By Jonah Goldberg
Saturday, July 2, 2016
I’ve been thinking about Buridan’s ass.
While that might be a phrase you’d expect to hear passing
Bill Clinton’s lips — if he had an intern whose last name was Buridan — I have
something else in mind.
In philosophy, Buridan’s ass is a paradox about
determinism, named after 14th-century philosopher Jean Buridan (but was
probably first proposed by Aristotle). Via Professor Wikipedia:
It refers to a hypothetical
situation wherein an ass that is equally hungry and thirsty is placed precisely
midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes
the ass will always go to whichever is closer, it will die of both hunger and
thirst since it cannot make any rational decision to choose one over the other.
There are other versions of the same dilemma, some with
two piles of hay or a human instead of a donkey. But you get the point.
Personally, I think it’s kind of a dumb paradox when applied to human action as
opposed to physical forces (which is what Aristotle had in mind).
Buridan’s ass keeps coming to mind even though it’s
almost an inverse analogy to what’s going on today. In Buridan’s parable the
donkey is asked to choose between two desirable, even life-saving, options. For
the analogy to get closer to the mark to today’s predicament, we would have to
be the hay forced to choose between two competing hungry asses.
In other words we have managed to flip Buridan’s paradox
on its head. We are being asked to pick our poison. We are being asked if we’d
prefer to be mauled by a lion or a tiger. We are being asked what kind of bread
our mandatory crap sandwiches shall be served on.
It’s a no-win scenario and Captain Kirk is nowhere on the
horizon to rig the Kobayashi Maru.
(Oh, and just for the record, we are not actually bound
by the binary choice everyone says we are. We can abstain from voting at all,
or vote for Gary Johnson, or write in someone else. The fact that such efforts
will not save us from our predicament is merely proof of how sh*tty our
predicament is.)
Victor’s Dilemma
Feeling forced to choose between the rock and the hard
place is bad enough. Having to write about it day after day is even worse.
Here’s the great Victor Davis Hanson letting his frustrations show:
Never Trumpers, then, face a sort
of existential quandary: The more they attack Hillary Clinton, the more it
becomes surreal to attack simultaneously (and far more frequently) Trump, who
has attacked Clinton in a fashion never before seen in her long political
history. And if Never Trumpers insist that the two candidates are of equal
odiousness, what then is the point of daily reiterating their oppositions: On
Monday attack Trump, on Tuesday Clinton, on Wednesday Trump again? Very quickly
the message is received that the two are equally terrible people and therefore
the election should not warrant any more commentary or interest, given that any
outcome will be wretched. The logic of Trump voters trashing Clinton and
Clinton voters trashing Trump is obvious; but what is the rationale of trashing
both, other than a sort of detached depression that does not wear well in daily
doses?
Now, VDH is smarter than the average bear — and that’s if
you’re referencing a distant planet inhabited by an advanced race of
super-intelligent grizzlies who figured out millennia ago how to genetically
design salmon that crap butter-scotch-flavored ice cream.
Nonetheless this is a strange critique, particularly in a
column that begins, “When have voters faced a choice between two such
unpalatable, unprincipled candidates?”
In that question lies the knife to cut the Gordian knot
Professor Hanson presents.
But first, let’s acknowledge a simple fact: We are in
uncharted territory — for everybody.
Victor makes it sound like the dilemma only exists for
Trump’s conservative opponents. But it’s everyone’s dilemma. If you’re a
principled conservative who nonetheless concludes that Hillary is the greater
evil, you’re still stuck with the problem that her Republican opponent is
unpalatable and unprincipled.
Coming Unmoored
Consider, again, Stephen Moore. On April 1, 2016 — that’s
exactly three months ago to the day — Steve co-authored a blistering (and
entirely accurate) attack on tariffs and protectionism generally:
Though almost all economists agree
that the freedom to trade is a pillar of a prosperous economy, it’s obvious
from the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders that free trade is in
political retreat right now and they want tariffs to keep out the foreign
competition. What they don’t seem to understand is that protectionism only
gives greater power to corporate lobbyists in Washington.
A few days before that, he wrote another stinging rebuke:
“Protectionism via tariffs is a regressive tax and would almost certainly
exacerbate income inequality. The people who benefit the most from low-cost
imports from China and sold at Wal-Mart or Target are the working poor.” The prior
August, he and Larry Kudlow (another born-again Trump backer) co-authored a
jeremiad against Trump’s protectionism, ridiculing the notion that trade with
China hurts us.
