| The False Flag Of "Certainty" As Fundamental Problem
AZDem takes as his point of departure an analysis by Bush Administration Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, Jr., who was responsible for refusing to reauthorize the NSA domestic wiretapping program when Ashcroft was hospitalized. In the passage AZDem quotes, Comey identifies the bottom-line problem with Bush Administration as its certainty.
While Comey's refusal was certainly admirable, and reflected something fundamental about his character, his actions do not negate the fact that he was, after all, a Bush Administration appointee, and an ideological conservative. Therefore, it seems only natural that he would be far more likely to see other conservatives erring more in terms of their process than in terms of fundamental substance. To put it bluntly, he would say the problem was that they were certain, when the deeper problem was that they were wrong--and not just accidentally so, but as a direct result of their ideology, which held them to be morally superior and beyond the reach of mundane reality, be it moral, ethical, legal or even physical.
AZDem elides this rather obvious point, simply by choosing Comey as the starting point and Polestar of his narrative. He then proceeds to the clearly mistaken claim that progressives were furious with Bush for eight long years precisely because of the same certainty that Comey identified....
After his resignation Comey, in a series of speeches, revealed that he was deeply troubled by the "certainty" with which Bush administration officials approached problems. At a William & Mary "Charter Day" address in 2008, Comey said
A healthy recognition of the limits of our ability to understand facts, and to reason from them to good decisions, is a strength.
But too often in my experience - especially at the top of government - that recognition is derided as a weakness, as "not being solid," or as "squishiness," or "lack of conviction." Comey's Charter Day Remarks
Liberals, including especially those at Daily Kos, spent eight long years agonizing over the certainty of the right. |
No doubt Bush's idiotic certainty was a considerable source of frustration for progressives, but it was assuredly not the driving cause. It was, at best, the sizzle, not the steak. What really got us angry was not the fact that Bush was certain, but that he was wrong--and generally not just "mistaken" wrong, but dishonestly wrong, morally wrong, fraudulently wrong--yes, he even lied--and that thousands of Americans and millions of Iraqis died as a direct result.
AZDem misdirects us away from this obvious truth by immediately following the above with a list of Bush certainties:
Certain that homosexuality is a choice
Certain that human life begins at conception
Certain that abortion is murder
Certain that American democracy is the best form of government for all
Certain that tax cuts solve all economic problems
Certain that regulation is evil and government is the problem
Certain that the free market solves all problems
Certain that European or Canadian style health care has failed
Certain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction
And on and on. The certainty of those on the right made serious dialogue impossible and made good decision making difficult.
On January 20, 2009 that changed. The United States has a President who believes good decisions come from listening to all perspectives. A President who understands that certainty is wrong, no matter what side of the political spectrum practices it. |
So, it's equally wrong to be certain that tax cuts solve all economic problems, and to be certain that they do not?
I don't think so. Do you?
That's what AZDem just claimed. But there's a stark asymmetry between those two professions of certainty. The first is a dogmatic assertion of universal causality. The second merely affirms a diversity of causation.
Although AZDem's formulation is exaggerated (restricting "free trade" and raising the minimum wage might also be blamed for some problems), the schematic relationship I've pointed out does indeed have a broad validity. Conservatives generally do tend to think that there are a few simple causes of all our problems, and a few proven solutions. They are not just certain about things in general, they are certain that things are really quite simple, when you get down to it. (They also tend to think that liberals are ultimately the cause of all our problems, since liberals tend to insist that things aren't just that simple.)
Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be certain that things are generally messy, that there are multiple causes for most of the social problems we encounter, and thus that we need to work hard to understand how different causes fit together, and how to get responses to those different causes to fit together into an effective policy response.
These two types of certainty are radically different from one another. The certainty in simple, singular causes and solutions to problems readily translates into dogmatism, and fierce disagreement with anyone who proposes a different cause or a different solution.
What's more, because of the belief in singular causes and solutions, these disagreements tend to be very light on the sort of rational argumentation that plausible might be able to change people's minds.
