Why you should hold your beliefs at arm’s length
The third reason that Carl is wrong to call himself a monarchist (and why I think people oughtn’t to call themselves liberals, conservatives, libertarians, environmentalists or whatever) is that human brains are very leaky contraptions, and one corollary of this is that initially descriptive ideas tend to drift in the direction of prescriptivity (hence, inter alia, the naturalistic fallacy). Let’s say you notice, as a fact about yourself, that you favor low taxes and a generally small government on ethical and practical grounds. You look in a dictionary and, lo and behold, that is a big part of the definition of “conservative.” Out come the phonemes: “I am a conservative.” Aren’t words great?
What you will probably not notice, however, is that increasingly when you don’t know what you think about some issue yet (say, your country’s stance on foreign affairs), you will take your cue from other self-identified conservatives, as opposed to thinking it through yourself and then describing your conclusion in political terminology. The normative self-definition has staged its coup d’etat. Whatever “conservatives” think, that is going to be your opinion. Of course, when I put it that way, it looks ridiculous. But from the inside, this process feels perfectly rational — like wisely throwing your lot in with a really smart group of people.
The hasty allegiances formed by the drift to normativity have a further drawback, in that they tend to make progress towards specific goals difficult. The political landscape is a skew coordinate system. In other words, you can never move along a single axis without simultaneously moving along others. Want to support the only party that is currently serious about climate change? Well, be my guest, as long as you don’t mind their economic protectionism. Want to combat protectionism by supporting the opposing party? By all means, as long as you’re all right with “family values.” And what, pray tell, does sexual bigotry have to do with free trade economics? Why exactly is that a package deal? Search me. Apparently it’s somehow distantly related to where two varieties of wig-wearing aristocrats sat during the French Revolution.**
To be clear, I am not advocating disengagement from politics. Rather, I suggest we should take a piecemeal approach to political issues, avoiding an excessive focus on their historical relations with each other.
I really, really like this essay, and I agree with it.
It touches on some other topics as well, not only politics.
What do you think? Do you agree with it, or not?