Britain's Lobbying Scandal

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/23/uk.lobbying.scandal/index.html

Some might say that I should have rather implied (as CNN did), that this is the Labour Party’s scandal.  The Tories are certainly in a position to take advantage of it.  But I’ve been reading Edward Said who while he has a special brief for the U.S., would swear a pox on all the Liberal Democratic houses. 

And there are others who claim that Liberal Democracy provides increased opportunities for corruption on the part of those who lead in business, government and the military.  And yes, it is possible for anti-Democratic activists to wax indignant when they encounter a scandal like the above.  The response I would make to them is that there is no form of government that is free of scandal and corruption.  And totalitarian forms of government aren’t immune, although they might seem to be because they are able to censor their presses.  A story like the above wouldn’t appear in a nation with a totalitarian government.

We are probably all aware of the corrupting influence of temptation.  Even the fictitious person who has never given in to temptation knows the sound of its siren call.  And “power” is an especially corrupting temptation as all nations know.  But what form of government handles its corrupted officials quite so well as the Liberal Democratic?  None!  It is being handled precisely right in Britain (if the CNN article is accurate and I assume that it is).  The press was permitted to engage in its interesting “sting” (and will suffer no repercussions, I trust) and once the four MPs were shown to be willing to sell their influence, they were suspended by the Labour Party.

The political careers of these corrupt MPs seem to be over.  We see unremitting attacks against Liberal Democratic forms of government coming from China, the Russian Federation, and various Muslim nations.  Let them pretend they have no corruption in their governments if they can, but let us strive to remove (as Britain just has) corrupt officials as soon as they are discovered.   Our system will work as long as we continue doing that.  Their systems will work, presumably, as long as they can keep their scandals hushed up.