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Saturday, June 17, 2006
Stupid Or Evil: Judgment Day
Your Curmudgeon has written before -- indeed, he's done so twice -- about the proclivity of the political Left for classifying its opponents as "stupid or evil." He who possesses a mature self-regard, leavened with enough humility to allow that he could still be wrong, tends to bridle at such statements, especially when the objective evidence speaks otherwise. But the main point here is not the accuracy nor the completeness of the partition; it's about the natural tendency of those convinced of their correctness to categorize their adversaries rather than to stick to the subject at hand.
Your Curmudgeon has a personal interest in this matter, having been intimately involved in politics for many years and in many ways. He's seen this tendency at close range on many occasions. Indeed, he's surrendered to it now and again himself.
Why can't we "stick to the subject at hand?" Why are we so inclined to diagnose our opponents, rather than simply conceding their right to be wrong? Wouldn't the latter approach go better with the concession that, as unlikely as it might seem, we might be the ones in error?
The matter comes to mind today because of two recent posts, the first by psychologist Pat Santy:
In a world where the Democratic Party leadership was anchored to reality, the debate with Republicans would be how to fight the war on terror better; and the American public would not be constantly subjected to the constant whining--by Kerry and others of his gormless ilk-- about how we shouldn't have gone to Iraq in the first place. Or the increasingly petulant demands to simply cut and run because everything is not going perfectly.The proponents of doom and gloom in the reality-based community insist that it is Bush who is in denial (or people like me), even as they twist and turn every major victory in the war into more evidence in their own minds that we are losing. Instead of national rejoicing at the death of one of the enemy's leaders; as we recommit ourselves to the fight, we instead witness the spectacle of Democrats pushing for surrender.
My patience with this kind of political denial, and the concomitant paranoid delusional system promulgated by the left, ended on 9/11. Their political insanity has become a threat that no rational person can afford to ignore because they put not only themselves in danger, but everyone else in this country.
Mark Alger, a Curmudgeonly favorite, provided this rejoinder:
...Pat's diagnosis of the Left as mentally infirm is -- in my not-so-very-humble opinion -- itself a species of denial which refuses to impute evil motives to evil acts. We are unwilling to credit that the opposition could simply be a bad person -- or civility demands that we not say so in polite company. So we try to explain away their illogic, their perfidy, their constant attacking the hull of the Lifeboat of the Nation with an auger as some kind of mental disease and accept that the evil they do as an unfortunate by-product of what -- face it -- isn't really their fault.And, nice and smart as Pat is, I have to call b******t.
We have to face facts, here, people. The Left knows exactly what it's doing. The long-established -- scorn quotes -- "progressive" program for humanity has been carefully lain decades ago, its effects and by-products not only well known, but clear desiderata. Socialism isn't an accidental byproduct of good -- albeit mistaken -- intentions, people; it's the end of a long, patient, deliberate march toward exactly that goal.
There is truth in both these observations...but not the whole truth.
All human characteristics exist in a distribution. Only those that unite us as a species are anywhere near to uniformly distributed. Those that distinguish us as individuals are a different subject.
Though many traits factor into one's relations with others, the ones most pertinent to political discourse are:
- Percipience,
- Intelligence,
- Knowledge,
- Humility.
In fact, those traits are the ones that will most strongly color one's relations with others on any subject where men can disagree. For man of good will Smith -- remember Smith? -- to hold opinions with justifiable confidence, he must first perceive the world around him with some degree of accuracy. He must form applicable generalizations about how it works, and compare the predictions of his theses to the verdicts of history. Assuming his predictions are satisfied, he can vent on the subject with a moderate assurance. But he must remember always that a truly exhaustive verification of any theory is inherently impossible -- that no matter how many confirmations his idea might gather, there could still be a contradiction lurking in the shadows that will bring his whole edifice crashing down around him.
When Smith confronts Jones, a dissenter to his concept, those four traits will be reinvoked:
- "Has Jones accurately perceived the data? Is it possible that he has, but that I haven't?"
- "Has Jones penetrated to an implication of my idea that I failed to see? Is it possible that testing that implication might provide the counterexample that would prove me wrong?"
- "Does Jones know more about this than I? Is he aware of a prior case where this idea was weighed in the scales of reality and found wanting?"
