I thought the following worth sharing.
“Just a heads-up that Venezuela’s regime is now firing on and murdering protesters. Another reminder that you can vote your way into socialism, but you’ll have to shoot your way out of it.” – Austin Petersen, 2/22/19
The more significant the disagreement, the more important it is that something as easily settled as the meaning of the words we use not prevent us from having a civil discussion. There are many real and important things about which we differ; our words should not be counted among them.
The word “tolerance” implies disagreement. After all, we are never asked to tolerate something of which we approve. Rather, we’re asked to tolerate things that we don’t necessarily like. Approval and tolerance are two different things, and asking someone to approve of something is not the same as asking them to tolerate it.
For example, I don’t approve of people swearing in public, but I tolerate it.
What does it mean to tolerate something? I’ll offer this simple definition: tolerance means that you would allow something even if you had the practical authority to prevent it.
So, back to my example: even if I had the authority to prevent people from swearing in public, I wouldn’t use it. I am tolerant of swearing in public, even though I don’t like it.
Please note that I’m not talking about changing what people think, making them believe what I believe and so do what I’d like them to do. That isn’t something accomplished through authority, but rather through persuasion and the exchange of ideas and viewpoints. We must, of necessity, “tolerate” what people think and believe, because there is no authority, real or imagined, which can compel others to believe what we believe. Nor, I would argue, should there be, as that would violate our most private right of conscience.
I believe strongly that people should be free, free to express their ideas and to live their lives with a reasonable minimum of restriction, free to approve or disapprove of whatever they want. We all have opinions, and sometimes strong ones, about what makes sense, what is true, and what is good for people. We should be free to express our approval or disapproval. That isn’t the same as tolerating or not tolerating.
I tolerate expression of approval and disapproval, even when I don’t agree with them.
Smoking, swearing in public, yelling at your kids in Wal-Mart, self-identifying as the wrong sex, hooking up, Gender Studies departments, cross-country skiing, blue-grass music, white-supremacist talk, black-supremacist talk, made-up pronouns, anti-semitic talk, Islam, decaf coffee, omitting the Oxford comma — there are a lot of things of which I don’t approve, but which I will tolerate.
I would like to ask my friends on the left to name a few things which they tolerate, but of which they do not approve. I wonder what they would answer. Because my impression is that many on the left use “tolerance” as a synonym for “approval.” And, when you tolerate only those things of which you approve, you really tolerate nothing at all.
If you aren’t familiar with the purported assault on a young man named Jussie Smollett, you can read a pretty good account of it here. But, basically, this young gay black male actor (details which are relevant) claimed that he was attacked while walking in Chicago late at night at the end of January. He claimed his assailants were Trump supporters who committed various obviously racially-motivated offenses against him, and then fled the scene. His claims were met with expressions of outrage and support from celebrities and politicians, often accompanied by editorial comments about racism in America, the President, etc.
It now seems almost certain that Mr. Smollett staged the entire event, with the assistance of two friends whom he paid for their participation.
People do foolish and desperate things for all sorts of reasons. One rumor has it that Mr. Smollett was being dropped from a program he was on, and so was seeking some extra attention and visibility. I have no idea what else might have been going on in his life to prompt him to do something as ugly and dishonest as this, and I don’t care: he’s one individual among billions and, as I’ve said any number of times, there will always be someone doing something stupid — and, if it’s gaudy enough, someone will report it. People love drama when it doesn’t impact them.
Whatever his motivation, Mr. Smollett has done a disservice to those who are or will be victims of actual violence, and to everyone who cares about truth and justice.
But Mr. Smollett is hardly alone in fabricating injustice, nor even the worst offender. There is an entire industry in America devoted to promulgating the mistaken idea that America is a racist country — that is, that racism is a deep, widespread, and essential quality of our nation.
That’s nonsense. There are racist people; it could be argued that most people — black, white, brown, or otherwise — have some racial bias, preferences, or misconceptions. But to argue that America, a nation that has long demanded full legal equality regardless of race, that has elected all kinds of minorities to the highest offices, that is self-consciously obsessed with avoiding even the semblance of racism, and that considers a charge of “racist” to be the most damning epithet, is in any significant sense a “racist country” is both unfair and absurd.
