Why the United States are now Only America [P2]

[This is part two a brief introductory piece I put up earlier this week. It is not necessary to read the first part for what follows to make sense, though it explains some of my motivations and lays the groundwork for discussion of what is a fairly sensitive topic. This version has integrated footnotes, for a version with standard footnotes please go HERE. Thanks for visiting – DpH]

The connection between politics, a divided America, and ethical relativism may not be immediately apparent, but this is only because ethical relativism didn’t show up in the media until after it had already infiltrated our daily lives, and the national discourse was likely too far gone to recover.

In the United States of America, ethical relativism began in the educational system. The public colleges and universities of the country were largely liberal places, which gained a reputation for elitism, snobbery, and anti-American sentiment during the Vietnam War Police Action. Whether or not this characterization of the institutions was accurate is not for me to say, the important thing is that the social stereotype of university students belonging to an elite sub-section of the population caught on in the national psyche¹.

1. As with most arguments, this explanation is oversimplified, though the construct is true. While there is some debate about how the three (liberalism, elitism, and education) came to be so intertwined, it is fairly safe to say it has something to do with conservative men from poor families going to fight in Vietnam (and their parents needing to believe that it was for something more valuable than pissing off Russia) while wealthier individuals who could afford secondary education, or were bright enough to gain scholarships, got to stay home and protest the very conflict to which conservative youth were sacrificed. It didn’t help matters that when the soldiers returned, they were often treated hostilely by those who had not served*.

*I am way off topic here, but I feel compelled to say that much as conservatives justified the war because they couldn’t bear the idea that their child was dying without cause, young liberals condemned the war in part because they felt immense guilt at not having served. This is not to say they didn’t also believe that it was unjust and unnecessary, only that their actions were more complicated than being unpatriotic or anti-American.

As the stereotype of those with an education being elitist liberals persisted, the liberals graduated and some of them became teachers. This new group of educators came from a culture where having attended college meant a lot of things, and mixed into those meanings and expectations was the idea that one thought he or she was better than other people. It is not possible to know whether what happened next was intentional, or merely subconscious overcompensation deriving from having been labeled a snob, but a new school of teaching began to develop. The new school said that teachers should be unfailing in their encouragement of students, that all students had the potential to be whatever they most desired, and that education was not the bastion of the white and wealthy any longer.

Had the first two items been true, and the last item actually been made a reality, this wouldn’t have been a problem². Unfortunately, the academic establishment was so focused on proving they weren’t elitist, they forgot to be discerning. Students who previously would have been encouraged to attend a vocational school, or earn a diploma so they could work in manufacturing, food processing, mechanical engineering, or building were now pushed toward four-year universities. As a consequence, programs of study that had long been considered glorified pseudo-science experienced growing enrollment. Among these was sociology³, which preached a mix of cultural tolerance and equality of ideas, but more importantly was the first major course of study in which one couldn’t actually be wrong.

2. While not the topic of this post, it is necessary to note that even present day admissions statistics for universities do not reflect full assimilation of certain minority ethnic groups into the academic framework. I hope to see this change in my lifetime, and in no way intend to indicate that I blame the inclusion of minorities for the eventual liberalization of schools. If anything, universities have not become liberal enough in matters of ethnicity. Please also bear in mind I am not arguing for or against affirmative action policies, which are an incredibly complicated topic regardless of how the subjectivist media portrays them. For more on this last item you may want to start with Jonathan Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation: The restoration of Apartheid schooling in America. I can’t say I always agree with Kozol, but he lays out a variety of arguments on the topic without requiring one to invest much time.

3. A guess and check “science” if there ever was one, sociology has the unique distinction of being the only subject I ever tried to receive a poor grade in. The episode I best remember involved me writing a paper on “the looking-glass self” in which I butchered the actual theory and literally wrote a paper comparing American society to Alice in Wonderland, drawing tenuous comparisons, and using every buzzword I could find in the glossary of my textbook regardless of whether it made any sense. The professor returned my paper with a written comment to the effect of: “I’m not sure you entirely understand this concept, but I like the way you have addressed the affect of culture on your world – 100/100!” All subsequent papers were of the same poor quality and my final grade was a 4.0. Color me unimpressed.

The success of this new subjective course of study eventually spilled over into the other humanities⁴, and the practitioners of such social sciences began using claims of race and gender bias to bring disagreeing departments in line. If an inflexible science based on empirical reasoning released a study that disagreed with sociology’s core principles it was likely to be dismissed on the grounds that it reflected only the scientist’s perception of the world through their chosen course of study and could not begin to speak for people who came from other cultures⁵.

4. Most notably into English literature courses, though composition courses and low level faux philosophy courses such as Contemporary Moral Problems were not left unscathed by the changing trends. The last was primarily hijacked by religion which imposed it’s opinions and beliefs as facts on issues like abortion, capital punishment, and separation of church and state (philosophically, of course, not in the legal sense where they long ago lost but can’t seem to get over it).