In contrast, the certainty in multiple causality and systematically integrated solutions involves an inherent openness to examining a diverse range of potential causes and solutions. To be sure, even scientists pushing their own pet models can be fiercely dogmatic in their own way. But the forms of argumentation they are forced into, simply because of the culture they are part of, necessary have far more substance than the dogmatic quarrels that believers in simple solutions routinely fall into. The same is true of Enlightenment culture generally, of which liberal political culture is a part. This is not to say that dogmatism is impossible on the left--particularly when one looks beyond the border of the US. But it is to say that the tendencies toward dogmatism differ dramatically between left and right, and they differ far more deeply than the tendencies toward certainty, precisely because left-liberal certainty generally tends to be more pluralistic and open-ended.
The Bush Attack On Enlightenment Reason
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
All this, however, is only modestly better than AZDem's original argument. It corrects a fundamental mistake, but it doesn't really get us pointed toward the truth of the matter, which is that Bush wasn't just certain, wasn't just wrong, wasn't just close-minded, but that he deliberately and systematically excluded the truth, and dismantled the means for disinterested analysis that were invaluable for discerning error and orienting toward truth. This was clearly demonstrated in the August 2003 report, "Politics and Science in the Bush Administration", prepared by minority staff of the Government Reform Committee at the direction of Henry Waxman.
Examination of the Waxman Report helps disenthrall us from the simplistic rhetorical games that AZDem (perhaps quite inadvertently) would trap us in. In the excerpt that follows, I've left out most of the supporting details in order to focus attention on the patterns discovered. I don't think anyone here needs convincing about the details of what the Bush Administration did. Rather, what's lacking in AZDem's account is conceptual clarity about how to characterize the overall pattern, which is what the following provides:
The Administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists. The subjects involved span a broad range, but they share a common attribute: the beneficiaries of the scientific distortions are important supporters of the President, including social conservatives and powerful industry groups.
The report identifies over twenty scientific issues affected by the undermining of science....
Across this wide range of issues, the report identifies the three principal ways in which the Bush Administration has pursued its agenda: by manipulating scientific advisory committees, by distorting and suppressing scientific information, and by interfering with scientific research and analysis.
Manipulating Scientific Advisory Committees
Scientific advisory committees assure that the government hears from the nation's top experts in a particular field before creating policy in that area. The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires that such committees be "fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented" and requires that advice and recommendations "not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest." The Bush Administration, however, has repeatedly manipulated the advisory committee process to advance its political and ideological agenda. Examples include: - Appointing Unqualified Persons with Industry Ties. ....
- Appointing Unqualified Persons with Ideological Agendas. The Department of Health and Human Services nominated as chair of the FDA's Reproductive Health Drug Advisory Committee an anti-abortion activist who recommends that women read the bible for relief of premenstrual symptoms. The appointee's principal credential appears to be his opposition to the abortifacient RU-486. The medical journal Lancet described his scientific record as "sparse" and wrote that "[a]ny further right-wing incursions on expert panels' membership will cause a terminal decline in public trust in the advice of scientists."
- Stacking Advisory Committees. ....
- Opposing Qualified Experts. The Department of Health and Human Services rejected a widely respected expert's nomination to a grant review panel on workplace safety after it became clear that she supported rules to protect workers from musculoskeletal injuries, rules that the Bush Administration opposes....
Distorting and Suppressing Scientific Information
The public relies on government agencies for accurate scientific information, evidence-based decision making on matters of life and health, and clear explanations of complex technical matters. Under the Bush Administration, however, Administration officials have withheld or skewed important scientific information that conflicts with the Bush Administration's ideological and political agenda. Examples include: - Including Misleading Information in Presidential Communications. After banning research on new lines of embryonic stem cells, President Bush assured the American people that research on "more than 60" existing lines cells "could lead to breakthrough therapies and cures." In fact, only 11 cell lines are now available for research, all of which were grown with mouse cells, rendering them inappropriate for treating people.
- Presenting Incomplete and Inaccurate Information to Congress. ....
- Altering Web Sites. ....
- Suppressing Agency Reports. After the White House edited a discussion of global warming in the Environmental Protection Agency's Draft Report on the Environment, agency scientists objected that the draft "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change," and EPA chose to eliminate the discussion entirely....
Interfering with Scientific Research
The federal government invests $100 billion annually in scientific research to discover new cures, protect the environment, defend the country, and support other effective policies for the health and welfare of the American people. But instead of encouraging the development and dissemination of objective scientific information, the Bush Administration has repeatedly interfered with scientific research and analysis where political and ideological interests are at stake. Examples include: - Scrutinizing Ongoing Research. ....