Like Mr. Smollett, proponents of the racist America theory have had to fabricate evidence, misinterpret statistics, and impute bad intent where more prosaic explanations are readily available. And, like Mr. Smollett, they do injury both to the truth and to the victims of true racism — most significantly, victims of the racism they create with their misguided prescriptions for social justice: with their low expectations and preferential treatment, their outrage and their excuse-making.
Mr. Smollett sought to create division where there was none. Everyone who beats the racist America drum is doing the same, regardless of how well-intended, or not, their motives. Racism will diminish when, and not until, those most obsessed with it stop seeing it where it isn’t, in every disparity and imagined micro-aggression.
It’s nice to imagine that the typical progressive has one issue about which he or she is passionate, one issue and one specific, clearly defined objective. If that were the case, we could discuss the merits of pursuing that objective. We could talk about the likely costs and the likely benefits, and maybe even reach some kind of understanding. Failing that, we could at least advocate for or against the progressive’s policy proposals in a thoughtful way.
But progressivism isn’t simply a response to the realization that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. It’s a perspective, an approach to living, an optimism about what could be. And make no mistake: however disenchanted progressives may be with the status quo, however convinced they may be that the current situation is intolerable and unjust, progressives are nonetheless optimists. They believe that the world, and the people in it, can be made better — endlessly better — and they fearlessly embrace change in pursuit of a hazy, undefinable and distant perfection.
They’re right: the world can be made better — endlessly better. An honest conservative should acknowledge that: the world is not as good as it can be, we are not as good as we can be. There is, and always will be, room for improvement, and that improvement will only come about through change. Conservatives and progressives should agree on this point: whether it is our temperament to optimistically embrace change or to pessimistically distrust it, some change is necessary and good.
Unfortunately, some change is unnecessary and bad. Some change is truly horrible: look to the starvation in oil-rich Venezuela for an example of that.
The reality is that neither pure conservatism nor pure progressivism works, in the sense of moving the human race ahead and making the world a better place. Progressivism only works if there is not much of it, just as conservatism only works if it is imperfect and, at least occasionally, amenable to progressive persuasion.
Everything is connected. We live and interact within a complex web of competing and cooperating interests, abilities, values, and goals. No one can grasp the complexity, the boundless detail, of our society, our economy, our culture. And yet it works: we coexist, get along with each other, and have created an enormous, historically unprecedented prosperity for an historically unprecedented number of people.
This is true because the web “understands” what we can not — because the whole is smarter than any of its parts. Over time, it has weeded out ideas that don’t work, so that what is left, however imperfect, works well enough to give us all we have.
So here’s where the conservative and the progressive differ, and also why the conservative is, in general, more likely right than the progressive.
Conservatives don’t understand how the world works. They just know that they don’t want to change it, because change is scary and fraught with danger, and what we have now works pretty well.
Progressives don’t understand how the world works either. They just know that they want to change it, some small part of it. The problem is that everything is connected, and that that small change will ripple outward and change other aspects of the society, economy, culture — change them in ways the progressive can’t anticipate, because no one is that smart.
This has always been true: change has always brought unintended consequences. What is different, today, is that there are a lot of progressives, and they have a lot of leverage now, in our media-driven monoculture filled with people ignorant of history and unmindful of complexity and, most importantly, embarrassed to be thought of as old-fashioned or unenlightened.
So when Rep. Ocasio-Cortez proposes something as deeply, profoundly, comprehensively, and objectively absurd as the Green New Deal, people who should know better — prominent, respected Democrats — jump on board, when instead they should be taking the child aside and explaining to her that being elected doesn’t make the foolish wise, and certainly not in her case.
Pick your bizarre and unworkable excess: imaginary human sexes beyond male and female, abortion until the day of birth, the elimination of cars and planes and fossil fuels, a centrally-planned economy that doesn’t descend into tyranny and poverty, a nation without borders, an economy crippled by the fear of climate change a hundred years from now for which no evidence exists today. In a culture with a sensible balance of conservative and progressive voices, all of these would be met with skepticism, and would have to fight to gain traction.
