IGNORANCE IS BLISS: HOW ONE LITTLE THING COULD CHANGE THE WORLD

Omnipotentblog has mentioned Jonathan Haidt in previous posts. “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion” is one of the more important books you may ever read. Haidt found that people think of morality in six different domains: harm, fairness, oppression, loyalty and patriotism, purity, and submission to authority. Liberals focus primarily on the first two and sometimes the third while conservatives focus on all six.

 

Haidt also highlighted research that shows humans are not as rational as they think. He portrayed the human brain as an elephant and its rider. The elephant is the subconscious and the rider is reason and intellect. The rider likes to think he is in charge but the elephant goes where it wants. The rider devises post hoc justifications for why it turned right or left. This is profoundly important because liberal doctrine rests on the altar of reason. All the ideas Democrats are selling now owe their existence to the French Enlightenment. Thinkers like Rousseau, Voltaire and Condorcet believed humanity could create a new existence based on science and reason alone. Believing human nature was basically good, it followed that bad behavior was largely derived from ignorance or oppressive social structures. Tear down that scaffolding of oppression and teach everyone things like smoking is bad and you will have a world of happy, healthy people. This idea ruled the 20^th century. It should be obvious now that it doesn’t work but for liberals it is still full steam ahead.

 

In contrast, British enlightenment thinkers like Edmund Burke, David Hume and Adam Smith believed man was incapable of being purely rational. To them, utopian enlightenment was pure fantasy. The disastrous French Revolution and the success of the American Revolution would seem to prove their case but for liberals, history is boring and pointless. Full steam ahead.

 

These revelations from Haidt should be enough to make progressives question themselves but hardened faith is tough to change. However, Haidt’s third major point is tremendously important. It could affect serious change if the advantage is seized. Though apparently moderate, Haidt is still a liberal. He defends this in the book. But his research showed that, unlike himself, liberals are largely ignorant of how conservatives think. Haidt had liberals and conservatives answer questions posing as their ideological counterparts. Conservatives did well. They know how liberals think. Liberals, unable to think past the false canard that says conservatives are mean, selfish and ignorant, did poorly.

 

This general ignorance about conservatism is central to the American political story. What would happen if the scales fell from liberal eyes and they began to understand their foes? Without willful blindness, leftism would be on life support. And if the underclass finds out conservatives aren’t really out to get them, Democrats are done.

 

Maybe Haidt’s research is flawed and just doesn’t register the truly Machiavellian nature of conservatives? Not according to American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks. In “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism”, he shows that conservatives donate more to charity and volunteer more of their time. In a landmark study on American religion, Robert Putnam and David Campbell showed that churchgoers are not just sour-faced Pharisees. Those who attend regularly are more generous to society on every level. Among the cheapest politicians in America is Joe Biden. Among the most generous? Dick Cheney.

 

“But Omnipotentblog, aren’t all the smart people on the left”? True, academia is dominated by leftists but George Orwell once said there are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them. For a movement allegedly based on science and reason, there are a number of core beliefs that science resoundingly rejects.

 

One pervasive anti-science belief is that, as Thomas Malthus first wrote in 1798, there are too many people on earth competing for inadequate resources. Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich popularized this in 1968 with “The Population Bomb”. With apocalyptic certitude, he predicted hundreds of millions would soon die of starvation. Ehrlich later coauthored a book of hysterics with Obama’s science czar, John Holdren, which promoted infertility drugs in food and water, seizing single mothers’ babies, and forced abortions. Few theories have been more thoroughly disproven as Malthusianism but it lives on. In 2009, he stated his projections had actually been too rosy but they had been staved off temporarily because his book stirred action.

 

Another demonstrable falsehood is the notion that wealth is static: There is x amount of money.  Rich people hoard it. Without question, the size of the economic pie shrinks and expands because of government policies and other innumerable variables. The rich and the poor can get richer at the same time. This “trickle down” stuff is snidely dismissed except there’s this thing called math, which increasingly seems to exist for the sole purpose of disproving liberal doctrine.