- Obstructing Agency Analyses. The Bush Administration refused to let the Environmental Protection Agency conduct analyses on air quality proposals that differ from the President's "Clear Skies" initiative....
- Undermining Outcome Assessment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to evaluate sex education programs and identify those with scientific evidence of effectiveness. After social conservatives complained that none of the programs taught "abstinence only," the agency ended the "Programs That Work" initiative altogether.
- Blocking Scientific Publication. ....
This report describes these and other examples of interference in the scientific process. While in a few cases the Bush Administration reversed itself or admitted error, most of these actions, policies, and appointments remain in effect.
A moment's reflection on the passage above should make it obvious that the invasion of Iraq was just one more part of this same far-reaching pattern, which in turn is a logical outgrowth of the conservative worldview, and its general antipathy toward Enlightenment rationality, as well as the common good. From the moment it took office, the Bush Administration not only ignored those who gave it information it didn't want to hear, it actively worked to sideline them--thus the demotion of Richard Clarke, not just demoting him personally, but downgrading the office he held to reduce the salience of information about terrorist threats. Elsewhere, it appointed unqualified ideologues, and corrupted the entire advisory process.
Just as scientists who tried to be objective about global warming were repeatedly stifled and shuttled aside, so, too, intelligence analysts who tried to be objective about Iraq's capabilities and intentions were similarly blocked from providing a coherent reality-based assessment of Iraq. It was much less a question of whether the Bush Administration manipulated the intelligence itself--they manipulated the entire process of intelligence-gathering and evaluation, just as the Waxman Report found that they had manipulated the entire scientific advisory process. (To take just one example, an illuminating article in Washington Monthly in xxx drew sharp parallels between Bush's Iraq policy and its development on the one hand and Bush's stem cell research policy on the other.)
With this unprecedented record of corrupting the entire fact-finding process before us, it seems downright perverse to summarize it as a problem of "certainty," a standard which, after all, would equally condemn someone who is certain that 2+2 equals 4, and someone who is certain that 2+2 equals 22.
No, AZDem's narrative will not do. "Certainty" in an abstract sense is not the problem. The problem is a disdain for truth. Of course we must not forget our own fallibility. But the awareness of our own fallibility is woven into the very foundation of Enlightenment reasoning. That foundation is not perfect, as it still inherited notions of disembodied reason from the theological and metaphysical traditions that preceded it (see, for example, Lakoff and Johnson's Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought). Yet, the awareness that we may be wrong, that ideas must be rationally defensible, that no one person possesses unique understanding beyond review of anyone else, this awareness permeates Enlightenment culture, and the philosophical tradition of political liberalism that counts the Enlightenment as one of its key foundations.
While a good many conservatives are more or less accepting of this foundation as well, it is undeniable that conservative thinkers across cultures and across the centuries have repeatedly argued against critical reason. What's more, reactionaries, whose attitudes are far more characteristic of American movement conservatives today, originally defined themselves specifically as reactionaries against the Enlightenment.
One cannot simply ignore hundreds of years of history, and pretend that those on the left/liberal side of things are as prone as those on the right to systemic error from unjustified certainty. This may be true of any one individual, of course, or even small groups or movements. (Indeed, it was much more broadly true in the Soviet Union, China and Pol Pot's Cambodia--civilizations in which Enlightenment culture had not taken root, and in which even Communist intellectuals became prime subjects of persecution.) But the culture of the left is permeated with values, norms, narratives, practices and institutions that strongly militate against unjustified certainty, which is why AZDem's narrative seeking to stigmatize liberals with accusations of Bush-like certainty is so wildly off the mark. We all share individual vulnerabilities to a wide range of human failings, but the dangers posed by any particular failing are highly contingent on the social and cultural environment we find ourselves in. Which is why alcoholism is so much more a problem in some cultures than others, and why unjustified certainty is similarly much more of a problem on the right than the left.
It's A Beautiful Day In The Niebuhrhood
Even all this, however, does not get us to the core of the problems with AZDem's formulation, though it does prepare us for getting there. Following the last passage quoted above, AZDem continues:
President Obama's favorite theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, famously posited that
f you and I disagree, then at least one of us is wrong, and it may be me.