Progressive ideas will still fail, as often as and for the same reasons that they always have: because they change a functioning world in ways no one expected or intended. What’s different now is that the safety net of conservatism has been weakened, and more ideas — good and bad, but mostly bad because most ideas are bad — are going to slip through, and are going to have to be weeded out by painful experience rather than preemptively by natural conservative skepticism.
It would be good for conservatives to begin taking pride in their conservatism, and seeing their skepticism as a necessary and valuable contribution to defending a successful culture. We have built something good, and we should be proud to be its champions and protectors. We can’t expect progressives to surrender their optimism and hubris, nor to gain the wisdom that comes from a sensible humility. It’s our job to rein them in; it has always been our job.
Progressives are doing what they’ve always done. Conservatives have to get back to doing their job, and doing it better. So, fellow conservatives, stick your neck out and dig your feet in, be bold in your skepticism, stop going along with what you believe is nonsensical, and be the defender of what has been shown to be good.
The political spectrum runs the gamut from crazy-on-the-left to crazy-on-the-right, but most of us are somewhere between those extremes. Most human qualities are distributed on something resembling a bell curve, fat in the middle and tapering to points at each side. Political views are no exception: most of us, Republican or Democrat, left or right, conservative or liberal, are closer to the middle than to either end.
It’s easy to buy into a caricature of the great American divide, an exaggerated portrayal that casts one or both sides as extremists who subscribe to the views of the tiny little fringe down at either end of the opinion curve. This is hardly surprising: whether you’re selling advertising (the press, Hollywood), trying to claim the virtuous high ground (Hollywood, politicians), or trying to push your preferred policy (politicians, advocates), it’s useful to portray your opponent as an idiot or a monster — in short, as an extremist.
Pick your topic. Abortion? One extreme would ban it completely; another would allow it right up to the moment of birth — or, possibly, just a little bit longer. The environment? One extreme wants to outlaw private transportation and impose astronomical energy costs on the nation; another would… well, I’m not exactly sure what an environmental extremist on the other end looks like, but I’m sure there are a few of them out there.
On immigration, one extreme wants to expel every illegal alien from the country and stop immigration entirely; the other wants to abolish ICE and throw open the borders. The economy? At one extreme, people call for outright socialism, a centrally planned and managed economy, and the de facto abolition of markets; at another extreme, radical anarcho-capitalists want to get rid of government and laws, keeping only the free market.
Sex? One extreme maintains that all men are rapists and all sex is rape; another, that women should have legal rights inferior to those of men. Race? One extreme says that America is systematically targeting black people for destruction, and that blacks and whites should each have their own nation; another extreme says that non-whites are inferior to whites — and that blacks and whites should each have their own nation. (Sometimes supposedly opposite extremes resemble each other more than one might expect.)
Etc., etc.
The vast majority of us are reasonably sane, and reject the extremes. We aren’t caricatures. We’re normal people living normal lives, seeking sensible compromises, getting along with people who don’t agree with us about some things but who are, nonetheless, still decent and sensible people. Most of us don’t know many people at the extremes, though we hear about them all the time on television and in social media. This is true whether we tend to think of ourselves as right or left, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican.
But here’s an odd thing. It’s hard to find respected voices on the right calling for crazy things. People on the right don’t like craziness, even when it’s coming from their own side. But it’s fairly easy to find respected voices on the left calling for things that sound nutty to most of us: abortion-until-birth (NY, Virginia, Vermont, etc.), black/white separatism (Black Lives Matter, Nation of Islam), socialism (Bernie, Acasio-Cortez, etc.), radical environmentalism, radical views about sexuality and identity, open borders, etc.
I won’t deny that there are crazy people on the right. But folks on the right try to keep them tucked away, out of sight. We don’t want to hear from them any more than the left does, and we sure don’t want them thinking they represent us. Because they don’t.
