GEORGE TEMPLETON: COMMENTARY
By George Templeton
Gazette Columnist
Journalists
should emulate “the patient and fearless men of science who have
labored to see what the world really is”. Newspapers are “… the Bible
of democracy”. Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), the father of modern
journalism.
“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the father of Conservatism
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” James Madison (1751-1836), a Founding Father of our country.
We
like to think that changes are gradual, around the periphery, at the
exposed surface, like the erosion that comes from wind, flood, freezing,
and fire. But sometimes change begins at the foundation, like an
earthquake caused by continental drift. Such an unexpected thing shakes
our ground of being, altering even the small, superficial, visible
surface because of a root cause, deep below.
To
be for or against something is simpler than the facts. We cannot
understand everything. Information just confuses us. Free thought is
the State’s enemy, but our democracy relies on it to resolve the
conflict of ideas inherit in its division of power. But people don’t
vote with their brains.
Walter
Lippmann wanted to replace voters with groups of experts who would have
public interest in mind. Where are the statesmen who are willing to
sacrifice themselves for the public good? We pay money for lawyers and
politicians. We need more scientists in government. We want the
scientific equivalent of political think tanks and an educational system
that prepares students for jobs.
An Anti-Science Administration
Silencing Science,
in the May 2019 Scientific American documents how the Trump
administration suppresses knowledge. It comes from government
censorship, misrepresentation, suppressing and distorting information,
budget cuts, removing scientists from agency positions, limiting science
teaching in education, and pressuring researchers to alter findings.
True information lives on. It changes not only what we know, but what
will be. The language of science is math. The geometry of scientific
thinking is applicable to the shape of social discourse.
Our
heads are “on straight”, because we live in a linear universe. Our
check book is linear and it is a differential equation. We put money in
and take it out. We could draw a line, using the monthly balance, to
see how things are going. It points at why.
A Misunderstanding
Recently
two new airplanes nosedived into the ground killing everyone aboard.
The CEO of the airline industry quoted its excellent track record. To
fly or not to fly, that is the question. The answer requires a leap of
faith because the evidence is not decisive.
Siméon
Poisson (1781-1840) devised the mathematic statistics that predicts
quality. Is a new airplane defective? Quality is a continuing effort
because things inside the factory (and our government) change. They are
never perfect.
Ernst
Weibull (1887-1979) created the same for reliability (things wear
out). Quality and reliability are different. It’s important because it
illustrates how life and death can be the consequences of scientific
ignorance.
When
problems are complicated, authorities turn the difficulty into a
convenient ancillary issue, deflecting answers away from the question.
Their pride will not accept guilt. The root cause identifies a deeper
and broader responsibility. The layman knows about some preexisting
imperfection, and so he concludes that this must have been the reason.
Even worse, sometimes an effect has no plausible relationship to its
claimed cause.
Muddled Thinking
At
Trump’s recent rally, he claimed, “The baby is born, the mother meets
with the doctor, they take care of the baby, they wrap the baby
beautifully, and then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not
they will execute the baby”. Coming from our President, lies like this
are believable.
Science
disciplines thinking. Functions of a variable are a concept that comes
from math. We are functions of our choices. They are all about
digesting information and relationships.
A
talk-show caller explained that guns don’t kill. It’s people. Our
culture disrespects life. Democrats allow doctors to rip children from
their mother’s womb right up until the moment of birth. If you outlaw
abortions will shootings decline?
This
illustrates how human emotions combine with propaganda to create flawed
thinking. A related form of bad thinking picks only one out of many
strongly interacting causes. Bills with last minute earmarks are yet
another example of jumbled intention. But maybe the intent is just to
anger Progressives because that earns votes.
The
Trump administration abandoned their principles for power and
popularity, not for the good of the people as claimed. As Jeff Flake
puts it in his book, Conscience of a Conservative, policies are
negotiable but principles are not. Leadership in the Trump
administration means accepting no responsibility for its shortcomings
and failures. It means winning re-election to the detriment of the
People.
It’s Called Political Science
Scientists
put things into well-defined categories, but they are artifacts of
their minds. A mind has gut feel and is contextual. Social conflict is
blurred.
The
Conservative religious family that raised me made a point of never
saying anything bad about anybody. That was gossip. Most of the
people, most of the time, are good. But if there is a small amount of
rat droppings in the coffee, when should we throw it (The Trump
administration) out?
Can
you obstruct justice by hindering an investigation? It is uncertain.
You could find guilt where there is innocence or innocence when
guilty. Science relates these errors with a probability curve. The
extremes of the curve reduce the chance for one or the other type of
error, but not both. It is possible to select an unbiased test
centering on the curve, but human nature rules against that and there is
a loss of discrimination.
Mediating Conflict
Many
nations have tried democracy only to turn away from it and revert to
despotism because of internal strife. It could happen to us.
Deliberate
conflict creation, simultaneously intolerant and permissive, is
immoral. It leads to revenge. The tools of an artistic deal are charm,
persuasion, trust, and respect. Governance is about bringing people
together. Tearing everything apart leaves only destruction.
All
measurements in science have a tolerance expressing their uncertainty.
It’s that way for moral decisions. There are no universal absolutes.
