"It's The Arrogance, Stupid!
Arnold Kling at TechCentralStation argues that liberals are stuck in 1968, believing that anyone who is not a liberal must be "incorrigibly stupid", to which I would add from my personal experience "or evil". It is all but impossible to swim in the left-dominated waters of academia without receiving the occasional forced mouthful of the arrogance that derives from intellectual inbreeding within a group of very smart people who are unfortunately isolated from ideas that compete with their left-leaning commitments. In short, Kling is definitely on to something here.
However, my first real reaction is that I wish Kling had turned the same analysis on conservatives beyond his hand-wavy and passive-voiced "conservatives make mistakes too" brush-off. Certainly, the right-wing has its share of moral and intellectual snobs, and while the left is sometimes eager to deploy the power of institutions to enforce their dogma and suppress dissent, the right tends to swing the power of God Himself against the Benighted Infidels that transgress God's Law on subjects ranging from sexuality to taxes to foreign policy to science cirrculum to the length of 9th-graders' gym shorts.
The mechanisms are different but the underlying pathology is the same -- crippling arrogance. Far too ill-educated (or lazy) to undertake the difficult task of researching and really thinking critically, partisans from left and right are increasingly willing to slather the public sphere with a toxic, domineering dose of slogans and presumptions that are not allowed to be questioned, let alone challenged with contrary data.
And while it obviously annoys some people, quite simply this is what I am on about and am going to keep on going on about -- the arrogance and puritanism from left and right works to raise barriers to debate and learning, encouraging people to isolate themselves from a political sphere that increasingly resembles a crowd of screaming children throwing tantrums (and fecal matter) at each other.
When I argue that moderates' unique contribution is a pragmatist willingness to resist dogmatism and adopt good ideas from both left and right, I'm suggesting that such willingness is necessary to prevent a complete takeover of politics by dogma-driven iconoclasm. Critics from left and right are often wont to condemn moderate politics as unprincipled for the simple reason that they confuse dogma with principles. Critical skepticism is a principle. Pragmatism is a principle. Intellectual rigor is a principle. And, in the end, seeking a difficult sythesis between left and right is a princpled activity."
tutakai.typepad.com |
