How little the well-being of the ostensible beneficiaries really matters is shown by how little attention is usually shown to testing theories logically beforehand or empirically afterwards, as compared to the unremitting efforts put into propagandizing or into demonizing those with alternative views. As an economist described someone who passionately advocated particular economic policies, without the most elementary knowledge of economic analysis and with little or no concern for empirical consequences, “he asks not whether it is water or gasoline he is tossing on the economic fire—he asks only whether it is a well-intended act.”70
Similarly, some of the most passionate opponents of the American involvement in the Vietnam war, ostensibly on grounds of the sufferings of the Indochinese peoples from the military conflict there, were not nearly as concerned about the fate of these peoples after the Americans left. As two former 1960s radicals said of their comrades who remained radicals:
Their moral amnesia allowed them to ignore the fact that more Indochinese people were killed in the first two years of the Communist peace than had been killed on all sides in a decade of the anti-Communist war.71
While many opponents of the Vietnam war on humanitarian grounds (myself included) were also horrified later by the vast and traumatic exodus of the “boat people” fleeing the new regime in Vietnam, and still more so by the genocide carried out by the victorious Communist regime in Cambodia, those who opposed the war from the perspective of an ideological vision created no such uproar over the sufferings of the peoples of Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos after the Communist victories in Indochina. As with so many other issues, the fate of the ostensible beneficiaries was never an over-riding consideration, if it was a consideration at all. Long before the Vietnam war, the fates of other ostensible beneficiaries had been repeatedly brushed aside with phrases about “the growing pains of a new society” or “You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs.” It was the vision that mattered, not the flesh-and-blood human beings who were viewed as the incidental casualties of the vision.
The crucial role of self-exaltation underlies the way that those with opposing opinions are viewed. It is not sufficient, for example, to depict those who believe in preserving peace through military deterrence as mistaken, factually incorrect, illogical in their analysis, or dangerous in their conclusions. All of these things, even if true, would still leave them on the same moral plane as the anointed visionaries and would leave both subject to the same requirements of evidence and logic, as their arguments are laid before others to decide. What is necessary, from the standpoint of self-exaltation, is to depict proponents of military deterrence as not “really” being for peace, as being either bloodthirsty or acting as venal representatives of special interests who desire war for their own ends.
In much the same way, it has not been enough to claim that advocates of judicial restraint are mistaken in their premises or conclusions. They must be depicted as calloused toward the less fortunate, biased against women and minorities, and otherwise morally unworthy. The verb “to Bork” has been added to the language by one of the most extensive demonization campaigns of this sort.
Self-exaltation introduces a bias into considerations of many issues. For example, it creates a vested interest in the incapacity of other people. That is, there is not only a tendency to see people as helpless and not responsible for their own actions, there is a tendency toward policies and programs which in fact reduce them to that condition and induce them to accept that image of themselves, while the anointed visionaries play the role of rescuers. This is only one of the ways in which the vision of morally anointed visionaries ministers to the egos of the anointed, rather than the well-being of the ostensible beneficiaries of their efforts.
The almost universal disdain toward the middle class—the bourgeoisie—by those with cosmic visions can be more readily understood in light of the role of such visions as personal gratification and personal license. The middle classes have been classically people of rules, traditions, and self-discipline, to a far greater extent than the underclass below them or the wealthy and aristocratic classes above them. While the underclass pay the price of not having the self-discipline of the bourgeoisie—in many ways, ranging from poverty to imprisonment—the truly wealthy and powerful can often disregard the rules, including laws, without paying the consequences. Those with cosmic visions that seek escape from social constraints regarded as arbitrary, rather than inherent, tend to romanticize the unruliness of the underclass and the sense of being above the rules found among the elite.
Rules, traditions, and self-discipline all represent guidance from the distilled experiences of others, rather than self-indulgence based the inner light of one’s own vision. It is almost axiomatic that those with cosmic visions must disdain the bourgeoisie. The visionaries must also disdain the kind of society that evolves over the generations through experience, rather than the kind of society that can be created by the imposition of an inspired vision.