 

The list of provably false liberal dogmas is long. Talk radio host Dennis Prager often says, “The facts of life are conservative”. It is why, as people age, they become more conservative. All this brings us to a potential solution. While knowledge doesn’t necessarily make people more moral, enlightenment can certainly make them more conservative. Because of the virtual monopoly the left has on higher education, what if a handful of wealthy conservatives like the Kochs or Sheldon Adelson donated money for college courses across the nation? They would be free and provide college credit. The major issues would be fairly debated between a liberal professor and a conservative, both making their case with real data on a level playing field. The rabid dogs guarding the p.c. thought bubble of college campuses would essentially be neutered. The charge of indoctrination would be defeated because nobody would be forcing anyone to take the class and there would be a liberal to counteract all the dirty conservative lies (i.e. truths). Government would have to mandate this, of course as one can imagine college administrators saying things like, “over my dead body”. It might be fun, however, to watch academics resort to total hysterics like mock self-immolations and nude sit-ins to prevent the dirty tricks of the right. You know, like honest debate. Fools they may be but they’re smart enough to know the truth is a dangerous thing.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

or...

 

LIBERAL LAMENTATIONS

 

The DJ held his finger an inch above the button in nervous anticipation. Then…cheers went up and the bass started thumping. Men kissed each other. Lesbians, well, they were still scowling but inside they were happy. The announcement outside the Supreme Court confirmed it: Gay marriage is the law now. Despite the imminent collapse of Western Civilization, seeing people so blissful is kind of touching. It’s not really their fault, of course. It’s straight people that don’t think much of marriage anymore despite the mountain of evidence for its positive benefits.

 

Most cheering this pyrrhic victory write off conservative anger as mere bigotry. They always do. But most conservatives know that gay marriage probably would’ve happened even without the courts. (Thanks, Millenials!) No, the current frustration isn’t about gay marriage per se; it’s about the rule of law. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the decision might be nice but it has nothing to do with the constitution. Justice Scalia argued, “Who do we think we are?” This argument about process seems petty and officious to the left and the perpetually ignorant (But I repeat myself.) Their aversion to the constitution allows them a simple doctrine: “I like this issue. I don’t like that one. Who cares how it happens?”  

 

Why does this matter? John Adams said, “We are a government of laws, not men”. Terrified of a tyrannical executive, the specter of King George III hovered over the constitutional convention. Media went ballistic over George W. Bush’s signing statements but when Obama stated, “Elections have consequences,” he meant his election, not the groin kicks he took in the mid-terms. Armed with a pen and a King George-sized ego he did the following:

1.        Despite settled law, he tried to sink the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository. He was spanked by an appellate court.

2.       Obama tried backdoor amnesty. Spanked again.

3.       Obama unilaterally made 37 illegal changes to Obamacare, one of which subsidized congress after they realized they would be forced to use Obamacare.

4.       Obama appointed the head of the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was technically in session. Spankedagain.

5.       Forbes provides a good list of other constitutional violations but there are other lists far more exhaustive.

Obama’s lawlessness and extreme partisanship also encouraged an atmosphere where the IRS punished its foes and the EPA rejected 90% of Freedom of Information requests from conservative groups while accepting 90% from liberal groups. Also, though it gained little attention, some of the Solicitor General’s arguments at SCOTUS suggested there really should be no limit to executive authority at all.

 

Conservatives are obsessed with this “Rule of Law”. It seems obvious that without it, we are Mexico. Maybe one reason the left doesn’t much care about this issue is their view of history itself. Woven into the Oval Office rug is a saying: “The arcof the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”. Intellectuals like Francis Fukuyama and Obama uber-advisor Cass Sunstein believe that history is indeed always progressing. Sounds nice except that it’s, you know, stupid. There are notable examples such as slavery being mostly eradicated thanks to Western civilization which forced the changes on their unwilling colonies around the world. But liberty and prosperity have risen and fallen throughout the ages. Greece invented democracy and then lost it. Rome was at times a republic but succumbed to tyranny.  Its conquering plunged the world into the Dark Ages. Even the Muslim world was once tolerant and innovative. And now? European social democracies are close to bankruptcy, pseudo-totalitarian Russia is ascendant, and the Middle East is even more aflame than usual. The arc of history is more like Chutes and Ladders.

 

Western Europeans are a decaying and morally effete race but American liberals still try to emulate them. Greece’s implosion should be a case study for them. Debt played a major part, of course, but the real reason they’ll soon be eating out of garbage cans and dying because they can’t get their insulin is cultural. The top Greek pastimes are 1. Tax evasion. 2. Work evasion 3. Blaming Germany. Petty corruption is endemic. Everything from traffic tickets to building codes is negotiable so what’s astounding is that anybody could be surprised at this self-imposed calamity.

