Jefferson Clinton will be forever be remembered for a remark he made while campaigning for President of the United States, "I feel your pain."

Do our "public servants" really feel our private pain?

They really don't. As a general rule, they could not care less about our pain.

Anyone who doubts this need only examine the conduct of four current and former Republic of China heads of state: sitting President Ma Ying-jeou, former President Chen Shui-bian, former Vice President Annette Lu, and former President Lee Teng-hui.

On August 8, 2009, Typhoon Morakot ripped across Taiwan. Mudslides were so massive Hsiaoling Village in Chiahsien Township was buried beneath a 10 meter deep layer of mud and gravel. Two hundred families were entombed alive as they slept in their beds.

How did President Ma Ying-jeou react? Ma told foreign reporters the villagers were ill prepared and underestimated the danger. He implied that the victims of Typhoon Morakot were to blame for their own misfortune. The public, needless to say, was outraged. Did Ma Ying-jeou "feel our pain?" Not that anyone could tell.

In fact, last year, the Chiahsien Township requested that the creek that would later precipitate this tragedy be cleared. The Water Conservation Bureau, then under Chen Shui-bian administration rule, turned down its request. The reason it gave was "The gravel is valuable. The request for creek clearing may well be motivated by commercial interests." The Chen crime family meanwhile, was laundering billions in illicit funds and transferring them into its secret overseas accounts.

When Typhoon Mindulle struck Taiwan in July 2004, then Vice President Annette Lu blamed Taiwan's Aborigines for overdevelopment, deforestation, soil erosion, and flooding in Taiwan's central mountain range. According to Lu, not only were victims of Typhoon Mindulle undeserving of public sympathy, they should be shipped off to Central and South America for damaging Taiwan's ecology.

The 9/21 Earthquake of 1999 was the worst quake to hit Taiwan in a century. Then President Lee Teng-hui, stung by mounting public criticism that his administration was sitting on its backside doing nothing, decided to stage a photo op.

Lee Teng-hui's helicopter entourage arrived in Puli, a hard-hit community close to the epicenter. The rotor wash from one of Lee's helicopters sent a heavy branch from a tree crashing down on five quake victims sitting in its shade. One of them, a five year old girl named Lai Yi-chun, was rushed to Taichung Veteran's Hospital. She showed no life signs upon arrival, and was declared legally dead three hours later.

What did this man, whom Newsweek magazine anointed "Mr. Democracy," do next? Did he transport the twice-victimized girl to the hospital in his personal helicopter? Did he stay by the side of the grief-stricken parents? He boarded his helicopter and flew off.

Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Citizens of modern democracies, like the inmates of an insane asylum, do the same thing over and over again even while expecting different results.

We parrot the rhetoric of democracy, which assures us that if selfish political opportunists are "democratically elected," they will magically metamorphose into selfless "public servants."

We parrot the rhetoric of democracy, which assures us that if one gang of selfish political opportunists betrays us, all we need to do is to "huan ren zhuo zhuo kan," i.e., vote in a second gang of selfish political opportunists, cross our fingers, and hope they work out.

We parrot the rhetoric of democracy, which assures us that democracy will function like a well-oiled machine once it "matures" by undergoing "di er ci zheng dang lun ti," i.e., Samuel Huntington's "second change in ruling parties."

But democracy, i.e., universal suffrage plus majority rule, will never make public servants feel our private pain. Neither the tyranny of the majority, i.e., a democratic dictatorship, nor the tyranny of a minority, i.e., an elitist dictatorship, will ever make public servants feel our private pain.

That's because both democratic dictatorships and elitist dictatorships are predators, and private individuals their prey. The only tears they will ever shed as they feed on us, are crocodile tears.

Only a free market in what we are accustomed to think of as "public services" will put power back in the hands of those whom it belongs, private individuals. Only a free market will ensure that "he who pays the piper, calls the tune." Only a daring process of radical privatization will make private individuals the masters of public servants. Only a free market will make public servants feel our private pain.