Political Vices

Twenty patterns to recognize

1. 01

   Dishonesty

   A readiness to make or preserve a misleading understanding for advantage, convenience or concealment.

2. 02

   Hypocrisy

   Habitually demanding standards of others while making unjustified exceptions for oneself.

3. 03

   Willful Blindness

   Deliberately avoiding available inquiry or evidence in order not to confront an unwelcome reality.

4. 04

   Self-Deception

   Habitually sustaining a comforting or self-serving interpretation despite reasons one could reasonably acknowledge against it.

5. 05

   Rigidity

   Habitual unwillingness to revise a view or method when relevant reasons call for reconsideration.

6. 06

   Favoritism

   Persistent, unjustified favoritism in the weight given to people's claims, evidence or opportunities.

7. 07

   Fanaticism

   A habitual commitment to a cause that treats its advancement as overriding defensible moral limits and other people's legitimate claims.

8. 08

   Contempt

   A habitual disposition to regard other people as beneath basic consideration or respect.

9. 09

   Callousness

   Habitual indifference to another person's suffering or serious needs.

10. 10

    Domination

    A persistent desire to control others that overrides their reasonable agency.

11. 11

    Servility

    Habitual surrender of considered judgment to secure favor or approval.

12. 12

    Arrogance

    An inflated sense of one's importance or judgment that discounts correction and other people's standing.

13. 13

    Vanity

    Excessive dependence on admiration and the appearance of importance.

14. 14

    Vindictiveness

    A habitual disposition to seek payback against someone for a real or perceived injury, slight, embarrassment or challenge.

15. 15

    Venality

    A readiness to trade a considered ethical commitment or entrusted responsibility for personal reward.

16. 16

    Greed

    Excessive desire for gain that persistently overrides fair claims or defensible limits.

17. 17

    Selfishness

    A persistent preference for one's own advantage or convenience over other people's legitimate claims.

18. 18

    Negligence

    Habitual disregard for the attention and care one could reasonably give to entrusted concerns.

19. 19

    Complacency

    Unwarranted satisfaction with one's adequacy that weakens needed attention or improvement.

20. 20

    Recklessness

    Disregard for foreseeable, significant consequences, including risks imposed on other people.

What political commitment is for

Political life lets people address concerns they cannot settle alone: common arrangements, competing claims, shared resources and the conditions of living together. It needs more than a correct private opinion. People must explain proposals, hear affected experience, organize action, make decisions and remain answerable for what those decisions do.

A political commitment deserves an account of its purpose and means. Success can become detached from that account when the party, leader or campaign becomes an end in itself. These twenty readings examine recurring dispositions through which truth, fair consideration, freedom and responsibility are displaced.

The audience includes citizens, volunteers, campaigners, party members and officials as well as political leaders. A misleading claim passed through a group chat and a misleading assurance issued from public office differ in reach and responsibility, while retaining the same underlying meaning of Dishonesty.

Similar political effects, different dispositions

Tribalism in the faction-above-truth sense belongs under Favoritism. Cronyism and nepotism concern insider and family preference. Corruption may involve selling responsibility, excessive gain, concealment or special treatment; naming the abuse does not establish which disposition is present.

Fanaticism is the one new disposition in this collection: treating a cause’s advancement as overriding defensible moral limits and other people’s legitimate claims. It is distinct from strong conviction, from Rigidity’s refusal of warranted revision and from Recklessness’s disregard of significant consequences. An adaptable strategist can still grant the cause an indefensible moral permission.

The same incident may express several dispositions, and an unwelcome result may establish none. A politician can be wrong without being dishonest, a citizen can refuse compromise without being fanatical, and a painful decision can take serious needs into account. The articles distinguish what actually guided a choice from how the outcome appears.

Standards across disagreement

Populism and technocracy are not admitted as vice labels. Neither appealing to ordinary people nor relying on expertise is inherently vicious. Certainty, simplification, secrecy and centralization likewise need examination in context. The question is what reasons, claims and evidence a particular choice has honored or overridden.

The standards apply to our own side as well as opponents. This does not require equal blame, equal evidential weight for every claim or a compromise halfway between positions. Accurate criticism can be severe, and justified boundaries can be firm. Basic consideration for people does not require approving every proposal.

The cases are imagined situations, not portraits of real parties or officeholders. Their lighter props make a choice visible without turning vulnerable people or suffering into the joke. Historical source passages retain their context, including the gravity of enslavement and exclusion; a small comic scene is not an equivalence of harms.

Read the case, then examine the reasons

Each article explains a mechanism, its public costs, a neighboring distinction and what a useful response could change. Reflection questions and related virtue readings offer further ways to think about the choice. They do not assign a character score or demand public confession.

Three source passages on each reading bring specific perspectives and counterpoints. The original triolet, limerick, explained paradox and sidebar question develop its own situation. A historical author’s claim remains something to examine, rather than a ready-made contemporary political rule.

This is a reference collection: no enrollment, vice program, tracking or My Vices. People face different capacities and dependencies. The readings do not demand confrontation with a threatening authority, unlimited disclosure or submission to group pressure. Political responsibility must be considered through the fitting choices actually available.

Other perspectives

Explore the readings