And here is Moore this week, agreeing with Donald Trump
on how we have to scrap these trade deals with China. (Though he did say, with
what I hope was profound understatement, that he is “more of a free trader”
than Trump).
It gets worse. For years, Moore ridiculed those who
questioned the benefits of unbridled immigration. In September, Moore told the Washington Post:
What Trump is saying about trade
and immigration is a political and economic disaster. … He’s almost now making
it cool and acceptable to be nativist on immigration and protectionist on
trade. That’s destroying a lot of the progress we’ve made as a party in the
last 30 years.
Steve in particular has insinuated that opponents of
unfettered immigration — including National
Review — are driven by irrational, “foaming at the mouth,” nativist, or
bigoted instincts in their opposition to unending immigration and the growing
Hispanic population that comes with it. The nobility of assimilation was once
one of his most cherished beliefs.
So here’s Steve in The
American Spectator this month responding to Republicans denouncing Trump’s
comments on Judge Curiel:
The Republicans are, by contrast,
pathetic wimps. They are so terrified of and traumatized by the “racist”
charge, that they threw the GOP nominee under the bus so that the media
wouldn’t label them bigots too. They foolishly piled on to the media and
Democratic attack. The media didn’t have to call on Jesse Jackson or Al
Sharpton to excoriate Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan lashed out at Trump for
his “racist comment.” Marco Rubio and others did the same. Jeb Bush called for
Trump to “retract” his comments.
They seemed to be saying: see how
racially progressive I am. I just denounced Donald Trump. He’s the Republican
racist, not me. That’s statesmanship for you.
Question: Does anyone believe that
this strategy will bring a stampede of black and Latino voters into the party?
Do they think this will get the media off their back?
Now, I like Steve. But how are we supposed to interpret
this? I think his mind-reading skills are on par with Chris Christie’s
acrobatic talents, but put that aside. Moore is flatly arguing that
conservatives who disagree with Trump — on the very principles Moore spent his
career defending — are idiots. Smart politicians and their “brain trusts” (his
words) should either shut up or lie. He asks, “Since when do we judge our
candidates based on the left’s warped criteria? Republicans seem to suffer from
the Stockholm Syndrome of seeking the affection of their captors.”
Uh, wait a second.
I thought opposition to nativism and bigotry were part of
our criteria — or at the very least
Steve’s. He even begins his op-ed conceding that Trump said “stupid and even
offensive things.” In other words, his objection can’t be found in all of this
rhetorical sprinkler system of diarrhea about the motives of those who won’t
fall in line, it’s that they are bothering to stand up for their principles,
when Steve won’t.
The Shock of the
New
After saying all that, it might seem strange for me to
add that I have been trying to adopt a more generous attitude towards those who
disagree with me about Trump.
It should go without saying that in extremely unusual
circumstances where none of the standard rules apply, different people will
have different responses to the new and unfamiliar. Throw ten pacifists into a
gladiatorial arena and tell them only one may leave the Coliseum alive, some
will still refuse to pick up their swords. But some won’t. A passionate
opponent of torture, when actually presented with the certain threat that a
bomb will go off underneath his family may stick to his principles, or he may
pick up that power drill.
I don’t particularly like these analogies, but I can’t
think of better ones right now. The point is, when the terra firma of
conventional categories falls away, it’s only natural that a once-unified group
will have diverse responses to what comes next. It’s like in a horror movie,
when Freddie Kruger or Jason or Lena Dunham suddenly appears, the teenagers
scatter, adopting different survival strategies. Some hide in the attic. Some
fight. Some get in a car and drive very far away. Others show Dunham a still
from one of her nude scenes.
So it is with Trump. One week Hugh Hewitt is comparing
him to Stage-4 cancer or a plummeting jet, another week he’s arguing that we
have to back him no matter what. I don’t mean this as a criticism per se.
Hugh’s an honorable and decent conservative and Republican and he’s trying to
figure out how to respond to a terrible situation. He’s come to one set of
conclusions, Kevin Williamson another. That’s to be expected when lifelong
conservatives are dumped in the Wilds of Trumpistan.
My Hypocrisy
I’m not accustomed to quoting John Maynard Keynes, but he
was right to say that when the facts change, so do his opinions.