- "Am I truly open to the possibility that I've erred, or have I made my concept into an article of faith?"
Now, in the first three of the above assessments, Smith may legitimately entertain the possibility that Jones is perceptually, intellectually, or educationally deficient. Let's imagine that Smith does reach one of the above conclusions. What can he do about it?
- He can present Jones with his own perceptions of the world, and invite Jones to "look where he's pointing," in the hope that Jones will then see what Smith has seen.
- He can attempt to lead Jones down the trails of implication that he's followed but Jones hasn't.
- He can direct Jones's attention to sources of data on the subject with which Jones is unfamiliar.
- He can abandon the dispute as not worth pursuing: "You have a right to your opinion."
- He can diagnose a flaw in Jones that has rendered him incapable of learning the facts as they really are, reasoning from them to the truth, or conceding that he's maintained a wrong position.
Allow your Curmudgeon to be clear on one critical point: there are many flawed persons in the world. Some are quite clearly evil, insane, or irremediably mentally deficient. But not all persons who disagree with Smith will deserve to be adjudged thus. A man of good will with an adequate store of humility will refrain from reaching such a verdict until it's beyond all reasonable doubt.
Political movements are internally heterodynamic. Different persons commit themselves to the same movement for different reasons. For some, it's an intellectual thing: the concepts strike them as important and sound. For others, it's an emotional response to the plight of others. For yet a third group, it's their psyches' cry to involve themselves in something, somehow. And for a fourth group, it's the desire to gain and wield power.
The liberty movement, with which your Curmudgeon was once overtly involved and the majority of whose ideals he still shares, is not an exception. The power struggles at the pinnacle of such organizations as the Libertarian Party would seem completely familiar to a visitor from a more conventional group such as the Democrats or the Republicans. But wandering through the ranks, one can easily find representatives of the other three motivational clusters: those intellectually excited by the ideas of individual freedom; those whose hearts ache for all the oppressed of the world; and those who desperately need to be involved in something, lest their lives lack all "meaning." These orientations and their intensities are distributed non-uniformly throughout the human species, a condition likely to persist until the Second Coming.
Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, in his book The Road To Serfdom, observed in a striking chapter titled "Why The Worst Get On Top" that the drive for power, and the subordination of all other priorities to it, is a critical advantage in the quest for organizational altitude and the authority over others that accompanies it. Leo Tolstoy phrased the matter even more succinctly:
In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, cunning, and cruelty.
Thus, we may expect to find evil men -- those interested solely in power over others -- disproportionately represented near the pinnacle of a political movement, where strategies are formulated, tactics are dictated, and the fruits of victory are carved up for distribution. But by inescapable implication, we will find evil men to be under-represented among the rank and file. Those well separated from the pinnacle, however wrong we might think them, are more likely to be moved by some "wholesome" (according to their lights) desire.
Yes, some will be certifiable -- but how many? Aren't genuinely delusional persons fairly rare in the common run of Man? While they might concentrate to a greater degree in extreme movements, ought we not to exercise restraint about such a diagnosis, as long as they exhibit the fundamental survival traits that constitute basic self-sufficiency?
This subject is inexhaustible. It touches on sanity, epistemology, virtue, and matters of good and evil, all of which are conceptual candle flames to this Curmudgeonly moth. But one must end an essay somewhere, and the time is drawing near when your Curmudgeon must mount his Cub Cadet 1022 and attack the Vietnam simulation his lawn has become.
Enlightened self-interest would dictate that one strive to look as far ahead for the consequences of one's actions as his intellect and knowledge will permit. Indeed, one of the great faults of the Left has been an unwillingness to peer forward thus. But we of the Right are just as susceptible to the temptation, and in no direction more hazardously than this: we are becoming all too prone to demonizing our opponents wholesale, as they have done to us for lo! these many moons.
Your Curmudgeon is no angel made flesh. He's done it too.
Let us concede that among our adversaries there are evil, delusional, and mentally and educationally deficient persons. But let us also concede that the great majority are not of those stripes, that we have among us a scattering just as flawed, and that the political discourse would best be served by assuming benevolence and competence in our debating partners as long as humanly possible. After all, to adjudge others as flawed beyond repair is, among other things, a self-exculpation for failing to carry the day. That alone ought to make us suspicious of our own motives for doing it.
