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What can I hope for (from politics)? 1111 This was ended once and for all by the recognition of the scarcity of natural resources, a decline in the quality of life and worry about the prospects of the future. Can the fiction of neutrality of the state be maintained under such circumstances? ‘The question is what we are to understand by neutrality. In the eyes of the founding fathers, it seems, neutrality did not mean a lack of values. Most of them were pragmatic politicians who knew all too well that a governmental decision is always based on preferences of value and that this cannot be otherwise, since it has to support good solutions and obstruct bad ones. They thereby necessarily interfere in citizens’ lives; this is precisely what they gained a mandate for. If they fail to do this, i.e., distinguish between individuals’ performance and instead use taxpayers’ money to finance good and bad, forms of behaviour that strengthen and undermine society alike, then they are wasting the resources at their disposal to an unjustifiable degree. Thus, the neutrality of the state originally meant solely the neutrality of the safe or, in other words, the impartial rule of law — which is included in the principle of equality before the law — and a prohibition on anyone deciding the debate on values with power. Nothing is further from the classic of utilitarian liberalism, John Stuart Mill, than the relativism of values that characterises libertarians. In his work on utility, he draws a sharp contrast between higher and base pleasures, the pursuit of others’ happiness and the chase of individual happiness. He leaves no doubt that the bodies exercising public power must reward good and persecute evil. The only thing they can no longer do is decide themselves what good and evil are, be it a curriculum, urban development or scientific research. Their mandate is for ensuring fair conditions for the public debate on the nature of good and evil, learn from its results and make decisions of power accordingly, while maintaining the possibility of refutation, error and the correction of error." Mill’s current followers claim that liberalism does not contradict the goals of ecological politics. They hold that it is the right of the neutral state — duty, even — to take preventative measures against those who harm the environment, saying that “...the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.””’ The debate centres on John Stuart Mill: On Liberty. Batoche Books, Kitchener, Ontario. » Tbid. p.13.
