Ideology and Dialectic Concluded

in the end, however, it is not the hypocrisy of either party that concerns me, and there is plenty of that to go around.  The willful ignorance that seems to be a growing position within conservative ideology is much more a cause for concern.   Elitists condemning the elitism of other elitists has long been a staple of American politics, but Rick Santorum's attacks on education have an air of sincerity about them.  It is perhaps true that a collegiate curriculum is more liberal and encourages more liberal attitudes, if by a liberal education one means what has been traditionally been meant by a liberal education, "the interaction of individuals, possessing different knowledge and different views," to borrow a phrase of Hayek.  The values underlying a liberal education are clear enough, and it begins with the tolerance of an open mind, the willingness to engage in dialectic aimed at 'truth,' even if it is the provisional, instrumental truth of the here and now, a 'truth' that will be challenged and amended, but always fundamental to a liberal education is "the belief that it is desirable that men should develop their own individual gifts and bents," to again borrow a phrase from Hayek.  One suspects that it is precisely the values of a liberal education that Santorum rebels against, and one credits the visceral origins of his rebellion against those values, particularly when it comes to the development of women's sexuality and to "gifts and bents" that are, well, not straight.  Although Santorum is much more enthusiastic than Romney, both have fallen sway to the right's growing insistence on the purity of an inadequately comprehensive doctrine.  Both are vying for the title "true conservative," and the nomination for their parties lead seems altogether too contingent upon gaining the title of "true conservatism."  On the economic side, the motivation is clear enough.  One need only follow the money, and if one follows the money, it becomes less and less about the freedom of individuals qua individuals to exercise their discretion in the selection of goods and services within an open market, more and more about the "freedom of the corporation" to exercise their will without the regulatory impositions of the state.  On the social side, however, one strongly suspects that Santorum's recent diatribes in favor of "freedom of religion" are not quite what the framer's of the constitution had in mind with the first amendment.  It is not so much the individual's freedom to follow his bent and practice religion as one might please, but rather the "freedom of religion" to exercise its will through the two coercive instruments of employment and the state.  American conservatism ultimately is the party of coercion.  "To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives," to again borrow a phrase of Hayek's, American conservatism "began increasingly to make use of the promise of a 'new freedom,'" but it is ultimately not freedom of the American people to shape his or her destiny. 

Ideology and Dialectic Continued

The failures on the right are equally obvious, though I think Hayek's analysis here misses the mark.  Fascism is not a variation of the scientists' and engineers' habits of thought.  Although it is easy enough to read the bureaucratic state into the stereotypical German personality, and to see the banality of evil in the likes of a state bureaucrat like Adolf Eichmann, the Fascist state finds its validation, not in the apotheosis of planning, but in the apotheosis of the person. It is worth pointing out that fascism arose, not in response to a strong government, but within a weakened and ineffectual government as did the Napoleanic before it.  The bureaucratic banality of evil in the Nazi state was not ground from which the likes of Hitler sprang, but rather an organizational response to the presence of a overweening personality.   I confess to being essentially a Hobbesian when it comes to unfettered human nature.  One need observe a middle-school playground to know that people are not essentially kind, but are socialized into kindness and maintained within civility through the presence of strong governance, and the adult versions of the middle school playgrounds celebrated in shows like Survivor illustrate the point equally well.  The players in those games may well be sociopathic, but it is easy enough to imagine various Lord of the Flies scenarios that would emerge if the reality show were in fact real and there were no TV host to channel and mitigate their more malign impulses.  

I am suggesting, in brief, that the absence of teachers and TV hosts -- the absence of empowered  government -- allows for the ascent of one or another form of bully whose will (or whose whim, or whose psychosis) becomes the rule of law.  One sees a similar dynamic in contemporary America.  The current complaint against the government is not that it has grown too large, as such, but that it has grown ineffectual in addressing the conditions of basic human dignity.  How it might be strengthened is the question, and we want to believe, along with Hayek, that "so long as dissent is not suppressed, there will always be some who will query the ideas ruling their contemporaries and put new ideas to the test of argument and propoganda."  The best will emerge in the so-called "free market of ideas" just as the best products emerge in the "free market" proper, and to "deprecate the value of intellectual freedom because it will never mean for everybody the same possibility of independent thought is completely to miss the reasons which give intellectual freedom its value."  It is not, however, "the same possibility of independent thought," but rather being heard on a stage large enough to let that "independent thought" hold any sway.  