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, that not your trespass but my ruling speaks. -- Hamlet, Act III, scene iv.
Comments
IMHO, what’s the point of bothering to distinguish between the evil and the merely stupid? it’s like asking “Would you rather eat the poison, or the dog shit?” Leave it all be. Torch it if you have to.
Posted by og on 06/17/2006 at 08:53 AMOK. This is why I’m not a big fan of examining motives to begin with.
As Christ put it, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” Evil is as evil does, and it doesn’t really matter whether those who encompass ill deeds or encourage and support others in that endeavor do so out of ... whatever motive. That they do ill is sufficient unto itself.
I am sick and tired (to borrow a phrase from Hillary Clinton) of being told that I have to tolerate the intolerable for the sake of civility or my own humble soul.
To my mind, that a man does a thing from misguided good intentions—whether ignorant or stupid—is far from a mitigating factor. In fact, I see it as an aggravating factor. As the card game Nasty Neighbor puts it, take two for being stupid. And that’s ON TOP of whatever penalty for plain old breaking-the-rules.
If that makes me stiff-necked and intolerant, arrogant and cock-sure, tough toenails.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 06/17/2006 at 03:12 PMI neither tolerate the ignorant or the evil, when I can help it. I don’t care how you got there, it isn’t my responsibility to fix your life. I have too many fires burning that DESERVE to be put out.
Posted by og on 06/17/2006 at 03:47 PMThank you, Mark, for putting your finger for me, finally, about what to do about the ‘good intentions’ crowd. “By their fruit...”, exactly. Truly good people are too busy managing their own stuff to worry about telling the rest of us how to live our lives; what types WANT that responsibility anyway? I’ve long been done with trying to separate the wheat from the chaff; I needed only the operating principle.
Posted by on 06/18/2006 at 04:25 AMYou know, folks, if what I post here has any value at all to anyone other than myself, it would be because I occasionally see things others don’t—things that aren’t hallucinations. One of those things might be at hand as we speak.
There’s been a lot of back-and-forth about how nasty the national discourse has become, and how little collaboration in finding the truth, as opposed to achieving partisan advances, we can observe in our time. Wouldn’t you say that blanket diagnoses of those who disagree with you as “stupid or evil or insane” might be a contributing factor?
If Smith is right and Jones is wrong, Smith’s best chance of persuading Jones to his views lies in treating Jones as one who is able to reach those conclusions by his own native powers. If Smith treats Jones as inherently incapable of that feat, regardless of the detail reason, he will succeed only in alienating Jones: certainly for the near term, and possibly forever.
Abraham Lincoln is often cited as having said that you can catch more flies with a drop of honey than with a gallon of gall. If this is true and applicable, oughtn’t we to restrict our diagnoses of “stupid or evil or insane” to those that are incontrovertible?
Do you want to luxuriate in your sense of superiority, or do you want to make progress in the national discourse?
I can’t make it any simpler than that.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 06/18/2006 at 07:04 AMAll this is true, Mr P. However: by obsessing over what I have to do to get someone to see my point of view who never can and never will, I have allowed them to live rent free inside my head, and I won’t countenance that. On the other hand, through my actions, I repeatedly offer my services and help to those who neither earn nor deserve it, and in this way, I demonstrate to them the difference between their lifestyle and mine. I don’t know any other way of “making converts” that doesn’t involve physical force. Not that I dislike the physical force concept.
Posted by og on 06/18/2006 at 08:27 AMFrancis, you definitely have a point, but so does Mark. The difference, I believe, at least for me, is to leave the judgement of one as stupid, insane or evil to Another and look at the results of their actions or beliefs. You yourself have said (I think) that a person cannot be reasoned out of something he has not been reasoned into. Some people simply cannot be reasoned with; therefore, their policies/actions are to be condemned and they are to be avoided.
I’m not reveling in my sense of superiority, I’m saving my sanity.
Posted by on 06/18/2006 at 02:28 PMFran;
I think both perspectives are valid. (Yes, I will wash my mouth out after having said that, but it’s true nevertheless.) Each has its place. We must be patient and teach those we love, and who are educable, and excoriate those who have demonstrated their perfidy with crystal clarity.
As the Airborne motto has it, “Let God sort them out.”
