Through reading more and more about China recently and the way that someone like Leo Strauss is gaining popularity in that country, and it instantly makes me think of the tea party, but also of Europe. This again will be a long post about a very abstract idea, but it strikes me as particularly resonant in this day and age: we are entering a new war of ideologies, but this time, it will be about knowledge itself, not its application.
I've long been obsessed with the idea that Western democracy is somehow in decline and I believe that the main reason is the rise of the acceptance of ignorance especially then a kind of political ignorance. I've questioned that belief many times over the years, and a fair bit of nuance has found its way into it. I've usually classified political ignorance as one of these: One, that after a certain point become increasingly reluctant to study the complexity of other world-views. Two, since most people don't have formal training in political or philosophic thought and/or rhetoric, and hence, while in other areas of their lives they are able to reason their way out of situations, in politics they will be happy to respond to ideas that come from "the gut" and will be drawn to affirmations, in the same way that for example horoscopes colour people's hopes and fears. Third, I've had a belief that ignorance is not just the sum of all things unlearned, but especially ignorance stems from the rejection of all that seems superfluous to experience.
However, the more I grow up, I'm seeing that this is, for the large part, youthful disdain for the world order. People are by and large very curious (though they are obsessed with having others corroborate their beliefs), their own ideas are a lot more nuanced than they when reported by others, and the real culprit is not the lack of knowledge they accumulate, but rather it is confusion surrounding its correct use.
Out of this mess of good-natured inspection comes the form that represents it politically, and it is nothing that has to do with Left and Right any more.
I believe that whereas political systems in the 20th century was one of competing ideas in a world of greater political discourse, the 21st will be based around different type of political system - that of the idea-compiler. The differences between the two are not new - they highlight, for example, the split between religion and science in some ways - but not for reasons of rationality as one might suppose. They are the split between those that think that the world operates under fairly rational rules and those that think those rules are largely conjectures that must be properly thought-through and tested by a select few. This is the template the world over and the real difference is whether people have a belief in their "constitution" (the former case - whichever form it may take) or whether they trust more their wise men. The problem really becomes now, when people have enough evidence to make them distrust their sacred rules and even more their hallowed leaders.
This is in one sense seemingly a plain insight into basic human nature, but my point here is that it's no longer about Left and Right. Just because you are a doctor who's participated on research into a clinical trial and wants to recommend that the drugs be developed and taken into consideration for cases in which the patient will be treated by said drug, meaning the loss of expenditure on a bunch of near-miss options, does that make you a socialist? Or does that make you a special-interest-conservative? Both are true, really, no? Or take the case of the farmer who has come into a pact with his fellow farmers to sell their collective wares for a better price, rather than be pushed down by the big buyers - does that make you a collectivist, or a successful small-business owner who knows how to organise his cohorts? Is it left, or is it right? The fact is, the reluctance to see the whole story through an ideological prism is incredibly limiting, and any kind of intellectual straightjacket is bad for decision-making.
It sounds trite, but the world seems incredibly complex to some, whilst others prefer to see it in strikingly simple terms. Most questions can be answered with long circuitous answers or with a laconic flourish and yet be as profound as each other. The key then is to make sure that we don't get bogged down in dogma nor exercises in excessive data-hunts. It's a tough tightrope to walk, but I for one welcome the change from the left and rightism that dogs our thinking on any subject and is at best a frothy mix of the worst excesses of both.
What I mean to propose is that democracies no longer work on a system where we put our faith in parties to represent us, but that we put more faith in the people representing us. It is not difficult to find politicians who are able to argue both for the collectivist farmer and the special-interest doctor, without recourse to an ideology. We have examples, and a body of academic work on all of these topics to really assist in the decision making for each of these people, and what we should be looking for is not the ideological fit that we have with this or that representative, but both their mastery of that knowledge and their ability to represent our geography. Thereby our elected officials will have a more direct responsibility to their electorates, who can try and hold them more directly accountable. Before we do that, however, we have to try and break the bonds of party affiliation.
[I think I should include this little addendum of things I particularly have a problem with:
On the right, I am slightly annoyed by the renewed interest in people like Leo Strauss, Ayn Rand and the Republican forays into treating the US Constitution as some kind of sacred text (may I suggest reading about Solon or the "Athenian Constitution" as a much better guide?). On the left, I am increasingly annoyed by the Krugmanites and the neo-Keynesites, who tend to treat the lessons of the 80s as some historic aberration.
