Unjustified Preference Quotes



The George W. Bush administration, violated the Civil Service Law and the traditions of the Justice Department by making hiring and assignment decisions on the basis of political ideology and participation. Making the situation worse, the political people who were put in senior positions of authority were often not very well qualified and far less so than the people they ended up supervising and outranking. The inspector general of the Justice Department, after being stonewalled, finally uncovered the mess and Monica Goodling, one of the worst offenders, was barred from ever working for the Justice Department again.


This is the ultimate extreme of conservatism which literally means to conserve what is. Salisbury argues that even if you truly believe that the status quo is bad, you should keep it as the risk of change and unexpected consequence is so great that it is not worth the risk. Interestingly, this is the same mode of thinking which created the command in the Koran for Muslims to live with a terrible Caliph or ruler (unless he is a blasphemer or heretic) rather than risk the instability of regime change. See {590195} and {593076} as examples.