Jonathan Chait in New York’s Intelligencer:
Politics is a matter of life and death. If you start with the premise that one side has a monopoly on truth, you inevitably land on the conclusion that questioning its ideas is dangerous.
There are two important truths in those two sentences.
The first is that politics matters. A common, allied aphorism is Elections have consequences. From the system of governance we use to how a member of society fulfills the responsibilities which that system of government thrusts upon them, these will have consequences in our lives, from bringing them prosperity to, yes, premature deaths for them and their loved ones – maybe burned at the stake, even. See English monarchical history – and that of today’s Saudi Arabia.
In American society, meaning a political system of representative democracy, I’ve repeatedly advocated that voters must bring more to the table than ideological allegiance. I argue that integrity and competency should play a far greater role than they do, while strongly suggesting that simple electoral victory via team politics is actually a net negative, not a net positive, due to the incompetent and radical personalities that gain power through their adherence to the ideological themes of the day. Enough. Search on ‘team politics’ on this blog if you want more thoughts on the matter.
The second truth? The observation concerning, well, truth: “If you start with the premise that one side has a monopoly on truth…” Implicit in that premise is that we can know truth, with complete certainty, a priori. I have become convinced that one of the key foundations of our nation is the incorporation of the concept of We’re not sure. It may not be inspirational, but the honest acknowledgment that we don’t know on a huge variety of important subjects has guided us to more wisdom than we’ll ever know. It has nourished the decision that we are a secular nation, not Christian, Muslim, nor Scientologist, and has led to untold numbers of legislative compromises which have kept governments from local to national running, rather than hung up in staring contests, and, from the consequences of those compromises, positive or negative, led to shared agreements on the truth or falsity of the propositions underlying the positions of the compromisers.
What happens in the absence of compromise? Think of the “government shutdowns” to which we’ve been subjected recently as extremist politicians stamp their feet and shout NO!, secure in the knowledge that only they are right. I shan’t point fingers, as I’m sure all those who are guilty would be outraged at being accused of engaging in such hubris, but I think most government observers will have strong opinions.
Chait’s opinion piece is quite long, and I think it qualifies as self-criticism, where self refers to the political movement to which you belong. Much like Andrew Sullivan, he’s critical of recent leftist intellectual trends that he perceives as illiberal; I haven’t the time nor formal training to really come to a conclusion, and I don’t travel in circles where I’d encounter those he discusses. But I found this statement fascinating:
Without rehashing at length, my argument against the left’s illiberal style is twofold. First, it tends to interpret political debates as pitting the interests of opposing groups rather than opposing ideas. Those questioning whatever is put forward as the positions of oppressed people are therefore often acting out of concealed motives. (Even oppressed people themselves may argue against their own authentic group interest; that a majority of African-Americans oppose looting, or that Omar Wasow himself is black, hardly matters.) Second, it frequently collapses the distinction between words and action — a distinction that is the foundation of the liberal model — by describing opposing beliefs as a safety threat.
His first argument is straightforward and, I think, stands a good chance of being correct. Ideas & principles drive actions when people act individually. However, when we coalesce into groups, ideas, principles, and rationality are subsumed, and the ideas and principles of only the leaders become the guiding lights of our actions, for good and bad.
This, not so incidentally, is why I am hardly ever a joiner. The idea that blindly following some leader about and committing a moral, if not legal, crime because of the leaders’ mistaken, but unchallenged, ideas makes me positively ill. I read too much history as a kid.
Now, I recognize that I refer to a caricature of a group; the best groups engage in extensive discussion, tolerate dissension, do not show deference to the leadership’s ideas, and if someone chooses to walk away in protest, they are not taking their intellectual or physical lives in their hands by doing so. But not all groups are “best,” as illustrated by the simple existence of the word apostate, a word with a definite denigrative connotation. Many groups, placing survival above idea excellence, punish dissension and either bar exits, or, contrarily, kick out the blasphemer.
But, returning to Chait, when we substitute groups defined by anything but shared ideas & principles, arguments based on ideas are forever in danger of illicit rejection, by which I mean they are correct arguments, in correspondence with reality and all that rot, but not accepted by some or all of the groups in question. Idea-based arguments are, in the liberal tradition, the only arguments that may lead to compromise, and then onwards to agreements concerning reality, without violence. To give a counter-example, grouping us by skin color and then asserting that one group is better than another is, in the end, a fool’s errand that can only be resolved by violence, not by peaceful resolution on some rational point. It’s madness personified.
But I found his second argument more interesting:
Second, it frequently collapses the distinction between words and action — a distinction that is the foundation of the liberal model — by describing opposing beliefs as a safety threat.
I’m not sure how he means that the distinction between words and actions are a foundation of the liberal model. Does he mean that we can argue over a beer about them, rather than pikes and pitchforks at dawn? I must meditate on this.