How this plays out - on the right, you have the people who spout supply-side nonsense about how lower taxes always yield greater economic growth, and on the left you have a belief in greater regulation coupled with greater borrowing as some kind of fix for growth. I realise that I am simplifying the two positions, but the arguments are very tendentious and they seem without nuance. Not once have I seen in any models presented by the likes of Wolf, DeLong or Krugman and their ilk, any word about what happens after their giant stimuli takes hold. There is almost an implicit suggestion that the world, once it has weathered the storm of the current recession, will somehow revert to an order whereby firms are not dependent on a government-subsidised economy, the gains of that growth will be accepted by the electorate to accommodate higher taxes and a greater co-ordination in the economy as to root out the deficient elements organically and rationally. That seems entirely implausible, but it also smacks of the kind of short term fixes that they enjoy pinning on the right.
On the right, however, I don't understand the positions either. The people who like to quote Friedman (less so now) and Hayek, also seem to discount that these people have already been successful in restoring some kind of balance to the economies of the Western world after the huge build-up of the post war years. The idea that those people are relevant now just isn't the case, because they unfortunately did not have coherent ideologies for a political union. The rightist idea that people with enough disposable income necessarily boost their own economy through increased entrepreneurial and investment activity is wrong not just by virtue of the experience of the past 30 years, but also it seems ludicrous in a globalised world with very relaxed rules of capital movement.
The problem for me is that these very loose ideas tend to be subsumed by leaders into their deliberations and the path that they choose to point toward is almost always influenced by this and the inherent short-termism. Take the example of the present Euro-crisis: you have Germany which thinks that their model of an economy focused on hard work and growth by making and supplying the world with superior products is workable for all countries. It is in political and economic union with Greece which has a completely different attitude to life values and also to growth. Now, Germany seems reluctant to let Greece go its merry way of default and expulsion from the monetary union because of the weight of obligation to a political union and the nervousness of its banks which are over-exposed to losses (and their knock-on losses from the other peripheral countries) which they are not willing to handle on their own (and because of the knock on effect on their country, economy and global financial stability, of course). Herein lies the short-termism of all the people involved - what the Dutch are actually suggesting today is something that should have been on the table two years ago (and before). I wouldn't want to go into the simplicity or complexity of a decision, but the problem is that the whole process is not about a discussion of a workable system, but rather it is a decision increasingly based around the idea that these decisions must be made understandable to the electorate, whether in conservative-corporatist Germany, or in anti-government-socialist Greece. Add this to the greater debate of how much austerity is necessary and how European economies should try and compete in this day and age, and I come back to the confusion of the voter I referred to at the beginning of this piece: by sticking to strict political platforms, leaders of the West stick to positions which have no side-leaning aspect inherent in them. And because their ability to adhere to their first principle-platforms are what the voters are apparently preparing to judge them on (they won't bother explaining the entangled principles to that electorate) in finding workable solutions, they will shy from considering the different approaches to the problem because they still have to seemingly their decisions to strict party-platform lines (there is a second part to this where I believe some short-term "Right" policies have an incredible "Left" effect in the long-run, but that's another story).
I don't think I am in any way qualified to propose a way out of the quagmire that Europe finds itself in. But I'll come out and say it anyway. In effect, I think the leaders of the main countries should come out with a road-map for Europe based around establishing a fairly transparent monetary cross-border policy between the states (how much flows from countries like Holland, Germany, to Italy etc., and what are Italy, etc's obligations as a result), but also a coherent economic policy (where are the best areas to focus on which products - is there a way Europe can encourage them to flourish there?) and a political union around acceptable axioms (there is a social contract between countries, no country is an autarky). And fairly strict rules that bind this all which result in fines and loss of financial authority if not adhered to. Then they should put the delinquent countries endangering this roadmap on a set probationary period and in the meantime ready a cross-European political and monetary taskforce which will act as their interim government if they are not able to get their houses in order (what makes me think that they will be any better at it - nothing, but it lends an air of respectability to the idea). And then elect a Roman emperor to rule over it all and buy him a fiddle... I guess I would agree with about half of that at least...
Joking aside, the point is that I doubt that this is a problem that highlights for me the ineptitude of a strict party-platform-line in a democratic system to really be able to fully cope with the complexities of governing, but it is at the same time not an unfathomable concept to withstand considerations of what would be acceptable for all sides in an open forum. The way of government must therefore be to govern by an entangled consensus, based around private first principles of their leaders and not their parties.]