Civil discourse, not unlike any other form of behavior, demands good governance.  While it might be partially cowardice that causes us pause in speaking up against the bully, particularly when the threat of reprisal is real and immediate, and one need only look to the various forms of police state to see that dynamic at work, but it is not only cowardice.  One need not specifically prohibit dissent to render it ineffectual.  The recent supreme court decision of Citizen's United vs. the Federal Election Commission had two effects that should cause us caution.  First, it weakened government to regulate political discourse.  Prior to the decision, the Federal Election Commission limited the amount an individual could contribute to a PAC to $5,000.  That boundary was removed.  This may in fact seem a positive benefit, insofar as political discourse is protected under our first amendment rights to free speech, and limiting spending on speech limits the amount and the audience of speech.  Second, having said that, however, the same decision has significantly subverted "respect for the individual man qua man" that Hayek wished to preserve, and supplanted it with a notion of the corporation as a person, yet another form of collectivist thought, and often the collectivist thought of the emergent oligarchy, if not playground bullies, the next best thing.  If the right sees the threat of the left, the left sees the threat of the right, and you have Robert Reich asking in his blog, " Have you heard of William Dore, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons, Peter Thiel, or Bruce Kovner?  If not, let me introduce them to you. They’re running for the Republican nomination for president."  These individuals have contributed upwards of 10 million dollars to various PACs, which leads Reich to comment, " I know, I know. You think Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney are running. They are – but only because the people listed in the first paragraph have given them huge sums of money to do so. In a sense, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul, and Romney are the fronts."  And he concludes, "bottom line, whoever emerges as the GOP standard bearer will be deeply indebted to a handful of people, each of whom will expected a good return on their investment."   That William Dore, president of the Dore Energy Corporation, gave one million to Rick Santorum, should not cause us pause on the possible sources of his antipathy to environmental science.  One wants to avoid conspiracy theories, the suggestion that there may be some grounds in the evidence to support a belief that Santorum is in cahoots with the energy companies to create a beautifully concocted scheme to increase the profits of Dore Energy Corporation.  One wants to believe that Santorum himself is sincere, but that he has a wide audience for his views, that he is in the running for President where he might effectuate those views, seems well backed by interests other than interests in "truth," where the "individual conscience" is the "sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those claiming it) warrants a belief." 

Ideology and Dialectic Continued

Hayek, who I quote in the previous post, has put the most convincing argument forward for the failure of what he calls a "planning" mindset.  The failure on the left on the macro scale were clear enough in the successive failure of the Soviet block in Europe and the introduction, as they say, of "socialism with Chinese characteristics."  The failures of the left were clear enough too in the successive failures of the Great Society programs to deliver on their promises.  One has to credit somewhat the conservative argument that both sets of failures stemmed from the importation of the scientist's and engineer's habits of thought into the social and economic spheres, the difficulty being, of course, that none of the social and economic engineers fully comprehended the whole of the reality they were attempting to manipulate, nor did they fully understand what might be called the Heisenbergian principle of social and economic change.  Because we do not fully comprehend the whole of the reality we are attempting to manipulate, we can know in part the current state of reality, and we can know what in that reality we would like to change, but we cannot fully predict the impact of that change on the whole of reality.  The creation of low cost subsidized housing solved one effect of poverty, but by concentrating the the unemployed and unemployable into specific locations, it served too to concentrate the effects of poverty in ways that few fully anticipated.   As Hayek put it, the result may be "the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utter different than those we had expected."   The difficulty with government solutions is not government in and of itself.  I suspect that government is no more, no less effectual than any other human organization, and big government is no more, no less effectual than the transnational corporate structures that currently exist.  If the latter have an edge on efficiency, and resist the imposition of government as an impediment to that efficiency, it's that corporate structures rarely, and never fully, provide a public account for the human costs of that efficiency.  The difficulty with big government is not that it is government, or that it is big, but rather that it is not big enough to comprehend the whole of the human endeavor it attempts to manipulate.  It fails, and the response to failure is predictable for those who are in power and who wish to hold power.   The first victim is 'truth,' which, as Hayek observes, and I think correctly, "ceases to have its old meaning."  It ceases to be an "interaction of individuals, possessing different knowledge and different views," and becomes "something to be laid down by authority, something which has to be believed in the interest of the unity of the organized effort."  The truth, with its lower-case contingency and transience, becomes Truth, once and for all.  If it begins with the scientists' and engineers' habits of thought -- where "the individual conscience [is] the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence warrants a belief" -- it ends in a faith-based commitment to a comprehensive social and economic doctrine.   It ends, as Hayek put it, in the "intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of the social process."  The history of the gulag provides the remainder of the story.