That's known to historians and political scientists as "Niebuhrian humility."
And Niebuhrian humility is true liberalism.
We are very fortunate to be led by a President with Niebuhrian humility. Conservatives may see humility as "apologizing for America," or as lack of conviction in American exceptionalism, but humility is what, ultimately, saves us. |
What could possibly be wrong with that?
Simple:
(1) Humility may be necessary, but it's not sufficient. Liberalism is much more than Niebuhrian humility. It is, in large part, a tradition of institutionalizing checks on individual and group error, whether due to certainty, fear, or any other cause.
(2) The institutionalizing of checks and balances is not just found in liberal government, but in liberal culture more generally, and in the secular practice of science in particular. By means of such institutional checks on misplaced certainty, a much more powerful foundation for knowledge is created. Although absolute certainty is never possible in science, "good-enough certainty" (that which it would be perverse to deny) can be established on a powerful, and completely transparent foundation, without recourse to hidden truths, or individual subjective intuitions (though, of course, intuition often plays a very important role in the process of scientific discovery, it is not needed to understand the end result.)
(3) Because theology generally lacks the checks-and-balance structures of science, which are available for reality-based public policy making, Niebuhrian humility is not the best guide what ails us politically, and how to overcome it. Where Niebuhrian humility should play a prominent role in policymaking is after systemic checks and balances have screened out factual falsehoods, not before. Given the extremely delusional state of our politics after 8 years of Bush/Cheney, there is an overwhelming need for a great deal of restoring reality-based policy-making before Niebuhrian humility becomes a more significant concern.
(4) Obama's insistence on superficial "open-mindedness" without respect to demonstable falsehood is a perversion of the value of Niebuhrian humility in the grand scheme of things. At the same time, he has demonstrated a striking lack of similarly open-mindedness to the voices of many progressive forces that actually supported his election.
Thus, to take just one example, he has said that Republican lawmakers made a good point in objecting to spending on reproductive health care in the stimulus package, when in fact this validated the false reasoning that spending itself was not inherently stimulative, and almost always significantly moreso than the Republican shibboleth of tax-cutting. More broadly, he ignored the widespread consensus of economists that (a) the stimulus needed to be significantly larger--roughly twice the size of what he asked, (b) spending is generally far more stimulative than tax cuts, and should constitute the lion's share of the package, (c) underfunding state and local government shortfalls would lead them to pass severly anti-stimulative budget cuts, thus undercutting the effectiveness of the stimulus, whereas (d) maintaining state and local budgets was one of the most fact-acting and effective ways to spend stimulus funding. (Not only would all the money be spent within two years, but the job security ensured by such funding would tend to promote more stimulative economic behavior on the part of government workers and contractors.)
He has shown a similar pattern of favoring center-right, establishment concerns with dubious foundations over the well-founded factual arguments of his electoral supporters on a wide range of issues--the stifling of single payer advocates, for example, his delay of action on repealing "don't act, don't tell," expanding the Bush-initiated Wall Street bailout without imposing significant regulations or initiating new reforms, his continuation--and even some expansion--of many Bush/Cheney "War on Terror" policies, expanding into Afghanistan, bombing civilians, continuing stop-loss to extend military service, a range of intelligence and detention policies that Glenn Greenwald has been documenting.
This is not what Niebuhrian humility is supposed to be all about, though it certainly is a reason why "Niebuhrian humility" needs to be regarded with some suspicion: it is far too easy for it to be selectively invoked to disproportionately muffle the would-be voices in defense of the defenseless.
p.s., Obama's Got Certainty Problems, Too!
As Paul Krugman noted in his July 9 column (emphasis mine):
It's perfectly O.K. for the administration to defend what it's done so far. It's fine to have Vice President Joseph Biden touring the country, highlighting the many good things the stimulus money is doing.
It's also reasonable for administration economists to call for patience, and point out, correctly, that the stimulus was never expected to have its full impact this summer, or even this year.
But there's a difference between defending what you've done so far and being defensive. It was disturbing when President Obama walked back Mr. Biden's admission that the administration "misread" the economy, declaring that "there's nothing we would have done differently." There was a whiff of the Bush infallibility complex in that remark, a hint that the current administration might share some of its predecessor's inability to admit mistakes. And that's an attitude neither Mr. Obama nor the country can afford.