There is a pedagogic value to the excoriation of evil. We have witnessed this truth in our own lifetimes. When preachers no longer thundered hellfire and brimstone from the pulpit, when ordinary churchgoin’ folk were cautioned not to be so—scorn quotes—“judgmental”, public morality took a sudden and tangential turn—and not for the better.
And back of it is Satan (metonymously speaking), wanting some leeway for his debauchery, persuading his myrmidons to make this argument, and persuasively, for his own ends.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 06/18/2006 at 10:49 PMOn the other hand, it is valuable to note that complaints of vinegar in the national discourse come mainly from the Left and leftist sympathizers—and are directed at the Right.
In truth, the level of political discourse is as it has always been—a point Rush makes repeatedly. Partisanship is healthy—just as competition is, and for the same reasons—and the expressions of partisanship are going to be, of necessity, high-dB-ish.
I see the oft-voiced plaints for civility as yet another meme in the Marxist/Leninist dialectic, which seeks to rhetorically disarm its opponents with a kind of verbal jiu-jitsu, using the oppositions own memes against it.
No, you will not persuade a person by getting his back up. But neither will you win in a pitched battle against a committed enemy by surrendering at the outset.
The enemy will use civility when it suits him, and abandon it when it does not. Remember what started this—a rhetorical flourish on the part of Ann Coulter. And, as she points out, Leftists didn’t cry out for civility when they savaged Reagan, Bork, North, Quayle, Thomas…
How long does the list need to be to persuade? I can go on a while if needs be.
Meantimes, men of goodwill—such as you, my friend—are persuaded by their own good natures to a course of action which will not result in their victory.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 06/18/2006 at 11:12 PMHow very fortunate that the long absent Bill Whittle published RAFTS the day after this argument among friends surfaced in Eternity Road’s comments.
There was a time, an age ago, where the differences between what we call the Left and the Right seemed more or less academic; maybe the distance from one high-rise tower to its twin – close enough to see the coffee mugs and family photos on the other side’s desk.
Then something happened.
Now we peer across a divide so wide that we can no longer see the other side; where the residents of the opposing camps are not viewed as having a difference of opinion so much as being considered insane.
Two worldviews this opposed cannot both be right (although they could both be wrong). I was about to write that one of them must be closer to the truth, but I stopped myself, for often people will define truth as conforming to their ideology, rather than the reverse. But surely one of these positions must conform better to reality, to the evidence, for anyone with an open mind to see?
Which one? And how do we tell? [emphasis in the orginal]
Read the rest my friends and learn how easy it is for you to adjudge correctly.
Posted by Pascal on 06/19/2006 at 01:49 AMPascal;
Whittle is right in one respect: it is incumbent on a man of intellect that he ensure his map conform with the coastline. Or, as Ayn Rand put it, if your results are at variance with your expectations, perhaps you’d better re-examine your premises.
My point is that cries of and for civility in partisan political discourse do not conform to the reality—that the Left is the part with the acid tongue, and most Rightists’ excoriations of them for that are reactionary.
Or, to put it another way: We didn’t start the fire.
And, while it’s possible that all of us are wrong, I see no percentage in wearing a hair shirt. I think it wise to have the courage of my convictions—having ensured as best I can that my convictions are worth having the courage of.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 06/19/2006 at 09:30 AMMark
1. Whittle only parenthetically considered that all of us are wrong. Looks more than not a device to suspend the reflexive protestations in the minds of his readers so that he could mpve onto his point. Along the coastline I’ve explored, I don’t see you and he in disagreement. You and CE is another matter.
2.Our CE once corrected me on this, and I’m passing it along to you. Firemen are not reactionary; they are reactive.
Now, being hostilely reflexively reactive towards evil and those who aid it is maybe what CE is getting at here. The Left wishes to make you appear to be the reactionary. Can you say you never regret having been reflexively rather than coolly responsive? I can’t. I wish I could.
That Fran wrote on REGRETS on the very next day as this essay suggests to me that he is passing along in this screed a bit of hard-earned wisdom from coastlines he explored. It helps that I don’t recall CE ever having been as readily accepting as this essay may seem to suggest. The list of bannees to ER is not short.
PF
Posted by Pascal on 06/19/2006 at 10:25 AMMark,
On the other hand. I may be far more removed from CE on this even than you.