   

Ideology and Dialectic Continued

As a brief detour, since I am on the subject of science, let me touch for a moment on the nature of science, since it is important to a complementary notion of the rational secular state.  I won't repeat the whole of thomas Kuhn's argument here, but will simply suggest that the history of science is a history of beautifully concocted schemes each of which failed to fully comprehend the whole of reality.  Ptolemaic astronomy fell to Copernican astronomy.  Newtonian physics fell to Einstein's relativity, which in turn fell to Bohr's quantum mechanics, and he list goes on.   The history of science, no less than other human endeavors, is a history of beautifully concocted schemes, none of which succeeded in fully comprehending the whole of reality, each of which was supplemented or supplanted by a new scheme, each of which will in turn be supplemented or supplanted by even newer schemes.  The history of science, more so than other human endeavors, is marked by "progress."  Copernican astronomy represents an "advance" on Ptolemaic astronomy.  Einstein's relativity represents an "advance" on Newtonian physics, and quantum mechanics an "advance" on relativity.   Each advance is marked by contingency and its truth ultimately proves to be transient -- that is to say, each theoretical advance, each beautifully concocted scheme, is marked by its potential future failure -- it is precisely this contingent transience, this possibility of failure that allows for "advance."  The differences between the schemes of science and the schemes of religion are too numerous to list, but central to the differences is the foreclosure on this notion of "progress."  While it is dangerous in some circles to suggest that religion is no less a human endeavor, its history no less a history of beautifully concocted schemes, each of which has been supplemented or supplanted by new schemes, the evidence is clear enough.  The gods of Rome were supplanted by the one true god, and the church that celebrated that one true god has been supplemented with any number of protestant variations on a scheme.  None, however, really represents an "advance," but rather the assertion of an end to advancement -- the truth once and for all.  If the religious mind misunderstands the scientific mind, it is precisely on this point of falsification.  The truths of science are always open to their eventual falsification.  Darwinian evolution is not a truth once and for all, but a truth that has been confirmed over and over again by the preponderance of evidence, while the mechanisms that support it have been subject to continuous revision.  Climate science has presented us with a body of evidence.  The best theoretical explanation of that evidence is open to some dispute, and consequently the optimal policy decisions too are open to some dispute, but what is not in question is the body of evidence -- the earth is getting warmer, and human actions are, to one degree or another, causing or contributing to that warming.  We understand climate change better today than yesterday, and no doubt will understand it better tomorrow than today, and presumably our policy decisions should be informed by those "advances."

I am suggesting, of course, that the policy orientations of what I have called the rational secular state are open to falsification in ways that the faith-based theocracy is not.  The beautifully concocted schemes of science are sustained or fail on the basis of confirming or falsifying evidence.  On what basis is the truth or falsity of the biblical accounts drawn into question?  Likewise, if ideological purity is the predicating good, on what basis is the truth or falsity of free market accounts drawn into question?   From the conservative mind-set, if the account fails to fully comprehend our human reality -- if it fails to address our contingent needs -- the difficulty lies, not in the account, but in each individual's faith in the account.  One is more or less faithful to the given truth, and dialectic, as such, is directed, not at a closer and closer approximation to truth, but at the discovery of apostasy from an already given truth.   The "social issues" could be the "core problem in the polarization of the  American politics."  The New York Times quotes Christine Whitman, the former republican governor of New Jersey and Environmental Protection Agency administrator, as suggesting that "anger over the state of politics increases apathy."  Consequently, "'only the most rabid partisans vote,' so political strategists steer campaigns to issues that turn them on," and "for republicans, those are often social issues such as abortion, gay marriage and contraception.  But the rise of a new strain of fiscal conservatism has also led to moralistic portrayals of votes on spending and the debt limit.  And when issues are framed around morality, compromise becomes very difficult."  I doubt, however, that the social issues are in themselves the "core problem."  I think, rather, one's position on social issues serves simply to signify and substantiate one's alignment with faith-based and increasingly theocratic social and economic truths.  The importation of the "habits of thought of the natural scientist and engineer" into the social and economic spheres -- a mindset that seeks neither moral approbation or disapprobation, but causality in human social and economic behavior, and if not causality, then predictable correlation -- "impose ideals of organization on sphere[s] of thought to which they are not appropriate," and they are not appropriate because they are mechanistic accounts that deny human freedom, and because they deny human freedom, they preclude the possibility of moral choice and moral blame.  If social behavior can be reduced to causality and correlation, then it is difficult to ascribe moral blame to individuals for "their choices," their unwillingness or inability to conform to prevailing moral standards.   If social behavior can be reduced to causality and correlation, it also implies an obligation for the creation of social and economic policy.  If the absence of work, for example, is the underlying causal factor for the rise in single parent households, if the relationship is indeed mechanistic, then the solution to single parent households is simply to create jobs, not to insist upon the moral probity of young women, is not to demand abstinence and then test that abstinence by denying access to contraception.         