The "Powerless" Defense--And Beyond
When confronted with the wide range of issues on which Obama has disappointed, defenders either deny that Obama's performance has been disappointing, or else claim he has done as well as can be expected, given the forces arrayed against him. However, given his incredible success in mobilizing a broad activist base, it's striking how assiduously he has avoided taking high-profile steps to mobilize outside-the-Beltway support for expanding the realm of political possibility. His most typical response has been to join with Versailles in marginalizing popular concerns, rather than working with popular forces to put pressure on Versailles. This was precisely what he did in helping to marginalize single-payer, excluding it from the health care debate. Likewise, he quite honestly told the bankers on one occasion, "I'm the only one standing between you and the pitchforks." He's worked assiduously to protect Bush Administration crimes from being openly discussed, much less prosecuted, even though he's actually violating international law himself by doing so.
The range of issues on which Obama has sided with the Versailles establishment, and against any sort of real change, is so long and broad that it's become increasingly necessary to fabricate excuse narratives, such as AZDem's, the best of which will not simply defend Obama, but cast those who criticize him as the real villains. And in the close of his diary, AZDem does not disappoint on this score:
The myth of certainty (and the absence of humility) plagues liberals as well. We are seeing it in strong doses here at Daily Kos, and elsewhere in the liberal blogs. We are certain we are right and the President's openness to other approaches and other ideas is seen as a betrayal.
A survey of Daily Kos dairies finds a plague of certainty. The President's failure to be as certain as we is "not change we can believe in," commenters say with regularity.
How close-minded and dogmatic of us to insist that single-payer--which could actually solve our health care crisis--be on the table! How narrow-minded and positively Bush/Rovian our attacks on his meeting cozily with everyone else under the Sun--everyone, that is, with more money on their side than facts or people.
And those of us upset that we might be fighting in Afghanistan for another 20 years? How close-minded can you possibly get?
We liberals need a huge dose of Niebuhrian humility. The process of governing is exceptionally important. (Gene McCarthy used to say that the process was more important than the result; whether you believe that or not, the point is that without a process that recognizes the possiblity that our side is wrong, no good result is likely). Enacting or enforcing a list of liberal agenda items without counter argument would not be change we can believe in, it would be an exercise in unfounded, prideful, certainty.
Gosh, I just knew there was something wrong with freeing the slaves! Thanks for clearing that up for me! It was the "unfounded, prideful, certainty"! Say, haven't the neo-Confederates been telling us as much for decades on end now?
What? It's unfair of me to take AZDem's argument over policies today, and apply them to controversial policies of the past? Gee, sorry! But when you make sweeping categorical arguments based on broad, unfounded generalizations--"Certainty bad! Wheeler-dealer politics good!"--you automatically issue gilded invitations to everyone under the Sun to argue in the same sort of decontextualized way.
As Obama said during the election campaign
Liberal objectives like withdrawing from Iraq, stopping AIDS and working more closely with our allies are laudable, "but they hardly constitute a coherent national security policy." Obama, Gospel and Verse
Let's celebrate that we have an administration deeply rooted not in naive liberalism or doctrinaire conservatism, but in an open-minded, rational, realistic approach to governance. That's true liberalism, and that's change we can believe in. |
Um, no. That's not "true liberalism." It's pure Clintonian corporate triangulation. It's what millions of poor naïve souls thought they were voting against when they chose Obama over Hillary Clinton in the primaries. There is nothing realistic about passing a stimulus bill that's half the size it needed to be to get the job done, shutting out the only approach to health care that can solve the problems we face, continuing a failed war-fighting approach to dealing with international terrorism, or failing to push for a global warming bill that actually commits us to making real progress. That's not change--it's business-as-usual in drag as change.
"Who you going to believe?" The old question goes, "Me or your lying eyes?"
If you choose your lying eyes, AZDem is certain that the problem is you... and your lying eyes.
Here's the key folks: Obama still can be an agent of change--but only if we force him to be one. And we're never going to force him to be an agent of change if we're bamboozled into thinking that he's better than us, and we're just like Karl Rove if we criticize him. |