 

If liberals really wish to destroy the rule of law to get what they want, they should be careful what they wish for. Weather changes. American history is full of religious revivals. One terrorist attack, a war, a handful of scathing government scandals and ‘voila!’ America is conservative again. After LBJ? Nixon. Carter? Reagan. Clinton? Bush. See the pattern? Maybe conservatives should make a list of things that just won’t be enforced when we get power.

 

“Hey! Is that bicycle helmet made from an endangered Desert Tortoise shell?”

 

“Why, yes it is!”

 

“Where can I get one?”

 

“Ebay”.

 

In a brilliant piece, Kurt Shlichter laments how liberals are willing to destroy lives over wedding cakes and flowers. He argues that these scorched-earth cultural battles and the incessant chipping away at the constitution have bottled up conservative anger like never before. And human nature favors payback.

 

Schlichter recalled his experience during the Bosnian war. Rule of law had become primal law. Villages were slaughtered, untold numbers of women raped. God forbid, but if the apocalypse arrives (zombie or regular), one week after 24 hour Chinese food goes away, 25% of urban liberals will be dead. Mormons will do fine because their apocalyptic theology requires expertise at canning and freeze-drying. But “the coastal elites, the ones who brought us helicopter parenting, ‘trigger warnings’ and coffee cups with diversity slogans are uniquely unsuited to a world where force rules instead of law”. The survivors will be the people who always understood that the current façade of civilization hides a human nature that can be animalistic and selfish. Liberals who know how to compost might last longer but when THEY are finally killed and eaten, there will only be one thing left to say: “MORMONS GOT FOOD! GET ‘EM!”  

BALTIMORE BURNING: A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOBS AND THE TYRANNY OF GROUP THINK

30,000 B.C.
October 4^th

The first mob ever.

Tonda can’t find his club. He looks and looks but can’t find it anywhere.

Lana: “Hey, Tonda. I think I saw that funny looking guy over there, Atouk, with a club that looks just like yours.”

Tonda: “What the…?? Get him!”

(Atouk is beaten to death by the clan.)

Lana: “Hey, Tonda. Never mind. It’s over here!”

 

 

Atouk

 

 

Tonda

 Ever since, similar scenes have played out over the centuries until Michael Brown’s step father in Ferguson, Missouri screamed “Burn this bitch down!” after the officer who killed him turned out to be completely innocent. And who can forget the rocks bouncing off the shields of the retreating officers in Baltimore? Anger over another dead black man erupted into more looting, burning, and rioting. Once again, nobody really knew what happened but ignorance seems to be the gasoline that fuels these things. Six officers involved, three of them black, were charged with manslaughter and second degree murder. The evidence? They didn’t get Freddie Gray immediate medical attention when he asked for it. They didn’t beat him or give him a rough ride in the van to knock him around a little. They just didn’t believe that the man with a familiar history of crying wolf and causing drama when arrested was actually hurt. That’s what passes for “murder” when you have an angry mob calling for blood.

In Afghanistan recently, a woman was accused of burning a Koran. She was beaten with sticks and set on fire by a crowd in broad daylight. She, too, was innocent. Eight police officers were among those arrested for the lynching.

 

When Omnipotentblog was in Haiti in 1995, a mob attacked and beat a soccer referee nearly to death. His crime? After the match the referee was exposed by a player as one of the police force that, under the Cedras regime, had brutalized and tortured the community. Except that he wasn’t. The ref had red-carded the player during the match. The player didn’t much like it so he “outed” him to the crowd. The ref was totally innocent but, you know, ignorance is gasoline.

Occasionally mobs get it right, however, as in this instance when a mob in India stormed a jail and beat an accused rapist to death. The victim claimed he offered her $50 to keep her mouth shut. India has suffered a rash of highly publicized rapes recently and rather than ignorance, it was a banned BBC documentary that lit the fire. There is apparently an attitude rampant among Indian cavemen that if a girl is out past nine o’clock, she’s literally a slut and is literally asking to be raped. Literally. Mukesh Singh, awaiting trial for another brutal gang rape and murder stated, “A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy…Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes.” “It was her fault” she died because she fought back. Indeed.