Ideology and Dialectic Continued

To suggest that Santorum sees himself as a messianic figure might be to over-state the case, but it is clear enough that the values he professes are centered in a comprehensive and uncompromising world view, one complete unto itself and consequently no longer open to dialectic.  Santorum's world view is comprehensive, in part because it is uncompromising.  It is sustained by a father knows best nostalgic idealism, a desire for an America that never really existed, but even if it had, an America that could no longer exist within the boundaries of his comprehensive vision without some very broad and very obvious exclusions.  There are, of course, the exclusions that emerge out of the world view (a reduction of sexuality and of women's sexuality in particular to reproductive efficacy) and the exclusions that have emerged outside of the world view (the vilification of non-Christian religious world views but perhaps more those who resist, on secular grounds, the imposition of political theology, the "American left who hates Christendom").  As Krugman points out in a recent editorial, however, it is not only "about sex and religion."  Santorum has "also declared that climate change is a hoax, part of a 'beautifully concocted scheme' on the part of the 'the left' to provide 'an excuse for more government control of your life.'"  There is an element of conspiracy theorizing behind Santorum's denunciation of the "junk science" behind the "whole narrative," and that in itself should render the diatribe suspect, but Santorum goes on to point out that it's a "beautifully concocted scheme because they know the earth is gonna [sic] cool and warm.  It's been on a warming trend so they said, 'Oh, let's take advantage of that.  We need the government to come in and regulate your life some more.'"   I find such a dialogue improbable at best, absurd at worst, in part because, at one remove, it is difficult for me to imagine who might actually benefit directly from such government control -- the environmentalists, perhaps, but who has significantly profited from a regulatory stance to limit greenhouse emissions?  Any regulatory stance is predicated on the common good, and while it is incumbent on those who advance the regulations to demonstrate how they do serve the common good, it is equally incumbent upon those who resist regulation to demonstrate how they harm or impede the common good -- that is to say, engage in dialectic aimed at consensus.   Having said that, the list of those who might in fact profit from the contrary stance and who might want to foreclose on dialectic could be rather long.  It is just as easy, if not easier, to imagine big oil executives making contributions to a super pac in support of a reactionary cabal against the regulation of greenhouse emissions.  If Darwinian accounts of evolutionary biology must be rejected because they don't square with Biblical accounts of creation, the recent accounts of climate change caused by, or helped along by, human action must likewise be rejected because they don't square with an equally sacred notion, the self-regulatory free market.

Idelogy and Dialectic Continued

The current presidential race could hardly be called a clash of the titans.  While many of us held out great hope for Obama that he would point us toward a humbler and more rational post-partisan politics, but that hope has been frustrated again and again.  There is sufficient evidence that he is open to dialectic, but dialectic takes two, and there is little evidence that his conservative counterparts are willing to engage, as they sat, meaningfully.  Indeed, among his republican opponents, each seems hell bent on demonstrating that their unwillingness to engage is greater than the others unwillingness to engage, a posture associated with an odd notion of ideological purity in the absence of a pure ideology.  Some of the posturing is, well, posturing.  On the list of Romney howlers, however, his suggestion that he was "a severely conservative governor" stands as a case in point.  It has already been noted that "severe," as an adjective, is normally used to modify a negative condition, a disease, as in "severely depressed," and I don't want to add my voice to the chorus.  Nevertheless, "severe" is hardly a word that brings warm feelings to mind -- something more like Scrouge in his counting house -- but even setting that aside, the sense that Romney is slick, disingenuous, may well be a simple observation that Romney, despite his public statements, is much less a tea party ideologue, more a business pragmatist.  With the so-called Romney-care, he had a problem to solve, and he solved it, apparently to wide satisfaction, and if ideological purity came into the discussion, there must have been some real reluctance to sacrifice the successful solution on the alter of ideological purity.  His personal values, his religious and family values, would fall well within the comfort zone of the restorative reactionaries, those who would push the reset button and return us to Leave it to Beaver -- no one familiar with the Mormon faith would doubt his credibility in this domain -- but his public values come forward most sincerely when he stands unapologetic for his wealth and the implicit business pragmatism that created it -- "hey, it's mine, I earned it!" -- that the manner in which he earned it had little or nothing to do with Christian values is of little or no consequence.  It's a different matter altogether.