5. This does not necessarily reflect the ideas of principled sociologists in the world, and may be taken as a perversion of its actual beliefs. However, this is generally how the college of sociology is administered at the undergraduate level. It reflects the idea that Person A and Person B will see the same event but have different opinions of what has happened based on unique prior experience that cannot be duplicated. The unfortunate fact is Norwood Russell Hanson never intended for his ideas about the theory-ladeness of observation to be used against science. Rather, Hanson put forward such theory to help remove personal experience from the equation of scientific study. Once one recognized that all present experience is informed by past experience he would (theoretically) be able to reduce his bias toward certain results before attempting his experiment or disseminating his research. For an accurate depiction of sociology’s origins I would recommend a text specializing in the French Revolution, check the index to see that Comte, Saint Simon, and Durkheim are listed.

The end result of this wrangling was ethical relativism, the idea that some things are true in Situation X that may not be true in Situation Y, becoming ethical subjectivism, the idea that some things are true for Person X that may not be true for Person Y.

This transition began in education, but spread quickly as an ideal way to limit uncomfortable debate in polite company. Where it had once been a mark of manners and good upbringing that one could civilly discuss controversial issues over dinner and drinks with logic and reason being the only moderators necessary, it became impolite to discuss such things at all because everyone was suddenly “entitled to their opinion.” It did not matter if the opinion was illogical, malformed, and false, you were not allowed to explain their rational misstep because it offended their system of beliefs about the world, beliefs that had been nurtured by a Liberal academic institution that allowed everyone to be right because the idea was progressive and provided them cover for charges of snobbery⁶. As with most incorrect decisions, the move to subjectivism served to accomplish very little⁷.

6. Though it did manage to drive the same wedge in academia that had previously only existed in politics. I have been on more than one college campus where the professors of social sciences refuse to communicate with the professors of empirical sciences, and vice versa. It isn’t so much that they dislike each other or don’t respect one another, rather it is too hard to shift gears from a world of numbers and logic into a world where nothing is certain (or move out of the comfort of all one’s ideas being correct into a discussion where there is an objective answer which cannot be disputed).

7. In the last twenty years American colleges have turned out millions of subjectivist thinkers, but they are still considered elitist institutions by those who feel it serves their political ends. Worse, those subjectivists (or ethical skeptics if you prefer) have gone on to raise children in an arena of permissiveness unrivaled in the modern world. By insisting that everyone could be equally right, we managed to institutionalize stupidity in this country^*.

*The funny thing is, everyone agrees that the majority of people in the United States are less than stellar thinkers, but no one believes they are in the majority.

Once the idea of relativism caught hold, it opened up a new way for media to interact with the population. Talk radio hosts and editorial writers could now say anything they pleased. They didn’t need facts or statistics to back their argument, only the proper amount of self-righteous rhetoric and moral indignation⁸. As the national discourse took on an unsophisticated and uninformed tone, the unsophisticated and uninformed began to get involved. Politics had always been a dirty game, but there had once been rules. You could lie all you wanted about yourself, but had to be honest about your opponent. Nixon said “I am not a crook,” not “McGovern is a crook;” however, in the new culture, politicians were free to claim anything they wanted about their opponent, so long as it didn’t offend their base and they didn’t admit they were wrong when actual facts got involved.

8. A good example of this is the idea that President Clinton’s administration was comprised of “tax and spend liberals” who were going to destroy the economy and leave behind a record deficit. There are some who still believe that was what happened in Washington D.C. between 1992 and 2000. In reality, the Clinton administration presided over the greatest period of economic growth in two decades and left a huge budget surplus for the incoming Republican administration. The larger point here is that while the public was able to cite a source for their opinion of President Clinton, their source was not able to cite anything other than his opinion. The level of discourse had been undermined at the primary level, one step removed from view.

The end result of this shift in the political paradigm was a nation that had long been generally united, began to divide. In 1984, Ronald Reagan took every state except Mondale’s home Minnesota, and won nearly 60% of the popular vote⁹. By 2000, the nation was divided nearly evenly, with Gore winning the Northeast and West coast, while Bush took the Midwest and south (except for New Mexico which went to the Democrat).

9. While the concept that American’s were more unified in their ideals during the 1984 election holds true, there is also something to be said for the fact that Mondale quite likely destroyed any chance he had of mounting a challenge before he even began campaigning. At the Democratic National Convention, Mondale famously said in his acceptance speech: “Let’s tell the truth. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.” It was an obvious attempt by the underdog to come across as the honest candidate, but was not well received. I posit that the reasons for this are two-fold.

A) American’s do not like to hear you are going to raise their taxes, and particularly don’t like to hear you use it as a means of gaining favor.

B) Mondale broke the rules of civilized politics when he said Reagan was lying about not raising taxes in his next term. He would have been better off saying he wasn’t going to raise taxes, and doing it behind the voter’s backs if he got elected. We were used to being lied to that way, but calling your opponent dishonest was just uncouth (even if it was true, but we’ll kick Reagan around some other time).