I don’t know why my friends on the left put up with the prominent extremists who claim to represent them. Partly I suspect it’s because our culture tilts left, and so left-wing extremism doesn’t stand out quite as much as right-wing extremism does: we’re all a little bit accustomed to nutty leftists. But partly, I’m pretty sure, it’s because leftist extremism is just more exciting, just feels better. Socialism sounds cool, never mind that it makes people poor and corrupt and mean and hungry. It sounds kind of romantic, in spite of its dismal record in the real world. And any claim of victimhood is going to be appealing, because we all respond to injustice, real and imagined.
So I guess it’s understandable why people who lean left tolerate prominent crazy people speaking on their behalf. But it’s a mistake: almost no one wants to live in the world the extremists would create. It would be good for all of us if their supporters would let the extremists know that crazy isn’t on the menu, and that they have to dial it back. Otherwise, there’s a good chance that the nuttiest people are going to be calling the tunes for the rest of us.
A crisis may be a terrible thing to waste, but the unfortunate truth — unfortunate, that is, for those in need of a crisis — is that crises aren’t all that common. Sure, each individual life has its complexity and challenges, its microcosmic crises. But the nation as a whole chugs along pretty well, with people and businesses managing to adapt to changing circumstances, and most of us getting along without major conflict.
That’s not a convenient truth if you want to galvanize the masses, to drag them out into the street and into the polling places, where they can vent their righteous fury by electing your candidate. For that, you really do need a crisis, something that will make their blood boil.
The law no longer distinguishes between black and white. A few institutions, notably our universities, give special preferences to non-white non-Asian people, but those are the exceptions: in America, skin color does not matter, as a matter of law. We’ve had a black President, any number of high-ranking black officials, black Senators and Congressmen, and a plethora of black stars, sports figures, entrepreneurs, writers, journalists, etc., etc. Non-white people are everywhere in our society and our government: by any reasonable measure, ours is a color-blind nation.
That’s good, and as it should be — unless, that is, the goal is to harness the outrage of offended minorities to achieve electoral success. If that is the goal, reality isn’t your friend: best to gin up some racial animosity, and try to paint a plausible picture of widespread oppression. It turns out that isn’t as hard as one might think, if a lazy and compliant press, and a lazy and unaccountable academia, give their full support to the effort. With their help, a demonstrably inclusive and tolerant country, a nation that self-consciously avoids even the appearance of discrimination, will embrace the fiction that racism remains a daily scourge. And that is all it takes to guarantee the turnout on election day.
Or consider the matter of what is euphemistically referred to as “women’s reproductive health,” because no one really likes the word “abortion.” In America, abortion is legal everywhere thanks to a Supreme Court ruling. Absent that ruling, it would still be legal almost everywhere: few states would ban it outright, and some would — as New York recently demonstrated — go out of their way to embrace its legality. Where you think America stands on the issue depends almost entirely on which questions you ask and how you phrase them. Most Americans, I think, are in favor of some degree of legal abortion; most Americans are opposed to unchecked abortion into the third trimester.
But you wouldn’t know that from the way the issue is talked about in the mainstream press and late night television. From that, you’d think that there was a crisis looming, that women were about to be returned to the dark ages when abortion was illegal and women were property. Even absent Roe v. Wade, there is no reason to believe that a woman could not legally terminate a pregnancy if she wished. But in lieu of a thoughtful discussion of the pros and cons of terminating pregnancies at various stages of gestation, we get the spectacle of women in “handmaid” outfits warning us that a crushing theocracy is right around the corner. Selling that fiction, and the resentment and panic it inspires, is good for business — if your business is getting people to vote for your party.
And then there’s the matter of freedom of speech. Our Constitution guarantees everyone the right to speak and write freely, and it’s a right we should guard jealously. One would think, if one listened only to the preening, grandstanding pomposities of the mainstream media, that this freedom was created specifically for those in the journalistic field, and that it was in dire threat of being extinguished by those in power. Neither is true: the freedom to express oneself is everyone’s right, no more guaranteed to journalists than to you and me; and Americans have never been more free to express themselves, nor more capable of doing so, than we are right now.