The situation matters but morality is never unbounded. Every decision
has a confidence interval. It provides the necessary flexibility for
relative moral decisions that are bounded by an absolute principal.
Moral issues are personal, political-social, and scientific-factual.
Religion mediates between the first two.
Lawrence Kohlberg (American Psychologist, 1927-1987) published a hierarchy of moral development. It goes as follows:
- Obedience and punishment
- Individualism
- Good or bad people.
- Law and Order
- Social Contract.
- Principled Conscience
Where
do you fit on his scale? Studies show that most people believe they
are more moral than others. It is a self-serving bias.
Consider the three pillars of the Trump administration:
- National security and sovereignty
- Economic nationalism
- Deconstruction of the administrative state
Joe Biden’s platform is:
- Rebuilding the middle class
- Reclaiming American leadership on the world stage
- Fostering an inclusive democracy
- A return to normal
Thinking Scientifically
Aaron
T. Beck, in the 1960’s, thought that to understand ourselves we must
inventory our behaviors and contemplate their reasons. Alternatively
we can start with our thoughts, our values, and then try to explain the
behaviors caused by them. Sometimes we make a mountain out of a
molehill. We worry about the “slippery slope”. Sometimes we ignore
fundamental truth. We have selective indignation. We remember only the
good things or perhaps only the bad things that have happened to us in
the past and we revise them to eliminate any inconsistency with our
present feelings. We see “links” that don’t exist. We personalize
things. We engage in all or none thinking.
Things
are not always completely good or bad. There are some things that are
necessary, but few that are sufficient. But the behavior of our
President and his administration are something else. The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout, describes the cause of the unprincipled chaos we see.
A
children’s show empathized sharing and the social benefits that come
from it. It morphs into the idea that business transactions require
mutual winners and that transactions are intrinsically ethical for that
reason. But the playing ground is not always flat. There is the
requirement that I will not scratch your back unless you scratch mine.
That becomes the childish idea that if you don’t scratch my back, I will
get even with you.
The
American way has become the American lie. Liars are emboldened because
they get away with it. As the pool of available lies grows, it becomes
more likely that we will select and believe things that are not true.
How do lawyers understand this? Sworn court testimony is the only way
to discover lies. Omission and exaggeration are O.K., but liars
deliberately mislead. The public will decide who is lying, but they are
not experts and they don’t have the facts. It’s only actions that
matter. If it isn’t against the law, it’s moral.
Norms,
not laws are the glue of society. Broadly speaking, they are society’s
expectations for our conduct in social situations. Without norms, our
world becomes more unstable and dangerous.
Mueller’s Report
Aren’t
you suspicious when an administration that is hostile to our old
alliances suddenly wants to be friends with our long standing enemies?
Should we admire strong-man dictators? There was no big collusion
conspiracy, but there could be conflict of interest.
Mueller documented his successful witch hunt, but now the investigators investigate the investigation.
Who
is on first base, the Trump administration or Congress? Does the
President have unfettered power to direct investigations to persecute
his enemies and “lock them up”? Perhaps a President cannot obstruct
justice, no matter what his actions and intentions are. The
Constitution does not make it clear.
A
“different kind of president”, who is neither guilty nor innocent,
attacks our norms. His behavior is not surprising. He has made
extremism acceptable. The pendulum swings left and right in destructive
instability. Is its motivating energy self-defense, self-interest, or
governance?
What
makes things the same kind? To see more clearly, we must pigeonhole
even though behavior’s variety calls the simple notion of good or bad
into question.
Classifications are not as stable as we wish they were. The cable news
poll measured Republicans, Conservatives, and Democrats. We have
drifted since the time of Edmund Burke. He railed against abstract
idealism. He was all about tradition, convention, prudential
management, and practical statesmanship. Today conservatives behave
like they are at a drunken super bowl party.
The philosopher Wittgenstein made a 19th
century illusion, the duck-rabbit, popular. It is on the web. There
are two different ways of thinking: “seeing that” or “seeing as”.
Suppose
your boss pressures you to lie and you do. You should repeat it each
time the problem reoccurs. A lie can be a stabilizing influence, a
demonstration of loyalty. You might get a raise or promotion, but this
will not fix the problem.
You
ask yourself the question, if my knowledge and experience does not
matter, why am I here? Is it just to be a team player? You can win
your leader’s favor or make him angry, but you will have to live with
the lie, knowing that you were not true to yourself. You realize that
it won’t work out. Ask yourself the question, when it fails will your
leader accept responsibility, or will he blame it on you?
None
of the above counts as obstruction, because Trump’s professionals did
not take the bait. The Mueller report documents numerous breaches of
ethics. Behavioral norms convict Trump, the man who loves to denigrate
and humiliate others. Is it any wonder that there is so much turn-over
in his administration?
A Great America
I
traveled the world in the eighties, nineties, and past the millennium,
as a technologist on assignment. We were the best. I knew it and so
did the world. We were not selfish or afraid. We could part with
yesterday because we believed in tomorrow. It meant working ourselves
out of our job while simultaneously preparing for the next one. That
is the lesson I learned.
n
2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used former President
Obama’s lame duck status as his excuse to block Merrick Garland’s
nomination for the Supreme Court after the death of Justice Antonin
Scalia.
