The Age of Irony
on the eve of the 2012 Elections
Eric Paul Nolte
We live
in an age of irony, of ironies strong enough to shake tectonic plates into fomenting
tsunamis on both coasts simultaneously.
As I
write this, on the eve of the 2012 Obama/Romney election, divisive clouds of
toxic, wounded, angry, righteous rhetoric sweep across the country like the
winds and drenching rain of a super-storm that is powered by differential
pressures in the atmosphere deeper and more powerful than anything this country
has seen since the start of the Civil War in 1861.
It is ironic
that we live in a time where the two most toxic political labels competing
candidates can hurl at each other are “liberal” and “Tea Partier.”
Consider that
everywhere in the world for two centuries, except in the United States since
the time of FDR, “liberal” is a term that denotes an advocate of free markets
and individual rights to life, liberty and property. Now, in the US for the last 80 years or so, “liberal”
has come to mean the righteous advocates of big government control, regulation
of everything, opposition to economic freedom, bureaucratic central planning
and social engineering funded by confiscatory taxation, and indifference to
national debt and unfunded obligations to future welfare programs amounting to
five times the size of annual GDP. How
ironic, how ... Orwellian is not too strong a term to describe such a reversal
of a term’s meaning. How bizarre.
To be
tarred with the label of “Tea Party,” as Nan Hayworth is here in my New York
State 18th Congressional District, is thought to be the most
deliciously toxic ammunition that her opponents can shoot at her. Now, I find this puzzling because my visit to teapartypatriots.org
showed an organization whose core principles are clearly stated and bedrock American: government should be
limited to the purposes spelled out by the US Constitution, chained down to operating with fiscal responsibility, and the economy should be animated by
free markets, not by overweening government bureaucratic central planning and
regulation of everything. The Tea Party
is a grass roots organization that champions the core American values. What’s wrong with that? And again, it strikes me as an irony of
Orwellian scale that such an advocacy of freedom has come to be a toxic label
dripping with hatred and bile. And yet
conservatives and Tea Party patriots tend to advocate some other ideas that I
find weirdly ironic.
My head spins
when I consider the irony of this endless caterwauling between conservatives and liberals, both sides
posing as defenders of freedom, and both sides firing salvos of hatred against
each other, as if freedom hung in the balance, when both sides are clearly
enemies of freedom, properly formulated.
Consider the
faith-based opposition of conservatives to abortion and gay marriage. I find this to be antithetical to the
American founders’ most important and radical idea, namely, the unprecedented affirmation of
the individual as a precious, unique, irreplaceable, and sovereign entity,
endowed by human nature itself with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.
The
conservative opposition to abortion is rooted in the Biblical definition of
life as beginning at conception, but science is not so ready to offer such a
sweeping absolutism on when a human life begins. Moreover, a moment’s thought would show that
a fetus is like a germinated acorn and not like a sapling. To confuse the acorn
with the sapling is to conflate the actual with the potential. The same distinction applies to the early
fetus and the baby.
The
conservative opposition to gay marriage is rooted in the biblically inspired
idea that marriage must be between a man and a woman. No one has a duty to reproduce, so the matter
of propagation has nothing to do with the freely chosen bonds of love between
individuals. The issue of marriage is not
a matter of insemination or the mechanics of male and female plumbing to make
babies. Breeding is not the essence of
marriage, and government is not endowed with the rightful power to dictate the
lives of its citizens in this most intimate area of human relationships, as if
it were the farmer making decisions about animal husbandry to improve his herd
of cattle. Even if reproduction were the
important issue here, every couple in the world could be homosexual, and the
species could continue to reproduce through turkey-baster conceptions and
adoptions.
But the
crucial matter about gay marriage is about the voluntary bonds of love between
individuals according to their uniquely different opinions on what a good life
looks like. It’s THEIR lives, not
yours. Ain’t none of your damn business
what your peaceful neighbors do! And
love is love is love is love. Who are
the conservatives to barge into the bedrooms of their neighbors and dictate
what they are allowed to call a family?
The Root of Conservative Righteousness
The root
of these conservative ideas is faith. Now, by faith one can mean confidence in
another person, the outcome of a difficult situation, of the truth of an idea,
but this is not what the religionists mean when they appeal to faith for the
validation of their precepts. Look it up,
if you don’t believe me, the primary meaning of faith is the belief in a proposition in the absence of evidence.
