In the course of discussing Tom Friedman's column on Turkey, Yaacov Lozowick made a telling observation:
A friend recently sent me this link, to a strongly pro-Israel article on an American political website. It's a gratifying read (even if she's got a few of her numbers wrong), but that's not the point, since if you know where to go looking, you can always find people who are even more hawkishly pro-Israel than many Israelis. (Hint: most American outlets who don't define themselves as stridently liberal). The point of the story was the person who sent me the link, a moderate woman who doesn't deal much with politics, with whom I've had past discussions from the left. In recent times, however, the amount of blatantly irrational invective being directed at Israel is so outlandish, that she's seeking comfort from wherever she can find it, even from folks who are not her natural allies.
This irrationality is becoming one of the main stories of our time, and probably deserves closer scrutiny than I'm giving it.
I have written a great deal about the tendency toward Societal Regression that takes place during times of great stress. Most of my posts have concerned various signs of such regression, starting with the American Psychoanalytic Panel on the subject from 2005, which I wrote about in Terror and Societal Regression. Yaacov Lozowick touches on a slightly different aspect of such regression, the tendency toward the elevation of the irrational.
No one is surprised when the Arab World and their appeasers in Europe and on the Left attack Israel with anti-Semitic tropes and evince apparent belief in the most fabulous paranoid conspiracy theories. The tendency toward irrationality when anti-Semitism is in play has a long historical pedigree. There is also no surprise that at any given time a small but not insignificant portion of the American polity believe bizarre theories about their political opponents. Such a tendency occurs on both the Left and the Right and their beliefs, even when given some currency by the opposing parties, rarely reach a threshold for concern. A mature and healthy society easily tolerates the irrational and maintains a reasonable perspective. However, when more mature and rational societies begin to slip down the path toward irrationality, the early danger signs can be missed.
Typically stable societies regress slowly at first, and then rapidly. As noted by Antonin Scalia, quoted by Jennifer Rubin, neither Hitler nor Stalin started out with the goal of becoming monsters:
The Best Speech Those High School Grads May Ever Hear
Movement is not necessarily progress. More important than your obligation to follow your conscience, or at least prior to it, is your obligation to form your conscience correctly. Nobody — remember this — neither Hitler, nor Lenin, nor any despot you could name, ever came forward with a proposal that read, “Now, let’s create a really oppressive and evil society.” Hitler said, “Let’s take the means necessary to restore our national pride and civic order.” And Lenin said, “Let’s take the means necessary to assure a fair distribution of the goods of the world.”
What determines whether a democratic society succumbs to severe Societal Regression depends on many different factors, some inherent in the population (Americans by and large have shown very good common sense over the years, even in the face of significant stressors such as 9/11) and some resident within the personality and person of the leadership. A demagogic leader during a time of great stress, creates a high risk environment for dangerous Societal Regression. One additional aspect that has protected us in the past is under assault:
On Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour, David Brooks — while properly castigating Rep. Joe Barton for his politically inept defense of BP and his muddled attempt to draw an important principle from what is happening — said this:
He actually had a kernel of truth at the core of what he said, which is that we’re a nation of laws. We have laws to protect the unpopular, and to even protect people who do bad things. And we have a set of laws, when somebody does something bad, does something negligent, to force them to pay and compensate those who were damaged. And that’s all on the books. And what President Obama did when he very publicly and very brutally strong-armed BP into setting aside this $20 billion, is, he went around those laws. And some people think, “Oh, it’s no problem. It’s only BP.” Well, if you’re upset about — I mean, if, imagine if Dick Cheney did it to somebody he didn’t like and said, “Oh, we don’t happen to like you. We’re going to set $20 billion aside, and I will appoint the person who is going to decide what is going to happen to that $20 billion.”
...
David’s point is well put, and, when passions among the polity are running high, it was a responsible observation to make.
In A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More and William Roper have an exchange in which Roper says to More, “So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!”
More answers: “Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?” Roper replies, “I’d cut down every law in England to do that!” And More answers this way:
Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
During this crisis, BP has acted horribly on almost every level; but the rule of law still matters, even — and maybe especially — in instances like this.
The rule of law is one of the great bulwarks of democracy protecting us from our worst instincts and our tendency to regress toward the irrational under stress. We have as President a man who has never been truly tested by failure. He has had a charmed political life, has an academic political philosophy that has never done particularly well in the past when tested against reality, and a sensitivity to slights that is troubling in a leader. All politicians (as all human beings do) have a tendency to demonize their opponents. Mature adults recognize that tendency and develop more mature modes of thinking that allow them to discount that tendency within themselves. The jury is still out on Barack Obama's level of emotional and political maturity. Thus far, in various settings, he has exhibited an unfortunate tendency to demonize his opposition, as if they were enemies rather than merely political opponents. This tendency can easily lead to demagoguery. As his grip on the levers of power is threatened, let us hope he can tolerate a diminution of his power with some grace. The alternative promises additional and unnecessary upheaval during parlous times.
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