Slate's commentary by Lili Loofbourow on the second Democratic debate observed with evident approval that moderate liberals no longer represent the party's orthodoxy. According to Loofbourow, apparently, our nation's political polarization is no longer cause for lament but for celebration. From now on, the fight is between the far left and the far right, and in the view of the Democratic Party, this is as it should be. She remarks:
Mitch McConnell has made the idea of governing by reaching across the aisle not just unworkable but fantastic; no serious person can entertain the possibility that Democratic priorities can be achieved with Republican cooperation.
There we have it. Democrats are saying there can be no compromise, and they are saying that the Republicans are entirely to blame.
Of course the Republicans are not blameless. Their intransigence over the past several years has been shameful. But how is this doubling down supposed to improve matters? It's as if the Democrats, after begging for half a loaf and getting nothing, now insist on taking the whole loaf.
Loofbourow goes on:
Republicans used to have some plausible deniability when the left accused them of racism, corruption, privileging the rich, or wanting to criminalize poverty. . . . Trump has stripped that veneer and proved every one of those charges not just right but undeniable.
So, Trump is X, therefore Republicans are X. And we're to believe Democrats are the voice of reason?
Recall that the accusation of plausible deniability always presupposes guilt. People who are presumed innocent are presumed not to need plausible deniability. Let's consider those four charges — not against Trump in particular but against anybody who is not on board with the progressive agenda.
Racism. Progressives say the nation has a problem with racism, and they propose certain solutions. Their adversaries, as a matter of fact, agree that racism exists and that it should not exist. They disagree about how to make it go away, and they offer reasons for their disagreement. Progressives are not interested in critiquing those reasons. They are satisfied with dismissing the reasons as justifications for racism. This lets them claim the moral high ground without doing the hard intellectual work of critically analyzing the adversaries' objections.
Corruption. Are some Republican officeholders corrupt? Of course. Are some Democratic officeholders corrupt? You know the answer. Corruption is not a product of any ideology. It is a product of human nature, and neither progressives nor conservatives are any more or less human than the rest of us.
Privileging the rich. We're still talking about human nature, not about anybody's political philosophy. Most rich people are powerful, and powerful people tend to use their power to benefit themselves. The smart ones will also use their power to benefit other people, including those who didn't get the lucky breaks that enabled them to get rich. That is because, as Socrates is supposed to have said, the right thing to do also happens to be the smart thing to do. Besides, anybody who achieves power in a democracy is going to be inclined to favor anyone who helped them acquire their power. We saw this happen when liberals were in power. When the governors need the consent of the governed, it is going to happen.
Wanting to criminalize poverty. Of course nobody is saying anything remotely like "Being poor ought to be against the law." Whence the notion, then, that Republicans are thinking it? Apparently from the observation that some things Republicans would like to prohibit are things that only poor people have any reason for doing, like sleeping under bridges.
Here the progressives are committing a fallacy identified by William F. Buckley over 50 years ago. During a meeting with some of his associates, Buckley said it was a mistake to infer subjective intention from objective outcome. In other words, you cannot validly conclude, from the observation that the enactment of some policy had certain consequences, that the advocates of that policy intended those consequences. On the occasion, he was not attacking any liberals. He was attacking the John Birch Society. The Birchers were arguing that because the government's post-WWII foreign policy had resulted in Communist victories in China and elsewhere, those victories must have been the purpose for which the policy was formulated. Buckley was saying that such thinking was just stupid, and he was right. It is just as stupid, and for the same reason, to accuse Republicans of wanting to criminalize poverty.
It is a fundamental principle of both law and ethics that intentions are relevant to moral judgments. It is the reason we make a distinction between murder and manslaughter even though the outcome is the same in both cases. And let us not forget who invented the notions of hate crime amd genocide, both of which are more about the perpetrators' motives than about the deeds themselves.
Next: The times are a-changin'
(This page last updated on August 22, 2019.)