Screeds
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Articles Of Faith
October 28, 2001
We have lost so much, this century past.
I've declaimed at length on quite a few of the "separable" losses, the ones that can be identified in isolation from one another. I won't put you through that again today. No doubt you have your own list. If you're a regular reader of this column, the commonality between your list and mine is probably considerable.
I had an exchange of shots with an ardent Drug Warrior not long ago. I tried to make clear what I regarded as a respectable argument: one that is open to being verified or falsified, in the tradition of Sir Karl Popper. My adversary would not hear of it. He was right, you see. He could not be wrong. The laws of physics, chemistry, and neurology were such that he could not be wrong.
Ever known someone who could not be wrong? I'd lay a pretty that you don't argue with him much.
Reality is not kind to those who can't be wrong. Mistakes are at the foundation of the human learning process. Certainty is denied to us by the infinite extent of the universe. We make do with confidence: the confidence that arises from long-observed regularities and our confirmed ability to predict the short-range consequences of particular events.
At its heart, the rational process is grounded in confidence that the laws of the universe are stable and knowable. This, too, is unprovable. A single counterexample would bring the structure of reason crashing down on Man's head. It hasn't happened yet -- reason has served us better than anything ever put forward to replace it -- but there are no guarantees.
There's an insensitivity to this among persons who argue politics and public policy. A century of wild social experimentation has undermined the rational discussion of such things. The social engineers have evaded objective assessment of the predictions they made for their schemes and the consequences that actually flowed from them. They've mastered the art of the non-argument: the accusation of hard-heartedness, the display of haughty contempt, the a posteriori change of objectives, the assertion that "if we hadn't acted, things would be even worse than they are."
As the social engineers have gone, so has the rest of the country. Left, right, or center, libertarian or totalitarian, the disease is now endemic. No one is immune.
Two brilliant men, scholars at the pinnacles of their fields, have made mention of this disease and its effects. Charles Murray, in his book In Pursuit: Of Happiness And Good Government, made repeated note of how important it is to measure the right things, that we might recognize and correct our mistakes. Thomas Sowell, in his book The Vision Of The Anointed, offered a more sweeping analysis of the mindset that seals itself against feedback from reality.
I've traveled extensively among politically active persons of every pole. I've done my best to engage them, to get to know their premises and their mental mechanisms. I've come back a badly frightened man. For all their thought and labor, Murray and Sowell have only skimmed the surface.
We no longer argue, but there is worse. We no longer think.
Eric Hoffer, in his landmark work The True Believer, spoke of the "fact-proof screen" that must be erected between a man and the world, if he is to become a fanatic. His concern was for the mass movements that bedeviled the world in his time, such as communism and fascism. Their exuberant energy attracted many who wanted something to believe in. Their skill at erecting the "fact-proof screen" in the mind of the newcomer, to protect their dogmas from contrary evidence, was the key to their success. Though they practiced politics, they promulgated articles of faith.
If we evaluate those movements as examples of demagogic art, they were the works of geniuses. If we evaluate them by their long-term consequences, they were the works of madmen.
Mass movements are less important to the West than they were in Hoffer's day. "Fact-proof screens" are more important. The practice of politics in our time now depends on them exclusively.
Governments have undertaken a thousand and one tasks. Not one of them has been suitably discharged, not even the warmaking power. If you doubt me, reflect on this: why, after two World Wars and several smaller ones that cost more than half a million American lives and an incalculable weight of American gold, all of which we "won," are Americans less safe than ever before?
What has our reaction to the massive and uniform failure of government been? At every juncture, we've loaded it with even more tasks, and entrusted it with even broader authority. We've done the exact opposite of what any thinking man would have done with an instrument that had failed him at every application.
I am quite willing to allow that there is evil afoot. Government tends to attract men motivated by power-lust, which is within my definition of evil. There can be no arguing with these, nor ought we to expect them to cooperate in the objective assessment of their deeds. But they are only a fraction. What about the rest of us? Why aren't we showing the skepticism and regard for facts that befits thinking men?
The freedom to act on our convictions, to make our own mistakes and learn from them, is Americans' patrimony. A great deal of blood was shed to secure it. No other society in the history of the world has had as much of it. Why are we treating it like some nauseating offal from an unenlightened past? Why are we turning our backs on reason and evidence? Why do we prefer to evade, to dissemble, and to hurl insults, rather than admit that we might be wrong?
Man cannot live without faith. Man's primary asset is his reason. If he loses his faith in that, he ceases to be a man. It is then that Hobbes's grisly vision, the "war of each against all," truly begins.
| <<- Arms And The Man | As Flies To Wanton Boys ->> |
