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Spring Reading: The Day of Judgment
Wednesday, May 21st, 2014
Robert Wechsler
I just finished reading a masterpiece of a novel about Nuoro, a town
in Sardinia: Salvatore Satta's The
Day of Judgment, translated from the Italian by Patrick
Creagh. It's a very wise, witty, and sad novel. Here are a few
pearls of wisdom that shed light on local government ethics.
"Being mayor meant seeing the Nuorese ... come forward hat in hand to ask for something. ... Power meant conceding this certain something; and this was all the more important because, in spite of appearances, power is shown more by giving than by taking away."
"Ludovico's trouble was that life would not allow him to dream; it urged him to take part in reality; it exposed him to an exhausting risk, exactly like that of a tightrope walker. He could get away with making no response to [his mother] when she called him, but how could he avoid responding to the demands of others, which are constant, continuous, and inexorable?"
"In Nuoro ... there was no hatred, and there was no love either. There was the struggle with others, which became the struggle with themselves. Love and hate balanced each other out, and converged in the need to preserve others in order to preserve themselves."
[Whenever anyone leaves Nuoro, the principal character, Sebastiano, says they have gone "to look for bread made from better things than wheat." This is how local officials and attorneys often seem to feel about looking elsewhere for ethics reform ideas. Rarely do they look outside their immediate area, where they are likely to find little. As a bread baker and government ethicist, I know that they are many things better than wheat, but they probably aren't being grown or ground nearby. Government ethics should not be treated like vegetables, where local is preferable.]
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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"Being mayor meant seeing the Nuorese ... come forward hat in hand to ask for something. ... Power meant conceding this certain something; and this was all the more important because, in spite of appearances, power is shown more by giving than by taking away."
"Ludovico's trouble was that life would not allow him to dream; it urged him to take part in reality; it exposed him to an exhausting risk, exactly like that of a tightrope walker. He could get away with making no response to [his mother] when she called him, but how could he avoid responding to the demands of others, which are constant, continuous, and inexorable?"
"In Nuoro ... there was no hatred, and there was no love either. There was the struggle with others, which became the struggle with themselves. Love and hate balanced each other out, and converged in the need to preserve others in order to preserve themselves."
[Whenever anyone leaves Nuoro, the principal character, Sebastiano, says they have gone "to look for bread made from better things than wheat." This is how local officials and attorneys often seem to feel about looking elsewhere for ethics reform ideas. Rarely do they look outside their immediate area, where they are likely to find little. As a bread baker and government ethicist, I know that they are many things better than wheat, but they probably aren't being grown or ground nearby. Government ethics should not be treated like vegetables, where local is preferable.]
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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