I am persuaded
that others can believe any damn fool notion they want to, so long as they keep
their grubby mitts to themselves and they’re willing to live and let live, but
this has not been the history of faith based groups who, through most of
history have displayed a distressing tendency to treat a difference of opinion
as an unforgiveable sin that must be punished by death. Christians had the fangs pulled out of their
theological heads at the end of the 30 years war, when thoughtful Christians
looked around at the stinking slaughterhouse of Europe in the mid-1600s and
noticed that Catholics and Protestants had murdered maybe a third of the population,
every man, woman, and child, all in the name of God, and said, "Hmm, may we can
do better than this.” Some other
religions lag considerably behind the mainstream of Christians in this regard. I grant that it is not Christians who are
strapping suicide vests to their children’s bodies and sending them out into
public places to blow random strangers to kingdom come, and then start cheering
and dancing in the streets with ecstatic jubilation.
There are
many problems with faith. The biggest
problem with faith is that human survival requires the acquisition and testing
of knowledge. We’re not born knowing how
to survive and flourish. We have to
figure it out. Reason is our means of
survival. It takes logic applied to the
evidence of experience to learn what works, what fails, what is true, what is
false.
Now faith
is belief in an idea for no logical reason and so faith should be rejected as a
tool of epistemology. A belief held by
faith might not be false, but its veracity must be tested by logic and
experience. Faith as a tool of knowledge
is poison and should be rejected.
Socially
and politically, the problem with faith-based beliefs is the question of how to
resolve the inevitable disputes that arise between conflicting faiths.
Bluto
tells Pluto, “God said we must dance by the light of the moon and swear death
on those who do not join us.”
Pluto
tells Bluto, “God said we must sing at the noontime sun and swear death on
those who do not join us.”
Who is
right? How are these blockheads going to
work out this asinine dispute? How can conflicting
faiths resolve their differences? The
problem is that faith, i.e. belief in the truth of a proposition without any
logical grounds, leaves no rational basis for testing the veracity of their
beliefs, or for comparing any conflicting propositions whether within or
without their own religion, so faith-based disputes can never be resolved by
rational means. With no rational basis
for discussion, reason is impossible, which makes force the only available
means for dealing with disagreements.
Even agreeing to disagree
requires the use of reason. In the end, an
agreement to disagree amounts to a suspension of the question involved, not an
answer to which, if any, of the competing ideas is correct.
People
who disagree, but reject reason as a
means of addressing their disagreements, are in the same position as a pride of
lions and a herd of zebras, warily eyeing each other across the savannah. Their ambassadors are not gonna come together
and start singing Kumbaya together by nightfall.
How the Liberals are Just as Wrong as the Conservatives
Now, consider
the contemporary “liberal” American opposition
to liberty. How ironic is this! “Liberal” comes from a Latin word denoting
liberty itself, and here we are with this lefty side of the political spectrum
firmly opposed to anything remotely approaching an affirmation of the
inalienable rights of every individual to one’s own life, liberty, property,
and the pursuit of happiness by one’s own lights, free of the meddling of
neighbors and government agents.
Yet at
the same time as these liberals reject inalienable individual rights to life,
liberty, property, and free trade, they resolutely affirm their belief in the
sanctity of gay marriage and the right of women to the ownership of their own
bodies, especially concerning any decision to terminate a pregnancy. By their eagerness to put government
bureaucrats in charge of regulating every aspect of business, liberals display
their appalling misunderstanding of the nature of wealth creation and of human
action in the market economy. Liberals
champion freedom, but legislate serfdom.
It’s like saying we love airplanes, so it is imperative that we outlaw the greedy, profit-seeking capitalists
whose ambition is to build wings, unmolested by the government bureaucrats and
central planners.
How bizarre! How ironic!
How sad! How stupid, all of it,
left and right. How threatening to all
of us, that the major factions remain entrenched, glowering at each other across No Man's Land,
clueless, intractable, and irreconcilable.
That I
can view this landscape and feel some clarity about the matter is not because I
am a genius, but because, in part, I fight my confirmation bias by reading
widely different points of view with an openness to hear the warring factions
with sympathy, to ask myself how smart, well-intentioned people can come to
hold their views.
I also
attribute my sense of clarity on this matter to the conviction that I have
found brilliant minds throughout history who have integrated their thoughts in
a rational manner. The history of ideas
is dripping with crazy false alternatives, deadly detours down rabbit holes,
and confusions of epic proportions. I
believe that the Aristotelian stream, as opposed to that of Aristotle’s
teacher, Plato, provides the best frame of reference that I know for making sense of this whole antic
enterprise called humanity.