How often do I make note about how some housed on the Right will readily get very angry at our own vital point riders (e.g., Dornan, Coulter, Savage)?
Those same critics are decibels quieter (should they say anything at all) when nasties of the Left are in the news. That behavior is what the term RINO was invented to convey.
I’m kind of the other side of the coin. I am inclined to get more angry at those who hold us back than at those who are openly our enemy (with whom I merely wish to get on with the battle). Hence my frequent shorthand quoting of Cicero’s “The barbarians at the gates are more honorable....”
For me RINO is too nice, but fifth columnist direly needs more proof. So I go with RINO for now.
That I have to recognize W and Rove as RINO lovers, if not RINOs themselves, is always a chore for me. How many ways does W have to disappoint us before we start getting more angry than this screed of CE’s would have us keep in abeyance? The list is long.
Borders unprotected. (Leftist gain)
Borders as a political gambit to gain more power. (Statist gain)
Spend, spend, spend. (Statist gain, Leftist economics)
OIF rules of engagement that seem determined to make McNamara look smart by comparison. (“liberal” agenda).
Stumping for Specter instead of Toomey. (Aiding RINO who best serves “liberal” agenda)
Holding back Get Out the Vote money for Bill Simon’s run against Gray Davis. (first round in attack on resurgent conservatives gaining control of CA GOP)
Beck decision still not enforced. (preserving the Democratic Party, the opposition of choice)
This is how I am reactive. I gather pieces of the puzzle and I display them.
The evidence they present so strongly contradict what is stated as intentions makes it very hard not to arrive at the conclusion that it is all either stupid or evil.
PF
Posted by Pascal on 06/19/2006 at 11:16 AMActually, I very much doubt stupidity other than by those who buy that there is no such thing as evil.
Posted by Pascal on 06/19/2006 at 11:40 AMThere is indeed room for both perspectives in the realm of discourse. As in everything, no rule should be followed off a cliff.
Insisting on an incontrivertable diagnosis before proclaiming “evil” or “stupid” is self-destructive, because as our host has persuasively argued many times, there are no incontrivertable diagnoses. Any valid hypothesis (including “Jones is stupid”, “Davis is evil”, or “Smith is insane") can be conclusively disproven by previously-undiscovered contrary evidence. Justified certainty is unavailable to mortal men, and thus to demand it is to erect an insurmountable barrier.
On the other hand...well, a lot of folks on our side of the battle _do_ seem a bit quick to judge huge masses of persons with whom they’re not directly familiar, on the basis of evidence that is most politely described as...scant.
Are the folks who laid out the course our country has followed for the last century evil? I feel confident in asserting that the case is solid. Likewise for those who, being familiar with the evidence and reasoning at our disposal, nevertheless continue to side with the leftists. But the widespread ignorance of history in our society, coupled with a tendency against analysis of facts and logic that might tend to contradict one’s beliefs, seems to allow for the exclusion of the vast majority of folks who pull the “D” lever on election day from the latter group.
Are they ignorant? Yes. But that’s not the same as “stupid”. Ignorance is curable. And while some of them probably are evil, I don’t comment on individuals in the absence of a lot more evidence than their political beliefs.
Posted by Matt on 06/20/2006 at 03:29 AMMatt;
You see quick on the trigger. I see the ability to read the stitches on a fastball. I’ve been observing this arena for an embarrassingly long time and can tell in less than thirty seconds whether a leftist speaker is ignorant, dumb, stupid, or venal. I don’t tar all leftists/liberals/progressives with the same brush. For one, a lot of my friends are left-leaning and I’d rather persuade them to the light than alienate them. (And, truth be told, as people age, get married, have children and a mortgage, even the most committed Marxist becomes more conservative.)
What concerns me is the knee-jerk reaction—a Strangelovian “sieg heil!”—to the pro forma calls for civility in venues where civility per se is not on. It strikes me almost as a species of murthaean surrender.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 06/20/2006 at 09:18 AMMark: Keep in mind, I wasn’t referring specifically to you. My reluctance to judge individuals I don’t know well unless there’s a lot of convincing evidence applies in this context too. And since I don’t know you well, and the only evidence at my disposal is your comments in a meta-argument here on somebody else’s blog…
Posted by Matt on 06/20/2006 at 11:16 AM