Self-exaltation is not inherent in all theories or all visions. For example, theories of laissez-faire economics, such as those of Adam Smith in the eighteenth century or Friedrich Hayek in the twentieth, do not create a vision of a morally anointed elite and, in fact, both writers said that men differ less than dogs.72 Hayek in particular went out of his way to praise the good intentions of his opponents and to say that the dire consequences he expected from their activities were the furthest things from the humane objectives they were seeking.73
The arrogant vision of an anointed elite comes not from the simple fact that it is a vision, but from the sense of themselves as morally anointed among those who hold this particular vision. That vision makes that particular belief possible and therefore becomes a vision which its devotees are loath to relinquish, even in the face of evidence against the views that sustain their exaltation. Desperately ingenious efforts to evade particular evidence, or to denigrate objective facts in general, are all consistent with their heavy emotional investment in their vision, which is ostensibly about the well-being of others but is ultimately about themselves.
It is not visions, as such, that are inherently dangerous. What is dangerous are insulated visions. Nothing produces insulation from reality more effectively than power and money. Power means that decisions based on the prevailing vision over-ride others’ decisions, beliefs, or evidence, regardless of what the facts may be. Money means that support for the ideologically preferred conclusions can be purchased not only from “hired guns” but also by funding the research and writings of those committed to the same viewpoint, for whatever reasons, while those who disagree are left unfunded.
While the tyranny of visions reached its height (or its depth) in twentieth-century totalitarian regimes, the long, costly, painful—and ultimately successful—struggles against those regimes did not end the tyranny of visions. That tyranny has now become part of Western democratic nations themselves. Indeed, the drive to impose that tyranny ever more widely in the United States has led to trends which can only be called the quiet repeal of the American revolution.
IV
The Quiet Repeal of the American Revolution
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Revolutionary War for American independence was not simply a landmark event in the history of the United States. It was a landmark in the history of the world—and especially a landmark in the history of the evolution of free and democratic societies. Its international significance was symbolized by France’s donation of the Statue of Liberty to the United States on the one hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and by the creation of a facsimile of this statue in China, more than a century after that, by protesters vainly seeking to create a free and democratic government in that country.
The Ame
rican revolution was in some ways the most farreaching of all the great revolutions in history. Other revolutions may have had more sweeping rhetoric, or greater extremes of violence and terror, or more categorical claims of change. They may even have had more radical changes of personnel, as in the change from czarist to Communist rulers in Moscow, while replacing one form of autocratic despotism with another and more bloody form.
The American revolution, however, went further in rejecting a basic conception of man and society that goes back thousands of years, and which is still with us today. Down through the centuries, people of the most diverse philosophic persuasions have proceeded as if what was needed was to replace false doctrines with true doctrines and false leaders with true leaders—the heathens with the faithful, capitalists with socialists, royalty with republicans, and so on. But, unlike the French revolution or the Bolshevik revolution, for example, the American revolution and its resulting constitution did not center on a change in the cast of characters in high places or on a change in their political language or immediate policy agenda. Its central concern was in establishing new processes by which whoever occupied the places of power could be restrained and replaced. In short, it did not pretend to have a doctrinal truth but instead implied a deep skepticism that anyone had either a monopoly on doctrinal truth or such moral or intellectual rectitude as to be exempt from constraints, condemnations, or dismissals from office by their fellow men.
What the American Constitution established was not simply a particular system but a process for changing systems, practices, and leaders, together with a method of constraining whoever or whatever was ascendant at any given time. Viewed positively, what the American revolution did was to give to the common man a voice, a veto, elbow room, and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of his “betters.” That is why it was not simply a national phenomenon but has been seen by others in the world at large as a landmark in the general struggle for human freedom.
That is also why it must be opposed by those with more ambitious visions—even if they do not consciously feel any animosity against constitutional freedoms—because, on issue after issue, those freedoms stand between the morally self-anointed and the realization of dreams which have overwhelming importance to them. Some of these dreams revolve around the quest for cosmic justice, in which constitutional constraints may be seen as technicalities to be finessed. Other dreams may be about personal ambitions that can be fulfilled only in a very different kind of society from that established by the Constitution of the United States. Ego and ideals are of course not mutually exclusive but may readily exist in the same individual, who may even mistake the former for the latter.