It has
been said that the history of ideas since the time of Greek antiquity can be
catalogued as footnotes to either Plato or Aristotle. This surely overstates the matter, but one
can see the broad truth of saying that thinkers tend to be more or less like
Plato or Aristotle. On the one side are
those who advocate some version of other-worldly philosophy and a social
organization of self-sacrifice for the common good, more or less like Plato. On the other hand are champions of a
philosophy for living on earth for the purpose of unfolding one’s own
happiness, or what Aristotle called eudaimonia,
his formulation of a happiness, broadly conceived across the span of a life, that
was opposed to mindless, hedonistic, self-indulgence, and which Aristotle held to be the supreme
good. Plato gave us the first blueprint
for a totalitarian utopia (although it is anachronistic to borrow the title of
Thomas More’s book, written more than a millennium after Plato.) Aristotle, who first formulated the laws of
logic, gave us the stream of thought that includes the intellectual roots of modern
science, technology, and ultimately political freedom, although it was John Locke and not Aristotle who formulated the idea of liberalism rooted in natural rights. I believe that Ayn Rand’s work, to date, represents the pinnacle of the stream that
starts with Aristotle and points the way to a better future. It was certainly Rand, with her philosophy rational self-interest as a moral ideal, who offered a stronger moral defense of the American project than anybody else before her.
What can
any of us do to make things better? I
start with myself. I start by trying to
advance my own understanding, and I do this by reading widely, but with a
point. I take philosophy to be the
mother of everything, so a grasp of what Mortimer Adler calls “the great
conversation” is crucial. To philosophy
I would add science, especially physics and the math required to grasp the
subject at first hand, and sound economics.
In economics, I am persuaded that John Maynard Keynes, patron saint of all the world's central banks, including our own Federal Reserve System, was grievously mistaken, ubiquitous as his ideas are today. By contrast, Ludwig von Mises was astonishingly prescient and powerful in his analysis of human action in the economic arena. For what this is worth. Examine it for yourself, as with everything else, and decide for yourself.
In economics, I am persuaded that John Maynard Keynes, patron saint of all the world's central banks, including our own Federal Reserve System, was grievously mistaken, ubiquitous as his ideas are today. By contrast, Ludwig von Mises was astonishingly prescient and powerful in his analysis of human action in the economic arena. For what this is worth. Examine it for yourself, as with everything else, and decide for yourself.
The
trouble with economics is the same trouble as with philosophy and psychology,
namely, that the times we live in, with respect to our grasp of the Big
Questions of truth and right, are so addled and confused that there is a radically
different and mutually exclusive school of thought for every conceivable
position on what it means to be human.
Ultimately,
we have to figure it out for ourselves.
There is no one else to do the understanding but we ourselves, looking out at the world and wandering
the corridors of our minds, no matter how modest or sophisticated our
knowledge. But we have a loyal ally in
our search for truth and right:
reality. Yes, reality.
Paying attention to reality would mean noticing that your mind does not really create the "reality" of the road when you're driving home. There is a reality, it lies objectively outside your mind, and if you think your mind creates your reality, reality will allow you to drive your silly self into a ditch, where, if you have survived this exercise in absurdity, you will have the opportunity to correct your postmodern delusions before these ideas kill you outright.
As with the relation between the road and your steering, so with economics and the politics of Keynes. If you agree with Keynes (and his contemporary acolyte, Paul Krugman) that the road to prosperity lies down the path of government deficit spending, you already have the opportunity to examine this idea from the ditch by the side of the road, where the economy has landed as a consequence of these policies. A deeper ditch, no a cliff, lies ahead, as we move "forward" with the President.
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revised 2013.1121
There are
decent histories of philosophy. I have
the volumes by Frederick Copleston, W. T. Jones, Wilhelm Windelband, Bertrand Russell, and Will Durant. These are good starting points, although I
would hesitate to say that any of them are completely trustworthy. But we should all have at least some vague
idea of the great issues that occupied the best minds of the world.
If our
math skills leave something to be desired, I highly recommend Sal Khan’s
amazing and inspiring project, Khan Academy, a free website that can take one
from 2 + 2 = 4 up to calculus, among many other subjects.
Visit KhanAcademy.org
And here
is a short list of some of the works I have found most useful in guiding my
own unfolding and my search for wisdom:
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
----- , Philosophy: Who Needs It?
----- , Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Second Edition)
Leonard
Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
------ , The
DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West are Going Out
------ , The
Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America
David
Harriman, The Logical Leap: Induction in
Physics
David
Kelley, The
Evidence of the Senses
------ , The
Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration
Henry
Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
Ludwig
von Mises, Socialism
----- , Liberalism
-----, Human
Action
Murray Rothbard,
For
a New Liberty
George
Reisman, Capitalism
Another book
that has surfaced recently is an easy read and embodies no little wisdom:
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