Watchers Council Nominations - Contradictions Are Not Your Friend
This week's submissions are up, complete with a skeptical shot at global warming. Compared to most center-right bloggers I'm a veritable dogmatist: I think that anthropogenic warming is probably happening. But the degree to which it's happening is obviously overstated by politicized scientists and pseudo-scientific politicians. The intellectual left spent decades insisting that science was purely a product of "power" and then spent the Bush years screaming about how he was subverting science and then responded by establishing sociological shibboleths within scientific communities. An excellent intro for a week of posts that revolve around contradictions and the obnoxious policymakers who pretentiously defend them.
Right Truth takes a forthright approach to potential contradictions. Her post tries to untangle the tension between humanitarian and religious approaches to "death with dignity." It's a good example of how to deal with contradictory impulses. Instead of basing half your actions on one and half your actions on the other - e.g. self-esteem education - or basing all your actions on one but pretending you're adhering to the other - e.g. UN diplomacy - you acknowledge that there's a tension and make an honest case for one impulse over the other.
Otherwise you end up looking like an idiot by trying to make the Bible justify gay marriage. See JoshuaPundit. Or looking like a corrupt crook by trying to appoint a Dubai lobbyist as the Climate Czar. See Cheat Seeking Missiles. Or looking like an idiotic corrupt crook by trying to do an end-run around the Illinois Constitution's impeachment provisions. See Rhymes with Right.
After the jump, the suggestion - across education, diplomacy, and political economy - that basing policy on contradictory wishful thinking might not be a great idea.
(1) Self-esteem education - A tangle of contradiction and wishful thinking that - before anything else - bumps uncomfortably into reality. Students are instilled with the firm belief their every thought is self-evidently the bestest and shiniest thought ever. Neither of those two gambles are defensible. Not every thought is worth sharing. And of the ones that are, even fewer self-evidently interesting . But instead of encouraging circumspection, educators staple slogans like "it's not important what you believe - what's important is that you believe" to elementary school walls. And then teachers put kids on stage - as Bookworm Room recounts - without instilling in them to even the barest sense of elocution. Eh. It's probably not important - merely one of the five ancient canons of rhetoric. What matters is how you feel.
Basic mistakes aside, self-esteem approaches get tangled in other muddled but pervasive liberal dogmas. Example: self-esteem educators want to limit lectures and tests lest students get questions wrong and feel bad. Dumb, but follow along. Problem: you're still in a school and you still need to teach students. Solution: have students "experience" the lesson and "immerse" themselves in activities. So now you have the following combination: (1) suffocating restrictions on "hurtful" expression, (2) an absence of anything like "dry facts," and (3) still needing to expose students to the sometimes brutal lessons of history. The result, via The Colossus Of Rhodey, is something in between tragedy and comedy.
(2) Diplomacy - There turns out to be some tension between the UN's conceit of universalism and its treatment of Israel. The contradiction enters as a tension between the idea of international law as neutral rule of law and the idea of international law as conveyor of justice - the latter itself corrupted by anti-Semitism into most venomous, resentful anti-Israel incitement. Except - as Soccer Dad points out - anti-Israel hatred has become so endemic in the UN that they don't even pretend to be objective. But of course they still want the trappings of objectivity. So they send a vicious anti-Israel tool to "investigate" Israeli human rights practice. But when Israel refuses to pretend that he's an objective diplomat and sends him backing, it's an outrage. He was an objective diplomat, after all.
And when contradictions become too acute to unblinkingly deny - when decades of Iranian diplomacy moves from lesser evils to the less-lesser evils to Ahmadinejad - there's always the solution of blaming Israel for not accepting a nuclear umbrella that was never supposed to be accepted. My post.
(3) Political Economy - The Glittering Eye, focusing on agriculture, bumps into perhaps the most basic interventionist contradiction: "on the one hand [the Dept. of Agriculture] is tasked with promoting American agriculture and on the other with regulating it." In the financial sector, meanwhile, Obama is looking to tee off on any number of industries. But as the Provocateur notes, he's missing the one practice that genuinely calls out for regulations. That's what happens when you intervene into economic markets on the basis of political ideology. Well - that plus a historically unprecedented global financial meltdown that risks multiple great power wars. At least they've learned their lesson! And at least Republicans aren't politically boxed in because they betrayed fundamental principles and approved the banking bailout. Or, as The Razor points out, whatever the opposite of that is.
References:
* It's a Mad Mad Weasely World [Watcher Of Weasels]
* Death With Dignity [Right Truth]
* Newsweak Shills For Same Sex Marriage - In It's Religion Section! [Joshua Pundit]
* Dubai's Lobbyist As Climate Czar? [Cheat Seeking Missiles]
* Sense At Daily Kos? [Rhymes With Right]
* Selfish is as selfish does [Bookworm Room]
* How dumb was this? [The Colossus Of Rhodey]
* Falk - moonbattery a feature not a bug [Soccer Dad]
* Obama: Since We All Know That Engagement With Iran Won't Work, How About A US Nuclear Umbrella For Israel? [MR]
* The Ministry of Silly Suggestions [The Glittering Eye]
* The Irony of Me, Barack Obama, Regulations, and Loan Modifications [The Provocateur]
* Bush's Automaker Bailout [The Razor]
Previously:
* Watcher's Council Nominations: Incompetence On Iran, The Economy, Education, And Admissions Of Incompetence
* Watchers Council Nominations: War In Mumbai, Scapegoating In Israel, Idiocy At Home
* Watchers Council Nominations: We Don't Know Much About Obama. Or How To Fix The Economy. Or Really, Anything.