Freedom of expression is not under assault, even if our mainstream media demonstrates on a daily basis how incompetent, dishonest, and biased it is. Even awful press is protected, and so they have nothing to fear. Criticism, legitimate and otherwise, is not restriction; no one has reduced the freedom of our news agencies to misreport and distort the news. (We haven’t even restricted the freedom of our major social media and search platforms to filter and suppress content that doesn’t agree with their own biases.)
But a non-crisis doesn’t rouse the mob, so let’s pretend that the First Amendment is as much under assault as, say, the Second. Let’s pretend that the endless stream of late night comedy routines that dutifully mock the administration are an exhibition of bravery in the face of near-certain censure — rather than lazy and unimaginative exercises in preaching to the choir. Let’s pretend that, absent any evidence and despite considerable evidence to the contrary, our most precious freedom is precariously balanced on the edge of an electoral knife, and only a vote for the right party can save it. And let’s see if voters are dumb thoughtless enough to ignore the fact that every single comic they hear is telling them the same things — and none of them have been silenced by the powers that be.
Race, abortion, free speech. There are no crises. But convincing people that these things are in danger is necessary to a party that uses fear and grievance to maintain its hold on a gullible electorate.
The sky isn’t falling. I would think it’s a sad, desperate way to live, believing that it is.
There’s a lot of talk these days about toxic masculinity and the problems men cause, both to themselves and to others, when they behave in classically manly ways.
Well, everyone has an opinion, and people are going to talk. But I’m going to share some things with you, man to man, and I hope you’ll remember them the next time a professor or a late night comic or a shaving company tries to tell you how you can “be better” than the sorry creature they apparently think you are.
First, women like manly men. They always have, and they always will. It’s the way we’re wired, no matter what the geniuses in the Gender Studies department try to tell you.
People like to pretend that women want sensitive guys who are in touch with their feelings, but the truth is that they like guys who are guys, guys who don’t whine, guys who spend more time working out or fixing something than they do getting in touch with their emotions. It isn’t just conservative, old-fashioned girls who think this way: most women, whether conservative or liberal, young or old, rich or poor, like a man who is in touch with his masculine side, not his feminine side.
Think about it. Think of the heroes of our popular culture, the movie stars past and present. Are they wimps? Do they fuss? Are they tentative and cautious, concerned about whose feelings they’re going to hurt when they save the girl (or the world)?
Nah, they’re guys. They do the heavy lifting, they take a beating without crying about it, and they don’t worry that people are going to think them insufficiently sensitive or empathic. They’ve been that way forever, back to the earliest recorded accounts. We all know what manliness is.
Secondly, men like manly men.
Men are willing to put up with quite a bit of … expressed concern … from women, because that’s part of the cost of enjoying the company of women. Women care — and care deeply — about things men barely notice, and women are likely to talk about it. Sometimes they’ll talk quite a lot about it.
That’s okay: women are the way they are, and we love them for it. Just shut up and let them talk; that’s often all they want.
But that kind of thing doesn’t look good on a guy. Women don’t think so, and neither do other men. If you want to be respected by other men, you should keep some stuff — a lot of stuff — to yourself. Men don’t need to spend a lot of time “unburdening” themselves, talking just to share their emotions and concerns. Guys will put up with that from women for obvious reasons, but there isn’t much benefit to hearing it from another guy. And, frankly, it’s embarrassing. So, if you really have to talk about it, cut to the chase: keep it short and to the point, and don’t whine.
Real man means something, and it doesn’t mean like a woman, or feminized, or vulnerable. It means what it’s always meant, and what it still means, even if a bunch of unmanly people want to reinvent it — reinvent you — as something weak and soft and compliant.
There’s nothing wrong with being a man.
I think a lot about the nature of conservatism and what is variously called leftism, progressivism, or liberalism, but which I like to call radicalism. I think of the political spectrum as having, as its most important axis, a continuum that runs from conservatism to radicalism — from, on the conservative side, an affinity for tradition and reluctance to accept change, to, on the radical side, a casual disregard for tradition and a comfort with change.