 

 

Feminist of the Year--Mukesh Singh

 

Financial bubbles are a different kind of mob but they are emotion-driven groupthink nonetheless. In the Netherlands in 1637 during the Great Tulip Mania, a bulb called The Viceroy (manly name for a tulip) eventually sold for 14 times the salary of a skilled craftsman. Other things traded for single bulbs that year were 12 acres of land, four tons of beer and 1000 lbs. of cheese. The whole country had gone mad. Housewives, orphans, and mechanics were getting in on the action until someone finally said, “4150 guilders for a *%^#$! tulip? That’s nuts!” The market crashed. Panic ensued. A lot of people were ruined.

 

Much has been written about the stock market crash of 1929 but the cause was essentially the same. The Roaring 20’s put cash in everybody’s hands. Housewives, orphans, and mechanics wanted in on the action. Stock values climbed to absurd heights. Just before the crash, experts were proclaiming a new paradigm, a perpetual period of wealth and prosperity. 

 

 

Michael Lewis, author of “The Blind Side” and “Moneyball” has written several books on the recent crash and big finance. In “The Big Short” and “Boomerang”, he documents how the mortgage, housing and bond industries got so completely out of control. There were a few sharp-minded contrarians who saw the crash coming but the vast majority of financial geniuses thought the fountain of money would flow forever. In retrospect, it should have been obvious but they really didn’t see it coming. Worse, some who tried to warn others were shunned or even fired.  

Are we all slaves to this groupthink? Maybe. Probably. In “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion”, Jonathan Haidt describes the mind as an elephant with a rider. The elephant is our unconscious world view. Haidt’s research shows that we believe that the rider--reason and intellect--is in charge but the elephant goes where it wants. The rider makes up justifications for wherever the elephant decides to go. The implication of this suggests the bulk of humanity is immune to logic and persuasion. History, a most depressing area of study, sadly bears witness. French Revolutionaries, drunk on their own opinions, thought they could create a society completely ruled by science and logic for the first time in history. They created a “Goddess of Reason” to replace the superstitions of the church. During the Reign of Terror, rivers of blood flowed in the streets as mobs cheered the thud of the guillotine. Reason!

If Haidt is right, it means that things like Omnipotentblog are rather useless and uninfluential (sigh). So how do people change their minds? Do they ever? Yes. Haidt’s research shows that no man is an island. It is through relationships that minds are changed. People influence people, not arguments. The notion of a society based on individualism is lovely but it has its natural limits. Collectivist experiments have failed spectacularly but it’s also clear that God created us to travel in packs. Politicians, pastors, and educators, especially conservative ones, should take note. Armed with slick arguments, mounds of data, and the righteousness of being utterly correct, you will convince no one of anything until you convince them you care.  

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE YOUR COUNTRY?

(To my recent readers from France: Thanks for visiting The Only Blog That Matters. Could you please leave a little comment explaining why so many of you are reading? I'm just curious. Merci!)


On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass, a runaway slave and one of the greatest orators and statesmen in American history, gave a speech at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn…What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?...To him, your celebration is a sham;…your denunciation of tyrants brass-fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”

 

Ouch.

 

Rudy Guiliani stepped in it recently. He said the President doesn’t love America. Sharply criticized, he only said what many think: Only 54 percent of voters believe Obama is patriotic. Is it possible an American President, even a committed leftist, might not love his country? Maybe. His favorite thing to do in front of foreign audiences is apologize for his own country. Yet, he’s also called America the one “indispensible nation” and once stated that nowhere else could a man with his story rise to his position.

 

Perhaps out of guilt for excesses like spitting on Vietnam vets and sending care packages to the Viet Cong, the left is ever sensitive to this criticism. They are vulnerable and they know it. In “25 Quotes that Prove Liberals Don’t Love America”, John Hawkins quotes reliable crazies like Ward Churchill, who advocates America be nuked, but also mainstream liberals like John Kerry, who once said, “I get always a little uptight when I hear politicians say how exceptional (America is)”. There is also a resurgence of America-hating radicalism on college campuses. The UC Irvine student government recently tried to ban all national flags. And when one conservative tried to get American flags put in classrooms at the University of Central Florida, progressive student groups denounced it, saying the flag stood "for violence, oppression and the rise of fascism."