A quarter of a century before he delivered the Gettysburg address, Abraham Lincoln gave another speech, much less celebrated but all too relevant to our theme and our times. In an 1838 address in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln asked where future dangers to the freedom and security of the American people might be found. It was not from foreign enemies, he said, but from internal threats. If and when the fundamental principles and structure of American government should fall under attack, “men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity” and “strike the blow” against free government.1
What is particularly significant about Lincoln’s warning is that it was based on a vision of what human beings are like, and especially what talented and ambitious leaders are like. To Lincoln, the historic achievement of American society in establishing a new form of government in the world was in jeopardy from later elites precisely because that achievement was already history:
The field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot.2
While the ambitions of some might be satisfied with “a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair,” Lincoln said, “such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle.” He added:
What! Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?—Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.—It sees not distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen.3
That some leader dangerous to the basic institutions of American society would arise, Lincoln thought inevitable. Safeguarding those institutions would require a public sufficiently united, sufficiently attached to freedom, and sufficiently wise, “to successfully frustrate his designs.”4 Today it would also require a public sufficiently resistant to incessant criticisms and condemnations of their society for failing to achieve cosmic justice. Moreover, if the dangers in our own times were limited to those of “towering genius,” there would be much less danger than there is. However, all that is needed are towering presumptions, which are increasingly mass-produced in our schools and colleges by the educational vogue of encouraging immature and inexperienced students to sit in emotional judgment on the complex evolution of whole ages and of vast civilizations.
Political leaders are not the only ones with a vested interest in opposing the existing framework of American society, precisely because it is the existing framework, so that supporting it offers no paths to the kind of glory they seek. The intelligentsia have exactly the same incentives as Napoleonic politicians, even if the glory they seek is not necessarily direct political power in their own hands, but only the triumph of their doctrines, the reordering of other people’s lives in accordance with their visions, a display of their own intellectual virtuosity, or simply a posture of daring in the role of a verbal dandy. The easiest way to achieve all these goals is to disdain the beaten path, as Lincoln put it, and to attack or undermine the fundamental structure of the American political system and society.
A small but all too typical example was provided by a Stanford law student serving in one of the many organizations devoted to “prisoner’s rights.” She said, “It’s precisely because prisoners are viewed as the castaways of our society—that’s what draws me to them even more.” She added, “We should want to know why a person can’t function in this society, what it is about this society.”5 In this formulation—common among the intelligentsia—people are in jail because they cannot function in this society. It is not that they do not choose to function, but to prey on others instead, and to commit acts that are crimes in all sorts of societies around the world. Usually neither evidence nor logic is asked or given for such blanket indictments of “society” or for a non-judgmental view of criminals. It is simply part of the zeitgeist and a shortcut to distinction—cheap glory—to take a stand against “society.”
Unfortunately, what many call “society” is in fact civilization. No one is openly opposed to American civilization, nor even covertly plotting its demise. Many of those pursuing a vision of cosmic justice simply take an adversarial position against traditions, morals, and institutions that make the survival of this civilization possible. The prerequisites of civilization are not an interesting subject to those who concentrate on its shortcomings—that is, on the extent to which what currently exists as the fruits of centuries of efforts and sacrifices is inferior to what they can produce in their imagination immediately at zero cost, in the comfort and security provided by the society they disdain. What would otherwise be a purely personal idiosyncrasy becomes socially ominous when it generates a who
le vision of the world in which very real and often very painful predicaments are dealt with as if they were entirely different from what they are.
That vision is the vision of cosmic justice. In addition to its other dangers, the quest for cosmic justice is incompatible with the fundamental principles of the American revolution—the rule of law, individual freedom, and democratic government.
THE RULE OF LAW
Laws are not simply edicts backed by the power to enforce them. All societies proclaim duties and prohibitions which they are prepared to enforce, but not all societies have the rule of law. Neither the individual tyranny of a despot nor the collective tyranny of a totalitarian political party under communism or fascism represents the rule of law, even though there may be many individual laws under both forms of government. The rule of law—“a government of laws and not of men”—implies rules known in advance, applied generally, and constraining the rulers as well as the ruled. Freedom implies exemptions from the power of the rulers and a corresponding limitation on the scope of all laws, even those of democratically elected governments. “Congress shall make no law—” the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States begins in spelling out some of the exemptions from laws which constitute the right to freedom. Democracy implies majority sanction as the basis for laws, but democracy by itself implies nothing about either freedom or the rule of law. A majority may destroy the freedom of a minority or make the issuance of edicts as arbitrary and discriminatory as it wishes. The systematic denial of rights to American blacks in the Southern states during the Jim Crow era was a classic example of democratic despotism.
Among the forces driving democratic governments toward an expansion of their powers beyond the point where these powers threaten freedom is that not only people of towering genius or towering presumptions, but also people of towering ambitions have a vested interest in such an expansion. As Alexis de Tocqueville put it: “It may easily be seen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those powers themselves.”6 If nothing else, they can easily imagine themselves and others of similar disposition “running the country,” with all the casual disregard of other people’s individual freedom that this implies.
The Quest for Cosmic Justice Page 13