CONTEMPORARY FALLACIES

I have recently discovered Roger Scruton’s reflections on the fallacies of modern culture that affect the thinking of those who want to bring about idealistic solutions to all the problems and challenges of humanity. It is entitled, THE USES OF PESSIMISM: AND THE DANGER OF FALSE HOPE. He addresses popular delusions, the madness of crowds, the idiocy of Marxist science, the doctrines of the Nazis, political and social engineering, addiction to unreality, the flight to debt in order to finance the present, the optimism of revolutionaries, and the debasement of education.

I remember being in London in 1968 when student radicals carrying the Little Red Book of Mao, demonstrated in favor of the Cultural Revolution in China which influenced academics in the Western world to liberate students from ‘oppressive’ studies and the social institutions of their day. It spread to psychology blaming the family, schools and churches which resulted in the closing of mental hospitals, the increase of homeless patients on the streets, the invention of ‘false memory syndrome’ where children ‘discover’ the repressed trauma of abuse from which they have never recovered.

He explores the utopian fallacy of the vision of a future state in which the conflicts and problems of human life are all solved completely, in which people live together in unity and harmony. All that creates tension and conflict is to be eliminated. For some, conflict comes from power, and utopia is to be a condition in which no one has power over anyone else; for others, conflict comes from inequality, and utopia is to be a state of complete equality; for others still, conflict comes from private property, and will be overcome only in a world of common ownership. Utopia never arrives but its ideals necessitate violence against anybody and anything that prevents it. The critic of utopians is an enemy of the people so be sought out and eliminated – the aristocracy, the Jews, the kulaks, the infidels, the culpable group, class or race to be deprived of their humanity.

In his chapter on the zero-sum fallacy Scruton addresses the grievances of the developing nations against the West that the prosperity of the latter is due to the wealth taken from former colonies. Therefore, the West owes the developing nations aid and reparations as compensation for their seized assets. But most of the aid delivered goes into the Swiss bank account of the corrupt political classes in their nations. Most of the grievances tend to focus on the United States which is resented for being successful. The West is made to feel guilty for its prosperity yet it is belied by the millions of people from the developing nations who are trying migrate to the West to enjoy its freedom, opportunity and comparative security. The anti-Americanism of the Islamists has everything to do with the stability that Americans enjoy and which is not often found in the Muslim world.

Equality and justice are not the same. The desire to create equality has resulted in the injustice of dumbing down standards, eliminating merit and punishing those who try to advance by talent and industry. School choice is opposed by those who do not want parents and children to have the freedom to find the skill, expertise or vocation that suits their abilities and fulfills their hopes.

The planning fallacy explores the bureaucratic desire to regiment the lives and economies of nations from the top down with no accountability for the damage they do and the failures that result. State-dominated economies, committed to pension plans and welfare programs that they can no longer finance, a loss of Judaeo-Christian moral and spiritual inheritance from which our law and culture derive attract politicians who busy themselves with illusory solutions, while hoping the problems will go away. The bureaucracy of the European Union, the civil service in the United Kingdom and the administrative state of the USA issue regulations and directives that cannot be ignored and which are difficult or nearly impossible to reverse. Laws are passed which inhibit freedom of expression and the free market.

People seek peace and try to prevent war by denying the realities of bad actors and the need of defense. They don’t want to spend funds on weapons, they seek to defund the police and the military and they allow criminals to go free. The human condition is sinful and cannot be redeemed without sacrifice and protection against evil. The Bible makes it clear that we need to be clear-eyed about the dangers of idealism and utopianism and those who threaten our culture and way of life.