Really Bad Neighbors

A few centuries after Machiavelli the notion of moral or spiritual fetters on rulers, especially with respect to international politics, has come to be viewed by ostensibly sophisticated commentators as absurd. It's broadly accepted that statecraft takes place beyond good and evil and is the work of an antinomian sect of cold, calculating sociopathic lizard people. The only political reality is realpolitik and its only rule is there are no rules.

Let's set aside the ideas, for now, that doing evil actually erodes and destroys the soul of the evil doers, and that we have an internal moral compass, and repeatedly violating it is actually painful and self-destructive. Instead, let's think about how repeated cheating, lying, theft, and violence destroys reputation and relationships.

Think of the difference between a bad neighbor and a good neighbor simply from a utilitarian point-of-view. A good neighbor is a resource, like good water, or good weather. A bad neighbor, a violent drunk for example, is the opposite--a curse upon all.

A violent gang of sociopaths can cheat, lie, and steal for awhile maybe even decades, but in the process they burn all their goodwill with the neighborhood and are eventually isolated and destroyed not by any moral force on its own, but because moral and good men won't abide a tyrant or a cheat.