Bureaucracy: love of privilege

Taken from Václav Havel’s speech of February 21, 1990, “A Joint Session of the U.S. Congress,” appearing in The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice by Václav Havel. Translated from the Czech by Paul Wilson and others, published by Alfred A. Knopf.
In a speech he gave in 1991, Václav Havel, the President of Czechoslovakia, commented on the privileges that begin to accrue to someone in high office:

“I go to a special doctor, I don’t have to drive a car, … I needn’t cook or shop for myself, and I needn’t even dial my own telephone….

In other words, I find myself in the world of privileges, exceptions, perks; in the world of VIPs who gradually lose track of how much butter or a streetcar costs…. I find myself on the very threshold of the world of the communist fat cats whom I have criticized all my life.

And worst of all, everything has its own unassailable logic. It would be laughable and contemptible for me to miss a meeting that served the interests of my country because I had spent my presidential time in a dentist’s waiting room….

But where do logic and objective necessity stop and excuses begin? Where does the interest of the country stop and the love of privileges begin?”

[Contributed] by Peg Tileston on www.holdthatthought.com: “In the United States, corporate executives rake in millions as their companies lay off workers.” Peg has been a community activist in Anchorage for over 30 years. She is the chairperson of Alaska Common Ground, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to encouraging all Alaskans to engage in respectful dialogue on issues of importance to them.