Such a dramatic change in so short a period of time is likely to have many causes; however, it seems the key was American’s could no longer be swayed by debate. Any political discussion was suddenly subject to ending in a stalemate of “we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” a clearly absurd idea that necessitates two opposing ideas be equally true. As this is impossible, the disagreement need only last until the two opinions can be subjected to logical evaluation and one be found superior. Unfortunately, even truth was becoming relative in the new culture.

There are three basic ways to understand truth. The first is as a statement of what properties a given item does or does not have. This relates to theoretical and observational properties, but also makes room for one’s personal experience by acknowledging that observational properties should not be confused for empirical evidence. This is the classically defined truth in which a “true” claim represents the world the way it is, while a “false” claim represents the world in a way which it is not.

With relativism and subjectivism come two other versions of truth which appear sane on the surface, but don’t hold up to thorough investigation. The philosopher Dr. Russ Payne writes about the second kind of truth as “a claim about belief.” Saying something is true in this case is only to say you believe it to be true. This is a valid usage of true in cases where two people believing opposite ideas are able to do so without one infringing upon the other¹⁰. If you say it is true that summer is the most beautiful time of the year, and I say summer is not the most beautiful time of the year, we have clearly not staked anything on the outcome of the debate. Our disagreement will not result in there being no summer, and a subjective truth does no harm. We can agree to disagree without concern, because we are not actually discussing truth, we are discussing belief with a very sloppy terminology that uses words to mean things they don’t actually mean.

10. To clarify, Dr. Payne is one of the most intelligent people I have ever met, and in no way does he endorse the view that truth as only “a claim about belief” is valid. He specializes in biomedical ethics, the philosophy of science, and logic. Abstract truth does not enter into his work. I hope to write more about universal and scientific law at some point in the future to more adequately address how even scientific-sounding laws of truth may actually be nothing more than accidents of nature and not true universal laws relating to empirical findings about our world. For now I would direct you to Karl Popper’s work on the Verificationist’s Theory of Meaning and the Demarcation Problem.

This second kind of truth is primarily dangerous only because it leads directly to the third kind of truth, which I call Truth via Equivocation¹¹. Just as equivocating in a debate requires that one pivot his argument by changing how a word is used between two premises, equivocation in daily life allows one to call a belief truth in benign circumstances, and then use the word truth when he means belief in more important discourse. If his opponent challenges him and points to the fact that he means belief (opinion) and not truth (fact), the lazy debater simply moves to “what’s true for you isn’t necessarily true for me” effectively ending debate¹².

11. The most common illustration of equivocation goes something like this:

P1: A feather is light

P2: Things which are light cannot be dark

C/ Therefore a feather cannot be dark

While this is a valid argument, it is not sound. By changing the active definitions of the words light and dark from premise to premise one is able to take a logically valid syllogism and create a fallacious argument. In the above example it is easy to spot how this has been done, but more subtle equivocations (religious people like to equivocate arguments on the usage of “perverse”) it can be hard to stop the conversation and convince your opponent or the audience that their point is invalid.

12. With thanks to Dr. Payne for the previous wording, this attempt to end debate is not necessarily malicious by nature. It is equally possible that one finds discussing such things emotionally upsetting and is using the subjectivist argument to prevent undue stress. However, it is still not an excuse for the behavior. If you want to talk about the value of democracy you have an obligation to take part in the process, and civilized discourse is key.

Conversations similar to this are probably familiar to anyone who discusses politics with friends or family. Perhaps they have always been common in the way that one who won’t listen to reason isn’t necessarily a poor friend, and cease-fires are good for maintaining relationships. However, never before have they been part of the national media’s discourse. Where we could once trust the media to report hard facts verified by multiple sources, we have been left with only a series of relativist and subjectivist propaganda machines. Even media outlets which attempt to sustain rational reporting have faltered in recent years, reporting “Democrats claim new policy will result in higher taxes for working poor” when they mean “looking at the tax plan and doing the math shows it will result in higher taxes.” News is now nothing more than a series of position papers and talking points. Full-disclosure no longer means you have to deliver all of the facts, only that you have to cite the sources of unreliable opinion you report as fact. Fair and balanced no longer indicates an attempt to objectively show all sides of an argument, rather it shows one is willing to report a given side’s position regardless of merit.

The relativist school of thought on matters of truth has become epidemic over the last decade, and taken down into the muck a nation that was once united behind the principle of settling differences and moving toward consensus through rational discussion. Truth can no longer be used as an arbiter of debate, and the end result has been a transition in all aspects of American life to inauthentic posturing.

The only way out of this propaganda-grown wilderness is to hold one another accountable. It does not matter if it is a coworker, friend, relative, or stranger, when a half truth is propped-up as fact, or a belief is put forward as truth we all have an obligation to our country to call that person a liar. There has been a lot of talk about patriotism over the last decade, and even more name calling, but patriotism has nothing to do with magnetic ribbons or American flag lapel pins. Patriotism is telling the truth about your nation and being unashamed, even when it is unflattering, because you know everyone you live with is trying to do better, trying to put country ahead of self, trying to tell the truth. Only then will we overcome what began as a metaphor describing our inability to agree on public policy, but become a literal condition: Only then will Americans be able to find common ground.

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