As Bill Clinton said to the girls at the Bunny Ranch,
take me. In 2012, I wrote a column, “The Case for Mitt Romney.” In it, I tried
to reassure conservatives who worried — understandably — that Romney wasn’t an
authentic conservative. It is absolutely true that if you replace “Romney” with
“Trump” it reads like a perfectly serviceable — even entertaining — argument
for supporting the 2016 presumptive nominee.
Some guy named Edmund Kozak at Laura Ingraham’s website
read it and now shouts “Hypocrite!” in my direction. I get it. What Kozak
doesn’t get is that I don’t see Trump the same way he does, or the way I saw
Mitt Romney.
If John Kasich or any — and I mean any — of the other 16 candidates had won the nomination, I’d
probably have written “The Case for John Kasich” by now. If I refused to do
that, I would indeed be a hypocrite — or at least inconsistent (hypocrisy is a
much misused word).
Note: I can’t stand Kasich. But he meets my own minimal
requirements for support. Trump, simply, doesn’t. He falls short of the mark
like John Candy in the long jump. I’m not going to rehash all of my reasons for
this conviction, but suffice it to say I think he’s unpatriotically unprepared
and unqualified for the job. Politically, conservatism at its core is about the
importance of ideas and the importance of character. With the exception of his
longstanding support for protectionism and the unalloyed importance of
“strength,” Trump cares not a whit for policy or philosophy. His attachment to
principles is, for the most part, a nearest-weapon-to-hand approach. As a
matter of character he’s crude, boorish, dishonest, proudly promiscuous, and
has launched countless businesses based on the idea that it’s morally
acceptable to take advantage of people. He dodged the actual Vietnam War but
claimed that avoiding the clap in the 1970s was his own personal Vietnam.
Kozak and many others either disagree with me on these
points or they simply don’t care. If it’s the former, we have some substantial
disagreements about what I think are obvious facts. If it’s the latter, then I
take our disagreement as a badge of honor. If Roger Simon wants to describe
that as “moral narcissism,” so be it. But, there’s a practical point here too.
I plan on being in this line of work for a while longer. In the future, I want
to be able to continue to say character and ideas matter without someone
shouting, “Oh yeah, then why did you support Donald Trump?”
Defining Down
Which brings me to my friend and longtime intellectual
lodestar Charles Kesler. I revere Charles. But I am flummoxed and bewildered by
the contortions he goes through to defend Trump. I’m already running long, so I
will give you just one example.
Charles writes:
Do obscenities fall from his lips
more readily than they did from Lyndon Johnson’s or Richard Nixon’s? Are the
circumstances of his three marriages more shameful than the circumstances of
John F. Kennedy’s pathologically unfaithful one — or for that matter, Bill
Clinton’s humiliatingly unfaithful one? Have any of his egotistical excesses
rivaled Andrew Jackson’s killing a man in a duel over a horse racing bet and an
insult to Jackson’s wife?
These are interesting questions and I’ve got what I think
are very good responses to all of them. But at a more basic level, how can you
establish these shortcomings as the new minimal threshold for good character
and ever talk about the importance of character ever again?
“Well, at least Bill Clinton didn’t kill a guy!”
This applies not just to the issue of character, but
policy as well: By waiving the standards we use to judge liberal politicians in
order to defend an allegedly conservative one, we are waiving those standards
for all time. I’m not talking about some allowances at the margins, politics
should be flexible — strange bedfellows and all that. But there’s a difference
between being flexible and willingly snapping your own spine to bend over for a
politician who, almost certainly, has contempt for the standards you once held
near and dear.
The Answer
And that brings me back to Victor’s dilemma. He asks,
“What is the rationale of trashing both [Clinton and Trump], other than a sort
of detached depression that does not wear well in daily doses?”
Every day, as I read or reread more Nock and Mencken, I’m
growing comfortable with the “detached depression” Hanson describes.
But the answer is staring him in the face: Because we’re
supposed to tell the truth. I will say Hillary is corrupt, deceitful, and
unqualified and I will say likewise about Trump — because that’s my job.
Victor is one of the finest historians alive, so I’ll
speak in those terms. George Orwell was one of the very few intellectuals
generally, and almost entirely alone on the left, who recognized that both
Stalin and Hitler were abominations. No, I’m not saying that we face a similar
moral or existential choice. What I am saying is that just because we are
facing a horrible choice, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t say it is horrible. That’s
our job. As Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is
a revolutionary act.”
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