Rick Santorum, however, is a more genuine conservative, one who would sacrifice almost anything on the alter of ideological purity.  If a political gaff is a time when a candidate inadvertently speaks the truth, his remarks on JFK and the separation of church and state represent a real gaff.  As the New York Times reported it, Santorum "described how he had become sickened after reading John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech calling for the rigid separation of religion and politics," and then asked the follow on question,  "What kind of country do we live in that says only people of nonfaith can come into the public square and make their case?"   His personal values, one suspects, verges on political apocalypticism, the grand Manichean contest between the satanic forces and the good people of Christian America, a contest that can only be resolved by putting religion (and few would doubt that he is using the term generically, and even fewer would doubt that he is referring to a version of his religion) at the center of public life.  If he has reversed himself, suggesting that "I’m for separation of church and state,” it is not simply political hypocrisy at work, though one suspects some damage control in the face of criticism, but it is also a reaffirmation of his own position as the redemptive candidate, the one who would bring church and state, the one who would bring the personal values of his religion and the public values of the presidency into convergence. 

To be continued. 

Ideology and Dialectic

The apparent political dialectic between the conservative and liberal ends of the spectrum within the US is not a dialectic.  The term, of course, is loaded with Hegelian, and following Hegel, with Marxist overtones, and I should perhaps admit up front that, in using the term, I have no grand vision.  I am thinking neither of the Hegelian dialectic recently celebrated by Fukuyama, a grand historical process that culminates inevitably in liberal democracy more or less as we know it in the US, nor am I thinking of the Marxist dialectic celebrated by a host of celebrated 20th century writers, an even grander historical process that culminates inevitably in the communist state.  In short, I am not thinking of dialectic on a world historical scale at all.  I have something less grandiose in mind, a questing dialectic, something on the order of the Socratic dialectic before Plato appropriated it in service of immutable Truth and the Ideal State.  The dynamic is perhaps the same.  The thesis is advanced only to be challenged by its antithesis, and through the ensuing exchange something like a tentative synthesis, a consensus, emerges.  The Socratic dialectic always ended with a note of the provisional lingering in the air, if not the Good once and for all, then a good enough for now, at once a resting point and an anticipated point of departure.

This note of the provisional stems perhaps from Socratic humility.  As he put in his Apology, "although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him."   It is easy enough to up-end the Socratic stance, to read his disparagement of falsity as a commitment to the truth, but the Socratic humility is at once the Socratic arrogance.  The false, once unmasked, can never again be an object of faith without the most egregious and self-serving cynicism.  I am among those who "like to hear the pretenders examined," and and there is something of divine comeuppance in seeing the pretentious ego popped, and it does take some courage to be the one with the pin.  Socrates demonstrated that courage by going to his death before accepting the shibboleths of his day.  Yet too, there is a cowardice in it.  Perhaps, like Socrates, I am too tentative to see a grand historical pattern, too hesitant to step forward with a grand plan of action.  I can all too easily see myself as the next in a line of pretenders, and my skin is too thin for even the dullest of pins.

Consequently, I am far from an idealist either in the common or the philosophical sense of the word.  If history has taught us anything, it is that all ideals are contingent and transitory and ultimately victims of their own internal contradictions -- which is not to say that all things are relative and arbitrary.  I do, however, believe that there is a reality, both human and physical, and we are part and parcel of it.  Our statements about that reality are more or less true -- our actions are more or less efficacious to any given purpose -- more or less -- and as such, they remain contingent and transitory.  Anyone who has "played by the rules" and "done all the right things" -- anyone who, like Job, had enormous faith in the justice of his world and yet suffered unimagined consequences -- knows intuitively what I am driving at.  We may have a grasp on things, but things are slippery.  We may be in control, but never wholly in control.  Life is unfair, and while we crave fairness with nearly the same intensity that we crave food and sex, and we can indeed make our surround more or less fair, more or less just, but absolute fairness, absolute justice, once and for all, seems possible in theory, but always elusive in fact.