I am deeply troubled by the emerging contours of public discourse – particularly since… oh… 2008.
Consider this fact. That we are debating the nature and character of those who come to recent town-hall meetings to ask questions and even offer objections to current healthcare reform proposals in Congress.
Rather than whether these people are right or wrong.
I find it remarkable that President Obama does not say something like this:
Look. This is a democracy. And people should be free to voice their opinions. As long as they are respectful and not disruptive. Even if I happen to disagree with them. We should be glad people come to these town-hall meetings and ask questions. Even if they have different opinions. I happen to disagree with them. I do not think they truly understand the healthcare reform bill we are proposing or how it will help not just the American people in general but how it will help them specifically.
President Bush said things very much like this. Not always. But often.
I voiced this concern to the reporter who spoke to me at the Baton Rouge Tea Party. That I am concerned about the marginalization of dissent. She disagreed with me and opined that it was like that and worse under President Bush. Fair enough.
I do not think she should shut up or that she is stupid or evil. I think she is merely wrong.
Why is it that current public discussions on politics seem more about whether we are stupid and evil and should shut up – rather than why we are merely wrong?
Ivan Kenneally wrote one of the most brilliant analyses of the current state of political discourse I have read to date. It ends with this:
Finally, despite a burgeoning distrust of both the economic and environmental defensibility of the cap-and-trade bill, Obama
has proceeded swiftly, pointing to non-existent mandates from the scientific community and the public at large. Again, it would be edifying to the American public if their representatives in the House slowed the frenetic pace of this legislation and drew attention to the disputes over the bill and the science behind it. However, the tripartite formula for technocratic politics — the illusion of immanent crisis, the pretense of public consensus, and the suppression of open debate — has prevented a serious and non-ideological dialogue from emerging.
The real danger of Obama’s technocratic administration lies in its habit of tendentiously recasting serious moral and political debates as misguided arguments about plainly observable empirical facts. Such intellectual self-indulgence preemptively labels all disagreement as uninformed or nefarious and renders democratic process — and all those that demand it — tiresome and frustrating. This transforms every nuanced policy debate into a choice between the light of reason and the darkness of ignorance; this heavy-handed dogmatism inevitably creates a cultural cleavage between the chosen bearers of truth and those who stupidly refuse the gifts bestowed by progress.
Read the whole thing at National Review Online.
And he teaches at Rochester Institute of Technology – which is where my parents met and from which my dad graduated.