 

William Galston, a Wall Street Journal columnist too clever by half, answered Giuliani by quoting conservative icon Edmund Burke: “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” Then came the usual tripe about it being patriotic to criticize your country. But in loving or hating America, what does that even mean? What is “American”? The founders thought long and hard about the constitution and formed it around Enlightenment and Biblical concepts. Like what? 1. God-given, irrevocable Natural Rights. 2 Equal protection under the law. 3. Federalism. 4. Checks and balances because men are not angels. 5. Capitalism and property rights.


The canon of the left is the exact opposite:  1. Rights are bestowed by government. 2. Law should favor the underclass. 3. Anti-federalism: Strong central government. 4. Executive branch supremacy. 5. Capitalism should be restrained and wealth redistributed. Do liberals think America is lovely? If so, what exactly do they love?

 

But one clever commenter posed a few questions like these: What if we loved our wives like Obama loves America? What if we: 1. Joked to her friends that she’s put on some weight recently. 2. Those girls who beat her up in high school? She must have provoked them. But good news! You found them all on Facebook and told them you apologize. 3. Tell her she didn’t really clean the house; it was Mr. Clean and those scrubbing bubbles that did the real work. 4. Tell her you love her so much, you want to completely transform her.


Woodrow Wilson was the first president to openly criticize the restrictive and “inefficient” constitution. Obama lamented that the constitution is a charter of “negative liberties”, which unfortunately doesn’t specify what government must do for people. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested Egypt reject the American Constitution as a model and embrace one like South Africa’s, which guarantees everything from food and housing to a healthy environment.

 

Galston was right about one thing, however. It is not patriotic to never criticize your country.This started as a simple “Liberals Hate America” piece. Then a thought occurred: What if Omnipotentblog was Russian? I would wish Putin a painful illness, something with boils and explosive diarrhea. I would acknowledge my country’s long history of tyranny and corruption. But despite 90% of Russian men being drunk at any given time of the day, I would still love my country and its people. I would wish the best for it. Is this the key to understanding the “patriotism” of the left?

 

During that same speech in 1852, Frederick Douglass expressed great hope that slavery would soon die. And later, after the Dred Scott decision forced the repatriation of escaped slaves, he said this: “I base my sense of the certain overthrow of slavery, in part, upon the nature of the American Government, the Constitution, the tendencies of the age, and the character of the American people…. I know of no soil better adapted to the growth of reform than American soil. I know of no country where the conditions for affecting great changes in the settled order of things, for the development of right ideas of liberty and humanity, are more favorable than here in these United States.” In 1851, Douglass had been persuaded that the “eternal principles,” the “saving principles,” in the constitution were real “and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it”. A strong believer in property rights, he also rejected as “arrant nonsense” the conflation of abolition and socialism. Expressing faith in America’s deeper, yet unrealized goodness, he rejected the popular notion of moving blacks back to Africa. Slaves were American. And nowhere else on earth could they flourish under the timelessness of that “glorious document”.

 

Perhaps the litmus test of patriotism is wherein one believes the rottenness lies. Does America need a shower and a haircut or gender reassignment surgery? Do we move onward to form a “more perfect union” or do we need to burn it down and start over? Maybe you believe America is morally comparable to Nazi Germany. If so, maybe you could check out one of the lovely socialist paradises around the world like Venezuela. But bring some toilet paper because they tend to run out.

MORAL CLARITY AND “THE AMERICAN SNIPER”

 

“Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die...”

 

 Charge of the Light Brigade

Lord Alfred Tennyson

 

If you haven’t seen Clint Eastwood’s new movie about Chris Kyle, the most successful sniper in American history, go see it. It will get in your head. The very first scene is a moral dilemma that twists Kyle’s mind into a nervous knot. Through his rifle scope he sees a woman hand something to a child, spurring the boy to run towards a company of patrolling Marines. Is it a grenade? Looked like a grenade. Is it? Kyle’s partner warns him that if he’s wrong, they’ll fry him. He kills the child who did, in fact, have a grenade. 

 

The left hates the movie. Why? It’s a movie about war that’s not morally ambiguous and self-flagellating. It presents the enemy as evil and American soldiers as flawed but heroic. It makes you grateful. And that’s all it takes: A movie with profound respect for America, the military, and the nuclear family just can’t go unchallenged.

