When I was in my teens (a lifetime ago), I read a lot of fantasy. J.R.R. Tolkien. G.R.R. Martin. C.S. Lewis. Terry Brooks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And then there was Frank Herbert, best known for his novel Dune<\/em><\/a> <\/em>(1965) and its many sequels. Though I didn\u2019t read the entire Dune series, I loved the first two books, which follow Paul Atreides, the heir of House Atreides, as his family is assigned control over the desert planet Arrakis, home to the spice melange, the most valuable resource in the galaxy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Herbert set a new standard for sci-fi, building entire worlds and cultures that integrated complex ideas and events from our own world, touching on a variety of themes \u2014 politics, religion, ecology, and power.<\/p>\n For years, I had not thought about Dune. But during the pandemic<\/a> I recalled how Paul Atreides warned about the danger of fear.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It was a passage that always stuck with me, and I wasn\u2019t alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n The quote \u2014 part of the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear and a mantra recited by Atreides during a critical test early in the first novel \u2014 is probably the most popular quote from the Dune books, and one routinely shared during the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Recently, I came across a Frank Herbert quote I hadn\u2019t heard before, one far less known.\u00a0<\/p>\n All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s a penetrating thought, and when I first read the words, I wondered if they were too good to be true. Most of us at one time or another have seen a quote online attributed to Morgan Freeman, George Washington, Robin Williams, or some other famous or influential person only to find after a two-minute investigation the quote is pure fiction or falsely attributed.<\/p>\n This is not the case with Herbert\u2019s quote on power. Even though I had never heard it before, it appears in Chapterhouse: Dune<\/em><\/a> <\/em>(1985), the final book in the series, and one widely considered the weakest of the Dune novels. (This might explain why I didn\u2019t read the book and was unfamiliar with the quote.)<\/p>\n Herbert\u2019s words on power stood out to me for two reasons. First, it somewhat turns on its head Lord Acton\u2019s famous line<\/a> that \u201cpower tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.\u201d Unlike Acton, Herbert was not saying individuals are corrupted by power, but that power draws corrupt people.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Second, Herbert\u2019s line is deeply Hayekian. In his magnum opus The Road to Serfdom<\/em><\/a>, the Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek dedicated an entire chapter to the idea of the worst men in society rising to the top (it\u2019s literally called \u201cWhy the Worst Get on Top\u201d).<\/p>\n In that chapter, Hayek describes at length how centralized systems elevate individuals to lead them, and concludes that those possessing the strongest desire to organize economic and social life to their plan tend to have the fewest scruples about exercising power over others.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo undertake the direction of the economic life of people with widely divergent ideals and values,\u201d Hayek wrote, \u201cthe best intentions cannot prevent one from being forced to act in a way which to some of those affected must appear highly immoral.\u201d<\/p>\n The Road to Serfdom<\/em> was published in 1944, when Stalin and Hitler were ascendant and the world was immersed in totalitarianism. Yet Hayek did not see the brutality of these systems as \u201caccidental by-products,\u201d but the natural progression of nation-states in which checks on power are destroyed or abandoned.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJust as the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans,\u201d he wrote, \u201cso the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure.\u201d<\/p>\n This is why \u201cthe unscrupulous and uninhibited\u201d are most likely to rise in such systems, Hayek concluded.<\/p>\n I have no idea if Herbert ever read Hayek, but his observation that governments have a powerful tendency to attract \u201cpathological personalities\u201d sounds remarkably close to Hayek\u2019s idea that \u201cthe worst\u201d get on top.\u00a0<\/p>\n As to the nature of power and whether it corrupts man or attracts the worst, I suspect it does both. Either way, history shows the result is much the same. For every George Washington, there are a hundred Robespierres<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Frank Herbert\u2019s Amazing \u2018Dune\u2019 Quote: \u2018All Governments Suffer a Recurring Problem\u2019<\/a> was first published by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)<\/a>, and is republished here with permission. Please support their efforts.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was in my teens (a lifetime ago), I read a lot of fantasy. J.R.R. Tolkien. G.R.R. Martin. C.S. Lewis. Terry Brooks.\u00a0 And then there was Frank Herbert, best known for his novel Dune (1965) and its many sequels. Though I didn\u2019t read the entire Dune series, I loved the first two books, which …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":2324418,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2392643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2392644,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392643\/revisions\/2392644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2324418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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