(What is ironic is that the author totally missed the fact that the Alt-Right is doing what he urges the Conservatives to do. The fact is that the Conservatives have already failed to carry out his 3 recommendations - and the Alt-Right is doing exactly that as we speak!) - CL
What is the root or basis of the battle?
Simple. It's epistemological and psychological: truth vs.
ideology and facts vs. feelings.
Is there such a thing as truth or facts? Do we let ideology
warp truth? Do we let feelings triumph over truth and facts?
The left employs six tactics to
win the battle.
The first is to deny that facts
and truth exist. Nietzsche:
Everything is Interpretation: ... Against those who say
"There are only facts," I say, "No, facts are precisely what
there is not, only interpretations." We cannot establish any fact in
itself. Perhaps it is folly to want to do such a thing. (Quoted in Louis P.
Pojman, Classics of Philosophy, Oxford UP, 1998, pp. 1015-16, emphasis
original.)
This is hyper-skepticism that has morphed nowadays into
postmodernism. It's called perspectivism. We have only our point of
view or worldview. Now let's fight for our corner, not so much for the
truth.
Postmodernism is dominant today. It's powerful. If we
deny facts, then the traditionalists' positions crumble. It's all about
challenging the old ways – or truths – that have stood the test of time.
The second tactic is to deny
common sense, which looks a lot like Nietzsche's hyper-skepticism. Being
somewhat sheltered in my own Christian world before I reached grad school at a
lowly state university, I was shocked at how many times I heard the
intellectuals sneer at common sense. "Oh, studies contradict common
sense!" (An older student in one of my classes just recently
repeated it, too.) It's obvious why they deny it. Common sense
trumps their ideology.
What is common sense? It's the convergence of the five
senses as we take in the physical data and perceive the world and eventually
draw conclusions from the perceptions. And then, since humankind all has
common sense – in common – we can work together to form a consensus
(note the stem -sens- in consensus).
However, the basis of hyper-skepticism is the denial that the five
senses are accurate to begin with. In Phil. 101 we learn about Descartes.
In his first Meditation, he imagined a figure down the street in the fog.
Is that a man walking toward me? I think it is, but maybe not.
My senses of sight and hearing are confused. It was a lamppost,
after all. So my five senses can't be trusted. (Never mind that
Descartes invented an extreme example, and in most cases, like driving down the
road, the five senses are reliable.) Descartes went for rationalism or
knowledge apart from empirical data.
Hume is the king of skeptics. Our knowledge of the
observable world of nature – or cause and effect – is based on custom or habit.
We're just used to things; we've grown accustomed to them. Our
empirical knowledge – the data perceived by the five senses – is not based on a
secure foundation.
Common sense is thrown out with the bath water, if there was a baby
to begin with.
The third tactic: the left
invented political correctness to win the battle, while the right values truth.
Here are the two sides boiled down:
Political correctness:
1. If you're truthful and
factual, you'll be hurtful.
2. Don't be hurtful.
3. Therefore, don't be truthful
and factual.
Political incorrectness:
1. If you're truthful and
factual, you'll be hurtful.
2. Truth and facts are
better than hurt feelings.
3. Therefore, be truthful
and factual (even if it hurts).
An example is women on the frontlines, where bullets fly by the
soldiers' and marines' heads. From observing the Olympics, we can deduce
that mankind at the top of his game is faster and stronger than womankind at
the top of her game in the same events like pole vault, high jump, rowing, or
the 100-meter sprint. These are biological, physical facts we can observe
with our own eyes. So quite sensibly, the IOC separates the men from
women.
Now let's imagine a platoon of twenty soldiers, ten men at the top
of their training and ten women at the top of their training. In
difficult situations, most of the women will not be able to keep up with most
of the men. The Olympics tell me so. Therefore, isn't it obvious
that we should keep the two sexes separate and women away from the most
difficult of scenarios?
However, the problem is that women who want to serve in combat –
however few they are – will have hurt feelings, not to mention the feelings of
congresswomen who support them, if the Joint Chiefs deny them the opportunity.
Behind the denial of biological and physical facts is ideology of
equality, not only of the intellect, but also of the world of observable
nature, the source of scientific conclusions.
So ideology and feelings must thwart the facts or biological
truth.
Going along with the third
tactic, the fourth one is to call names. How many times have
we heard these pejoratives: homophobe, Islamophobe, sexist, racist, intolerant,
speciesist, and ignorant! (I got called this last one recently, until I
was able to steer the classroom discussion toward the basic facts in the
differences between mankind and womankind.) It is difficult to have one's
feelings hurt and especially to have an ideology crumble before the facts, so
name-calling is an emotional reaction to maintain the ideology. I
sympathize – but I won't cave in to it.
The fifth tactic is to invent
sensitivity training classes. If you say truthful things – if truth
can be discovered or is even a value these days – then you must be hauled into
a sensitivity training class to get yourself re-educated. I had a
discussion with a dean about who is going to win the ideological battle – the
professional eggshell-walkers who intend to drag the rest of us on to their
eggshells, or will reasonable people like him and me refuse to play their game
and refuse to submit to their value of feelings over facts? Maybe we
should have hyper-sensitivity training.
"Don't be so danged sensitive!" A Cal Berkeley
grad, he stared at me for a few seconds, processing my words. I think he
saw it. The discussion ended well. He's been good to me ever since
(so far because I have lost jobs before for my views).
The sixth tactic is to go to
the courts. The left gets frustrated with the slow, stupid sheep called
Americans. Our fellow citizens believe, almost by nature and by virtue of
being descendants of pioneers, in common sense and in knowledge derived from
the physical world. This is called American pragmatism, and thank God for
it (I say). However, law schools are filled with intellectuals who have
drunk deeply from Nietzsche, Hume, and Descartes and other hyper-skeptics.
Law schools have turned into left-wing indoctrination seminaries:
ideology over facts. This is especially disconcerting because the courts
are supposed to try the facts, and often they do. Nonetheless, the judges
strike down the will of the slow, stupid sheep by placing ideological
considerations first, when it suits them. Article Three (judicial branch)
is slapping around Article One (legislative branch).
So who is going to win?
Conservatism can win if its believers first understand the battle.
The Battle for America's Soul is epistemological and psychological
(emotions and feelings); the fight boils down to truth vs. feelings and facts
vs. ideology.
Second, we can win if we show how truth and facts should be the basis
of our ideology and feelings. Life is better if our beliefs correspond to
the real world – the correspondence theory of truth. It is (or should be)
the moving force of our perception of morality founded on fact, the root of our
sensible policies. Thus can we meet the emotional and intellectual needs
of humans and win the policy fights.
Third, conservatism can win if we fearlessly – in the face of the
sneers – promote more American common sense or pragmatism, which asks what
works. It's the source of our cutting-edge greatness, our
entrepreneurship, free-market capitalism; the source of our inventions and
advanced technology, like cell phones and space exploration; the root of our law
courts founded on facts (one hopes).
No wonder leftists sneer at American common sense. They lose
if it wins.
In national policy, as distinct from family life, facts and truth
– however hurtful to some – must come first.
Then we can win every
time.
James Arlandson's website is Live as Free People, where he has
posted Neo-Monarchs
v. the People, Postmodern
roots of leftist policy, The Sneering
Age, Three cures for
the Sneering Age!, and the
Second Amendment from an Eighteenth Century Yeoman's Perspective.
