Encyclopedia of Political Nonsense
August 18, 2009Contrarian Comments Off on Encyclopedia of Political NonsenseFreeSpokane today adds a new feature — the Encyclopedia of Political Nonsense. It will be a compilation of words, phrases, and statements frequently encountered in social/political discussions which are either empirically false or rest upon assumptions which are empirically false. The qualifier “empirically” is important here: the Encyclopedia will not include statements with which I merely disagree or which assume values I don’t happen to share. It will not include statements around which there is genuine controversy and uncertainty (e.g., most of the debates concerning global warming). It will only qualify as “nonsense” if the statement or its underlying assumptions can readily be shown to be false by straightforward empirical methods — by observation, or as logically derived conclusions from observations.
Each word or phrase will be illustrated with a recent example from Net-accessible sources — local, wherever possible — so the reader can view the comment in context. Being frequently encountered, most of the entries will be familiar, of course. Many of them will be buzzwords, slogans or catchphrases from the catechisms of “greenies” and Leftists (who are typically the same people), recited in virtually every political discussion in which they become involved. But homilies from other loci on the political spectrum will be included also. The Encyclopedia will be non-partisan.
As the term “catechism” implies, the nonsensical words, phrases, and statements are usually recited by rote; they are elements of a learned liturgy which expresses the weltanschauung of their adherents, a set of beliefs and assumptions they have absorbed from the micro-monoculture in which they live and with which they identify, and which most of their dittoheads will never have investigated or even pondered. They fit neatly within the definition of “Faith” offered by Ambrose Bierce in his delightful Devil’s Dictionary (which partly inspired this Encyclopedia): “Belief without evidence in things told by one without knowledge about things without parallel.”
The Encyclopedia will never be exhaustive, but as time goes on it will become more comprehensive. I’ll add entries as I encounter them in the media, including the local blogosphere.
Herewith the initial entries, in alphabetical order:
The People. Synonyms: The General Will (Rousseau), the Public Interest, the Common Good, the Collective Consciousness, The State.
An abstract, transcendental, collective entity contrived to glorify and sanctify the commands of despots intent upon preventing the vulgar masses from pointlessly pursuing their selfish and trivial goals (“special interests”) and drafting them and their resources into pursuit of the goals of the despots, their patrons and their acolytes — which are held forth as the exalted goals of the transcendental entity. Example: ““We need to give government back to the people, and not to those who answer to special interests.” (From a comment by “Voice of Reason” here. Scroll down to comment #53).
One well-known modern formulation is that of Mussolini: “The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality — thus it may be called the “ethic” State . . . .”
The concept is nonsense because the presumed collective entity is a pure fiction; its existence cannot be demonstrated by any empirical method. Societies are comprised of individuals, and are nothing but those individuals. “Society” is merely a term of convenience, for referring to those individuals collectively. Attached to each of those constituent individuals is a hierarchy of interests, values, and goals. Each person’s hierarchy is as distinctive and unique to that person as his fingerprints and DNA, although he will likely share some of the interests and goals within it with certain other individuals. There are no goals or interests to be found in any society which are not the interests and goals of some particular individual(s) or other. I.e., all interests are “special interests,” all of them are important to the individuals in whose hierarchies they reside, and none of them are transcendental. The term is invoked to bamboozle the gullible into abandoning their own interests in favor of those of the despots, by appeal to their atavistic religious sense.
Other tactics which seek to exploit different irrationalisms but aim at the same end are the appeals to “Democracy” and “Mother Earth.” See the respective entries.
Sprawl. A term of disparagement for urban growth, particularly growth of suburban homes and businesses. Example: “Coordinate land use and transportation planning to result in an efficient pattern of development that supports alternative transportation modes consistent with the transportation chapter and makes significant progress toward reducing sprawl, traffic congestion, and air pollution.” (Goal LU-4 of the City of Spokane’s Comprehensive Plan).
Also in the same chapter (therefore same link): “Reduce sprawl. Reduce the inappropriate conversion of undeveloped land into sprawling, low density development,” and “Controlling urban sprawl in order to protect outlying rural areas.” The term also appears in numerous other places in that document.
Use of this term is nonsensical because the profferred rationale for it is nonsensical, and so are the justifications. “Outlying rural areas” are in no need of “protection” from urban growth, since no conversion of rural land to urban uses occurs without the consent of the present owners of that land. Every farmer is perfectly capable of “protecting” himself from rapacious developers: all he has to do is say, “Sorry, the land is not for sale.” Needless to say, the farmer will surely need protection should decisions regarding urban growth come to fall under the control of politicians and bureaucrats, because they will not hestitate to use eminent domain to force growth of the types they prefer. Then the farmer will need lawyers, courts, and probably a shotgun to keep the despots and predators at bay.
