The first thing we do, ...

... let's kill all the lawyers. It is funny that Weber ends with a Shakespeare sonnet because one of my first thoughts while reading this was the famous Henry VI quote.

I see "Politics as a Vocation" as an over-long lecture in three acts: "Kill All the Lawyers," "Cult of Personality," and "For the Love of God, Please, and I Can't Emphasize This Enough, Understand the Difference Between Theory and Practice." Frankly, I didn't care for the whole thing.

I found the first act to be over-long and essentially "A Political Brief History of Time" without any of the wit that would be implied by my stealing Stephen Hawking's title. Yes, yes, monopoly of force, Roman law, et cetera. I'm sure this was all quite groundbreaking in 1919, but I still wouldn't have wanted to sit through the bloody thing.

The "Cult of Personality" section or, to put it differently, "What Demagogues and Insiders Do" was lacking. It does not speak at all to the psychology of why governments take these forms. Since I can most easily critique his portrayal of the U.S. political system, I'd say that he didn't explain his point about Calhoun's generation enough and indeed completely neglected to mention that this cyclical political action had already happened once before and once after Calhoun's generation of compromisers died off. In truth, I found this lack of depth in this section to taint my view of the whole lecture, leaving a bad taste in my mouth and a bit of malice in my words.

Because of this, by the time I got to Act 3, the lecture was already doomed to a poor review. Yep, a politician should be realistic, not idealistic. Do what's going to help, not what some made-up principle tells you to. Because that is, in itself, its own principle. I get it, Max; this is what you wanted to say the whole time. Couldn't Act 3 have just been the entire lecture? It seems to contain your actual points. Please?

So I wasn't too happy with the lecture. That's not to say it doesn't have good points, but thanks in part to the pervasiveness of Weber's work, I've already heard them. Much clearer. I didn't even like the "live with/live for" section - it's a word play that should be self-evident. And as he points out, none of the pairs of definitions he gives any number of times during the lecture are mutually exclusive. Sorry, Max. Maybe it worked better in German.