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principle, or moral self-indulgence

出自 EP6 的 Humphrey 和 Bernard 的一段对话：

"If it's our job to carry out government policies, shouldn't we believe in them?"

"Oh, what an extraordinary idea."

"Why?"

"Bernard... I have served 11 governments in the past 30 years. If I'd believed in all their policies, I would've been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would've been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalizing steel and of de-nationalizing it and re-nationalizing it. On capital punishment, I would've been a fervent retentionist and an ardent abolitionist. I would've been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a grammar school preserver and destroyer, a nationalization freak and a privatization maniac.
But above all, I would've been a stark-staring raving schizophrenic."

"So what do we believe in?"

"At this moment, Bernard, we believe in stopping the minister from informing the Prime Minister."

这一集 Humphrey 和 Hacker 的立场对立似乎不再是公务员和内阁大臣的对立，而是现实主义者和理想主义者的对立。Humphrey 是保守的现实主义者，Hacker 代表思维欠成熟的理想主义者。上面摘录的一长段 Humphrey 的台词似乎道出了不少他30年公务员生涯的无奈。

Annie 劝 Hacker 去 do the right thing. 但现实从来都不是非黑即白。限制军火买卖将意味着上万人的失业。所以 chief whip 形容 Hacker 说这是他的 moral self-indulgence. 让人感慨。

接受现实和坚持原则，两者的平衡点大概因人而异吧。只不过无论怎样选择，都要有自己承担责任与后果的觉悟。