Scarecrows - Richard Sale
By Richard Sale, author of Clinton’s Secret Wars
The art of having an opinion consists of our willingness to undergo the labor of ascertaining the reasons why we have it. It means carefully learning data, and then examining facts and assertions to see which are actual truths worth keeping and which are simply erroneous statements whose sole value may consist in their being familiar and personal. The virtue of facts is that they can be verified, while our feelings may only be empty biases that furnish us with pretexts or bogus reasons rather than any insight into reality.
To have responsible opinions then means that we are humble enough to subject our views to criticisms that may challenge their veracity or which might imply that our views are perhaps in part mistaken, or worse, complete rubbish. Feelings are fine, but they are not thought. Conscience requires that we impose some check on our subjective leanings and that check must come from those who are better and brighter than we are – those who know more than we do in areas we deem important. This should not enthrone the Expert, but the existence of such people should caution us that when we view the sun as “rising” in the morning, in spite of our unshakeable confidence in what we see, Copernicus was right and we are wrong.
To the Texas Board of Education, it seems that the knowledge of history is not to be based on proven facts, because the board apparently believes that the facts consist of what the mass of us have chosen to believe they are. In a sense this is true. It is unfortunate that a major factor in our accepting the “Truth” lies in its being familiar and convenient – conventional wisdom, in brief. The historical revisions in Texas are thus based on an impression of some undigested bits of common knowledge, not a mastery of the intricacies of the any subject itself. According to the board, we are to relax, trust our gut instincts, our unthinking reflexes, much like the employer who mistrusts the job applicant who has not bothered to shine his or her shoes and therefore does not inquire further. It’s okay to revise history based on the resentful suspicion that our views have been ridiculed and denied their real importance, not because they are perhaps parochial, partial or mistaken, but because snotty liberals or snobs have spitefully ignored them.
To many people these days, there is no such thing as objectivity – everything is, after all, just somebody’s opinion, and if objectivity cannot be attained, then why labor so hard to acquire it? In our Facebook age, ignorance is a right. God created man in his image and likeness, not some paltry, defective nearsighted creature in need of a library. Standards are what the mass of us say they are, and besides, isn’t popularity the same as being superior? Why is the High Brow so impressive when he isn’t even popular? Clearly, those who know nothing about a subject still have picked up enough phrases and catchwords to have a feeling about it, and therefore the ignorant have the same right as anyone else to voice their views.
Listening to much of the day’s debate on Big Government or Deficits, Jobs and the like, one gets the impression that many of the most insistent rabble-rousers are, in fact, a bit like sleepwalkers -- lost, desolate, and very frightened. They have lost respect for our national life and to them the world is degenerate and hostile. They face a paralytic, uncaring Congress, power-hungry politicians, etc. What is surprising in listening carefully to such people is how few of their statements reflect any of the reality to which they refer. Their protests sound like a defensive, flinching reflex and their proposals are not so much a real agenda, but a sort of scarecrow meant to frighten off opponents.
Thus we float along in a sea of suffocating flotsam while all around us looms the menace of un-met challenges.
