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Monday, September 20, 2004
Stupid Or Evil Redux
March 2, 2004
Your Curmudgeon’s charitable impulses—yes, yes, we all know that’s a contradiction in terms—are forever struggling against two other sets: the desire to accept what he sees at its face value, and the inclination to laugh at it. Regard the words of Neil Levy, a professor of philosophy at the University of Melbourne:
Most people believe that we have a duty to gather evidence on both sides of central moral and political controversies, in order to fulfill our epistemic responsibilities and come to hold justified cognitive attitudes on these matters. I argue, on the contrary, that to the extent to which these controversies require special expertise, we have no such duty. We are far more likely to worsen than to improve our epistemic situation by becoming better informed on these questions. I suggest we do better to embrace the views of experts who are also morally wise. I argue that this is likely to lead to more accurate beliefs about these political and moral controversies; in any case, it will avoid the incoherence and irrationality which are the likely consequence of open-minded evidence gathering.
If you’re having trouble believing that a man who sports a Ph.D. could say such a thing, you’re not alone. But there’s worse in the kettle. Regard the following, from Cornell University professor of philosophy Benjamin Hellie:
But left- and right-wing sources are not symmetrical. The goal of the right wing is to perpetuate and worsen a system in which a small number of people control obscene quantities of wealth and power at the expense of the vast majority, whereas the goal of the left wing is to distribute wealth and power more broadly. For short, the goal of the right wing is perpetuating and increasing injustice, whereas the goal of the left wing is increasing justice.
People do not like injustice. The knowledge that injustice is being done to others offends their sense of morality; the knowledge that injustice is being done to them makes them angry and resentful. Both these emotions contribute to a desire to use the political system in order to counter injustice. So it is very helpful for the right wing to achieve its goal if the existence of injustice, and the unjust effects of the policies it endorses, can be concealed.
Providing this concealment is the role of right-wing political writers. Thus, a priori, given that injustice exists and that right-wing policies are unjust, you might expect the ample use of lies, misdirection, and sophistry from these guys. (In fact, my intimate knowledge with right-wing political writing provides ample evidence that what you might expect is exactly what you get.)
By contrast, the role of left-wing political writers is to cause people to believe that there is injustice, and that right-wing policies make it worse. Given, once again, that both these points are true, all that left wing political writers need to do is report the truth.
Your Curmudgeon doesn’t normally deride the sincerely felt opinions of others. There’s no shame in differing with others, and no shame in having been wrong, provided one is willing to accept the verdict of reality once it’s delivered. However, these two gentlemen ought to hope that no one else ever reads the above statements. For what, after all, do their arguments amount to?
Because I Never Lie,
And I’m Always Right.”
(Thank you, Firesign Theater, for anticipating this need.)
Hellie’s statement goes even further, in that it ascribes evil intentions to those who disagree with this self-elevated moral and political expert. Hellie counsels his readers to assume evil motives among rightist commentators. Clearly, the man isn’t concerned about making converts to his views.
In his earlier essay on this subject, your Curmudgeon wrote that leftist doctrines ought to be argued for, and that it’s in our interests that they be represented capably. But leftists of all varieties are gradually abandoning the field of argument. The two citations presented above would have been extreme outliers two or three decades ago; today, they exemplify the rhetorical preferences of the highest-profile representatives of leftist thought.
Perhaps this is the necessary consequence of Sowell’s “vision of differential rectitude.” Leftists have assumed their moral standing to be significantly above that of others. Over the century past, they’ve had to confront an avalanche of evidence that their prescriptions are less than effective; indeed, that they’re utterly unwholesome, toxic to human life and happiness. Were they not to wall the evidence irretrievably out of bounds—were they not to dismiss all arguments against their notions presumptively, as the whisperings of Satan—the earthquakes that have toppled their political edifices would topple them from their moral pedestals as well.
So they demand to have their intellectual and moral superiority deemed unchallengeable. They exhort us to subordinate our moral and political opinions to the “experts”—care to guess who those are?—and to dismiss counter-evidence and counter-argument with prejudice. They seek to sweep their opponents from the field by disqualifying us morally, before battle can be joined.
Perhaps the height of irony is Hellie’s conclusion that “all that left wing political writers need to do is report the truth.” Clearly, if that were so, his demonization of us as conscious agents of injustice would be unnecessary, as would the campaigns of calumny the Left is conducting against anyone to the right of John Kerry.
From the standpoint of the freedom advocate, no development in political discourse could be more promising. Statements such as Levy’s and Hellie’s should receive all the publicity conservatives and libertarians can get them. They are self-damning.
Intelligent leftists who aren’t quite that full of themselves should note the tremors beneath their feet. It isn’t we of the Right who are causing them; it’s their nominal comrades and fellow-travelers, who are so desperate to win the field, and so appalled by the rising wave of evidence and sentiment against them, that they’ve taken to shouting moral denunciations against those who differ with them. Were they to gain power, re-education camps for us benighted ones would probably be Public Policy Priority One.
One final thought: the Levy / Hellie species of leftist is the sort that one can never persuade of anything. To such a mind, we are not respectable participants in an intellectual debate about politics, morals, and society; we are the enemy, precisely because we differ with him. Effort devoted to convincing him of anything is effort wasted. Worse, it can leave the freedom advocate weary, disheartened, and wondering why he bothers, a net loss for all concerned.
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