A Balancing Act
Political opinions must be founded in real-world knowledge PI Editorial
Politics is certainly a unique subject. It is distinguished from biology, for example, in the fact that it is a subject about which lay people feel highly qualified to comment and criticize. Political opinions are thus ubiquitous, and indeed, it is a Constitutional right to petition our government with our (un)informed grievances. In the airing of such grievances, what's wrong with everyone having an opinion about how American society should be run?
Certainly politicians and pundits play up this universality of political opinions. We should have free health care, because health care is a fundamental right, say some. Many agree with them. So if these opinions are held by a majority of the people, and they vote into office those who agree with them, isn't that what democracy is all about?
Politics is so much fun for so many people because it seems like there are no right answers (thus, no one can really be wrong in holding an opinion) and because it involves normative questions of societal arrangement. What should the government do about [insert grave public policy problem]? Why shouldn't American citizens be free to [insert controversial expressive act]? It's a fun game, indeed. Rights and ideals can come from anywhere, even (and often) merely from the rectal cavern of your local cable news pundit.
It's tempting to think only the uninformed and undereducated think they can just create convenient little Political Worlds into which they can fit their ad hoc normative theorizing. But this excessive license is taken just as consistently by the most brilliant minds in politics and law - the theorists.
Theorists, who are usually unknown to the lay public until well after their deaths, are extremely important in modern society. They set the philosophical and moral frameworks under which our society progresses. The American Revolution itself was directly inspired and strengthened by the works of John Locke, writing centuries earlier. The curse of the theorist is that his ideas generally aren't put into practice until well after his death; the curse of the public is often the same delay in the implementation of brilliant ideas.
But many of today's most famous theorists are taking the subject in an inappropriate direction, by the same blanket creative license that delegitimizes most water-cooler political debate: the failure to understand the factors which dictate the success or failure of a political policy.
The social impact of political action is never determined by the abstract theories or viewpoints that inspire it. It is determined by all of the other studies of the human experience: economics, psychology, sociology, and science. Talking about ideal rights is all fine and good, but eventually ideas need to be put into practice - which requires the understanding of the disciplines that study that which is put into practice. Marxism, for example, fails because it refuses to recognize the intrinsic value in the division of labor, monetary quantification, and free bargaining, among many other cherished axioms of capitalist economics. Social restrictions, such as censorship, fail because they ignore the psychological and sociological elements of morality and ethics: thought cannot be forced.
These highly obvious points about the value of empirical knowledge are unfortunately disregarded by many commentators and activists, but more dangerously, by contemporary political theorists.
The late John Rawls, for example, gained widespread acclaim for his concept of the Veil of Ignorance. In essence, he proposed that a truly just society could only be achieved by creating a system in which every individual would be happy, no matter his status in life. That is, whether he is rich or poor, male or female, talented or stupid, he feels that the society would work in his best interests. He uses this model to propose excessive egalitarianism - anyone in this position, he presumes, would design a society to make sure that the rich redistributed much of its wealth and other benefits to the poor. After all, what if you were poor? Wouldn't you want the rich's money?
Certainly, gross majorities of citizens in any society would agree with him. The difference between the many who agree with him, and the few who don't, is that the latter understand economics. Those who understand economics know that there can be a benefit to all classes from earned economic inequality. The specter of great wealth above one's peers is the very profit-seeking incentive that induces producers to create goods and services to fulfill our needs, which in turn creates capital flows and investment, which in turn helps create the prosperity which gives all classes a better living situation. Ask yourself: is it better to be poor in the rich United States, or poor in the hyper-poor Eritrea?
Ronald Dworkin, another egalitarian theorist, goes even farther. His theory of justice espouses what is called "egalitarianism of luck", that is to say, the belief that circumstances beyond your control (natural intelligence, in-born talents, fortunate economic circumstances) should not be allowed to create inequality. Society, in his view, should somehow redistribute this "luck" so that those without it can be more "equal" with those who have it.
But of course, others know that it is these very gifts that others possess that deliver the economic growth and societal enrichment that we all enjoy. Picasso may have done nothing to deserve his artistic talents, but few, beyond presumably Ronald Dworkin, would argue that we should all be bereft the incredible enjoyment we gain from viewing one of his aberrantly-skilled works.
It might be ironically true that those who understand only these auxiliary disciplines - economics, psychology, sociology - are better served to make political judgments then those who study only politics and law in the abstract. The empirically useless works of Dworkin, et al., confirm this. Closer to home, we see this when lay politicians, who oppose any sort of policy action to prevent against global warming, attempt to contradict the studies of the National Academy of Sciences, or when lay pundits, who have never seen a gunshot fired in anger, try to tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff how to prosecute a war.
The future of politics and law lies in the intersection between all of the disciplines that govern their real world impact. This organization hopes to assist this progress, by grounding arguments less in abstract ideals and more in applicable knowledge.
Many American universities are also leading this charge. Some top law schools, such as Yale, Columbia and USC, are renowned for their adoption of interdisciplinary research and teaching. Most political science programs are unfortunately behind the times, stuck teaching in a theoretical bubble, but some progress there is encouraging.
Indeed, public policy does not exist in a theoretical vacuum, and neither should its discussions. It's time for us to listen less to John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, and more to Milton Friedman and Richard Posner. And that's not just because we want to keep our in-born talents.