I don’t believe that either side has a lock on intelligence, morality, or virtue. I think people of both conservative and radical dispositions are necessary. I think most of us lean one way or the other innately, rather than as a result of education or circumstance — and that most of us lean toward the conservative side, for fairly obvious reasons of evolutionary selection and survival.
While I don’t think either side is necessarily more intelligent or thoughtful than the other, I do think that conservatives tend to be correct more often than radicals. This isn’t an indictment of radicals, but merely an observation that it is easier to preserve what exists than to create something new that is as good as what already exists. And what exists, whatever its faults, has withstood the test of time and demonstrated itself to be, in a cultural sense, fit: like a species that has adapted to its environment, a culture is an evolved thing that has proven itself functional and durable.
Just as it’s easier to successfully prepare an elaborate meal from existing, tested recipes than from inspiration and imagination, so too is it easier for a population to live comfortably by its tested rules and customs than by making radical and experimental departures from them.
This is true to the extent that the culture is a good one — that is, that it provides a decent and rewarding life for its members. Cultures that are grossly dysfunctional, that are cruel and barbaric, that fail to serve most of the population reasonably well, may be functional and durable, but it’s easier to imagine that radical departures will tend to be for the good, given that so much of the culture is already bad.
In other words, the better the culture, the more likely it is that the conservative perspective will be the one more conducive to a general prospering, and the worse the culture, the less worthy of preservation its principles, and the more welcome the risk of radical transformation.
Ours is a good culture. This is an objective statement: by any historical comparison, and by any even remotely fair and reasonable analysis, our culture has promoted the security, comfort, and prosperity of the vast majority of the people who live within it, and done so to a degree never before and nowhere experienced.
Good isn’t perfect. There are aspects of our culture that could undoubtedly be improved. But the burden of proof should be on those who propose radical change, because the status quo is good. What is, is good. Those who propose to change it should make their case, and make it plainly, and openly, in detail, and with some humility. It isn’t enough to have a catchy phrase, or to be swept up in hope and enthusiasm. It isn’t enough to have a winsome or charismatic champion. Radical ideas need strong arguments and robust debate.
We should insist on the open and healthy discussion, debate, and criticism of radical ideas, and oppose efforts to suppress such discussion under the guise of political correctness, tolerance, or sensitivity.
From a President who often seems mean-spirited and petty, to angry mobs threatening their opponents with bodily harm, to smugly superior journalists and entertainers preaching their bottomless contempt to a Pavlovian audience of unthinking conformists, the observation that much of our national conversation is mired in incivility and vulgarity seems undeniable.
Whether or not this is new is debatable. Heated political exchanges are nothing new; yellow journalism and intemperate pundits are not a 21st century phenomenon, nor even a 20th. What seems likely is that the scope of incivility has increased, upward to the President and Congress, downward to every citizen with a microphone or Twitter account. Partly this is the product of greater participation: when everyone has a voice, a lot of people with nothing useful to say will nonetheless say it loudly.
In such a heated atmosphere, it’s difficult to resist joining in, piling on. I’ve certainly fallen prey to the temptation, as much as I try to resist it. We should all make a greater effort to slow down and dial back the outrage, focus more on ideas than on individuals, spend more time trying to understand each other than scoring points with barbed comments and cheap wit. If civil society is what we want, we should try to be more broadly civil.
But there’s another aspect to civility, one less obvious than a rude tweet or a vulgar stand-up journalist comic. This is respect for alternative viewpoints — at least, for those that are not obviously far outside the bounds of humanity and decency, or wildly irrational. This is deep civility, the willingness not only to be reasonably gracious in one’s discourse, but also sincerely thoughtful in one’s engagement with ideas.
This kind of deep civility is difficult for both conservatives and radicals, for those wary of change and for those enthusiastic for it. But it’s the kind of civility that will be required if we hope to become more broadly decent, because the casual disrespect for ideas and beliefs is the engine that drives the rage we see.