 

Amanda Taub of Vox illustrates perfectly the moral confusion and dogmatic thinking of the left. She writes, “It's a movie about a black-and-white distinction between good and evil, but it is set almost entirely in the Iraq War, which can only be honestly portrayed in shades of gray”. Rejecting the “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” mantra, Kyle’s dogged moral clarity throughout was indeed striking. He tuned out the hand-wringing and simpering of the war’s critics to fixate on one thing: killing bad guys to protect his own. In justifying this, he remarked to his friends that they could not imagine the evil he had seen.

 

Taub called the movie historical revisionism noting that the butcher with the electric drill was fictional. Artistic license aside, the human depravity in Iraq was all too real. Bloomberg news praised respected war reporter Dexter Filkins’ book on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He wrote, “Electric drills were a Shiite obsession. When you found a guy with drill marks in his legs, he was almost certainly a Sunni, and he was almost certainly killed by a Shiite. The Sunnis preferred to behead, or to kill themselves while killing others.'' A New York Times article also noted the widespread cruelty among the Shiite majority, with whom we were largely aligned. When British soldiers stormed a special police unit known to have participated in death squads, they discovered, “more than 100 men were crowded into a single cell, 30 feet by 40 feet…A significant number showed signs of torture. Some had crushed hands and feet…while others had cigarette and electrical burns and a significant number had gunshot wounds to their legs and knees.” “They are like savage dogs that bite when they are hungry,” said one resident. “Their evaluation of guilt or innocence is how much money you can pay.” Kyle referred to men like these as “savages”. MSNBC pundits tut-tutted at the evident racism but Kyle didn’t just mean it in a pejorative way. He meant it quite literally.

 

More interesting than whether or not the war was good is how differently the left and right see morality itself. The left always claims the moral high ground and they sneer at the simplicity and lack of subtlety in conservative thought. Yet, a recent study showed that the right has distinctively more complicated and nuanced views. The study did not attempt to decide which side was morally superior, merely how they framed the very issue of morality. New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt found that people tend to arrange their values within six different domains. The first, Care versus Harm, concerns empathy and desire to not see others hurt. The second, Fairness versus Cheating, is concerned with justice and rights. Liberals tend to see fairness in terms of equality, while conservatives see it as an issue of proportionality, hence, liberals' desires to see a large social safety net versus the conservative attitude that people should get what they work for and no more. The third domain was Oppression vs. Liberty.

Liberals primarily focus on the first domain but also care much about the second and third. Conservatives care about these values, too, but they also care about three other moral domains that liberals tend to ignore: Loyalty and Betrayal, which concerns things like patriotism and group identity; Authority versus Subversion, which includes deference to authority and the rule of law; and Sanctity versus Degradation, which concerns beliefs about the sanctity and desecration of the body.

 

Liberals do one thing well: Find a group that is hurting and pass laws to overcome it, AKA “Do-something-itis”. Conservatism asks, “Yes, but will it work?” Always on to the next “solution”, liberals don’t seem to care. Thomas Sowell calls this “Stage one thinking”. The conservative moral vision, far from being simplistic, requires a complicated, utilitarian balancing act. It is through this lens of competing moralities that conservatives view war and everything else.

 

But even with morally muddy equations like war, it often comes down to a simple dichotomy: fight or don’t. When that moral balance tips to 51% good, the decision is black and white. During war, soldiers can’t shut off their moral filters; that’s how massacres happen. But they do need a black-and-white clarity of purpose, a justification that shields them from madness. The horrors of war require an astounding amount of denial and cognitive dissonance. In one scene, a funeral of one of Kyle’s friends, the grieving widow read a letter from the dead soldier questioning the war’s righteousness. Kyle said, “The Iraqis didn’t kill him. That letter did”. In “The Thin Red Line”, another great war movie, a young officer refuses to send his men up a machine gun-infested hill to their almost certain deaths. When his commander, played by Nick Nolte, explains the necessity of taking the hill, he states, “I think you’re right”. Nolte replied, “Next time, you don’t have to tell me when you think I’m right. We’ll just assume”. And so it must be.

 

Was Chris Kyle, the greatest sniper in history, simple-minded or single-minded? Was he morally obtuse or morally focused? Those are important distinctions but I would guess that the hundreds or even thousands of Americans and Iraqis he saved don’t really care.

 

I don’t either.