Huainanzi - Entry 7

When rulers are very crafty, their subjects are very devious.
~ a passage from The Book of Leadership and Strategy by Thomas Cleary ~

For me, this goes to the heart of modeling the behavior that one would deem moral or ethical. When the leaders of a nation or any type of group don't walk their talk, it sets a bad example and others become far more likely to emulate the leaders' actions, not their words.

One example that springs to mind is the tie between a nation that preemptively goes off to war and that nation's domestic police force which too often preemptively arrests or attacks peaceful protesters who have broken no laws.

The national leaders craftily state that they ordered an attack on a nation that didn't attack us first in order to avert a potential attack on the US or its allies down the road. They make it sound like they decided to deal with a threat in its mere infancy, but it later turns out that this threat was made-up.

Unfortunately, the model blueprint has now been adopted by many police forces throughout the land. Before the Republican Convention in 2008, several individuals and groups were arrested PRIOR to participating in ANY protests or demonstrations. In videos that have gone viral, we've seen several examples of the police in NYC who have physically attacked protesters with little, if any, direct provocation. The police have defended their actions by stating that they were trying to defuse a threat BEFORE it actually emerged.

To read the introduction to this ongoing series, go here.