Growth which occurs naturally in accordance with market demands is entirely voluntary, on the parts of the sellers of the rural land, the developers who build subdivisions, office parks, or shopping centers on it, and the purchasers and lessees of those developments. Each of them acts in accordance with what he perceives to be his best interest. Unless the interests of these relevant parties coincide the development does not occur. When these facts are pointed out, the greenies and leftists respond with more nonsense: that the farmer is a “victim” of inexorable economic pressures, or that buyers purchase homes in the suburbs because they have been “brainwashed” by slick marketeers and promoters (their desires are not “authentic”), because the evil developers offer no alternatives, and sometimes, when not being circumspect, even with the arrogant claim that farmers and consumers are too stupid to know what is in their own best interests and require an enlightened planner to do their thinking for them.
The “inexorable economic pressures” to which the farmer is subjected is, of course, the prospect of a better return on his investment in the land than he could possibly expect to realize by continuing to farm it, which he knows has long been marginal, if not actually unprofitable. The alleged lack of consumer alternatives is factually false. Consider the various inner city condo projects which have been cancelled, suspended, or stalled in Spokane in the last few years because buyers for the units did not appear — the Wall St tower, the YWCA twin towers, the W Riverside tower, the Vox Tower, and the moribund Kendall Yards project. While all these high-density projects folded for lack of buyer interest, sales of homes in the suburbs and in such exurbs as Post Falls and Rathdrum continued apace.
Now, the expounders of these various nonsensical claims know very well that they are nonsense. They trot them forth not because they actually believe them, but because they hope they will sound less threatening and therefore less likely to incite rebellion than the justification they actually accept: that the interests of individual farmers, businesspersons, and consumers are of no consequence anyway; the interests of “The People” or “Mother Earth” necessarily override them (see respective entries).
Sustainability. A buzzword from the “greenie” catechism repeated so often it has become annoying to many people, thus undercutting its rhetorical value. Example: “Sustainable practices require that we evaluate how our decisions today will affect society, the environment and the economies of the future. No shortage of examples for this one.
The term is nonsensical because it badly misunderstands the nature and laws of economics and of complex systems generally. The latter have two characteristic and well-understood features which render the concept of “sustainability” irrelevant. First, they are dynamic systems consisting of an endless succession of states, each differing in unpredictable ways from its predecessors. The “greenies” who recite this platitude observe the current state of the economy — the complex of resources, goods, services, technologies, and consumer desires and preferences which typify or dominate contemporary economic activity — and worry how that state can be “sustained” into the indefinite future. But of course, being a dynamic system, no state of the economy need be sustained very far into the future, and it will not be, regardless of what kinds of planning the greenies do or how Draconian the restrictions and controls they succeed in imposing. A popular cliche about the weather (another complex adaptive system) is, “If you don’t like it, wait ’til tomorrow. It will be different.” The state of the economy at any point in the future will also be different, and the resources it then utilizes, the technologies it employs, and the demands upon it will be different and likely unfathomable to us early 21st Century observers.
Which brings us to the 2nd feature of complex systems which render the concept of “sustainability” nonsensical: future states of the economy, like those of all other complex systems, are unpredictable, except in the very short term. No “greenie,” no planner, no ideologue can have any idea what the economy of 100 years from now will require as resources (or what will be considered a “resource”), what technologies will be employed or what demands consumers will place upon it, and thus no idea what effects the activities of today’s humans may have on it.
I said that the evidence that an entry in the Encyclopedia was nonsense would be empirical. The empirical evidence for this one lies in history, particularly the history of attempts to predict the future states of any complex system. No 19th century planner or prognosticator came anywhere close to predicting the economic complexion of the year 2000, of any of its characteristic technologies, methodologies, products, or consumer demands — not air travel, not automobiles, nor radio, television, microprocessors, cell phones, synthetic fibers, DNA analysis or genetically-altered organisms, motion pictures, rock music, or the Internet, before the key inventions appeared (some later developments of existing technologies *were* correctly predicted, e.g., cell phones). Those who ventured predictions — from Malthus to Marx to Edward Bellamy to Ladies Home Journal magazine — got most of them wrong and missed the important ones entirely. (A good commentary on Bellamy’s *Looking Backward* here. Nor could any soothsayer of the 18th century predict the economy of the 19th century. And so on.
Advocates of “sustainability” are not interested in the economy of the future as it will naturally evolve, about which they can know nothing, but in controlling the economy of today in order to assure that they will control it in the future.
More to come . . .