Those on the right, who value tradition and are skeptical, wary, fearful, or otherwise resistant to change should keep in mind what they know to be true: that the old ways aren’t always the best ways. More importantly, they must not assume that those with radical ideas are bent on destruction, or that their desire to effect change is evidence of a wish to tear down the civilized world and introduce barbarism. Whatever one thinks of the virtue of the ideas they espouse, one should try to credit them with decent motives and engage them accordingly.
Those on the left, who are eager for change and confident that the change will be good, should honestly face the reality that change brings inherent risk, that unintended consequences often lead to unexpected and undesirable — and sometimes catastrophic — outcomes. More importantly, they should keep in mind that those who oppose them are not consumed by hatred and a desire to return to an ignoble past, but rather by a wish to preserve and defend what they sincerely believe is good.
I am a man of the right. As long as hatred, bigotry, and small-mindedness are the motives imputed to me because of the views I hold, I must struggle to assume the decency of those with whom I disagree. But I do believe that most people — left and right — are decent; that everyone I know personally is a decent person who wants to make the world better, and that that’s true of most people; and that the ugliness we see springs more from human frailty and imperfection than from malice.
Perhaps the most destructive word introduced into our popular lexicon is hate. It’s time to be a little more charitable in our assessment of motives, so that we can discuss the worthiness of ideas rather than attacking the people who hold them.
You wouldn’t guess it from reading the news, but the sad reality is that there aren’t enough bad guys to explain all that’s wrong in the world.
Oh, we try to find culprits for everything: there’s a natural human urge to seek a malevolent intelligence behind misfortune — to ascribe blame to someone. It is comforting to imagine that bad things happen because bad people cause them to happen. We have some faint hope, after all, of ridding ourselves of bad people — and, until we do, we enjoy the knowledge of our moral superiority.
But much of what goes wrong in the world isn’t the result of bad intentions, but rather of good intentions gone wrong in unpredictable ways. That’s a disconcerting thought to consider, which may be why so many possessed of beneficent motives do their best to avoid doing so.
Examples abound. Those favoring legal enforcement of our borders are racists; their opponents hate America and want to bring about the ruin of our country. Those opposed to Roe v. Wade are medieval misogynistic oppressors; abortion supporters are murderers. Those who opposed same-sex marriage are theocratic tyrants; proponents are nihilists bent on destroying the fabric of society.
Global warming skeptics are Gaia-hating monsters in thrall to Big Oil; those sounding the AGW alarm are human-hating monsters in thrall to Paul Ehrlich. The rich get richer because they’re evil; the poor get poorer because they’re lazy. Minorities suffer because of white people; women suffer because of men; everyone suffers because of white men. (White men are the moral O-negative, the universal donors of oppression; and when you have a villain that versatile, why look any further?)
In the age of social media and an activist press, believing the worst about your opponent is wonderfully freeing: when your opponent is a hateful bigot — or, more importantly, when you believe him to be — you don’t have to engage his arguments. That saves a lot of time, and is particularly useful if your own arguments are, well, wanting.
But a lot of our problems are the natural results of our prosperity and good fortune and technological progress. Safer and less menial work, longer lives and greater freedom and equality, deeper safety nets, the emergence of a technology-driven monoculture — all of these things are good and bad, bringing both comfort and problematic transformation.
Most people aren’t politicians, nor outspoken, nor activists. Most people mean well. Most people who voted for Hillary Clinton thought she would make the country a better place; most people who voted for Donald Trump believed the same thing. I know a lot of Democrats and a lot of Republicans, but I don’t think I know any villains. I don’t personally know anyone who wants to destroy my country, though I know a few who honestly believe that we can walk like Venezuela and talk like Venezuela but not, ultimately, become Venezuela.
The opinion cloud is invested in, obsessed with, demonizing the opposition: for the press, for pundits, for activists, for the professional political set, it’s just good business to assume the worst about anyone who stands between you and your conception of a better world. Because right makes might, and there’s no more compelling argument than “but you’re evil,” for those willing to make it.
We amateurs, who fancy ourselves modest thinkers and reasonably well-informed, fall prey to this easy superiority just like everyone else. But it doesn’t earn us a paycheck, and is best kept in check if our hope is to persuade others that our views make sense.