226. When Error Philosophers Become Kings

 

Call somebody a philosopher and sure enough you'll get the question, "But how will he do as a ruler?"  Too many minds have been seeded by Plato's pronouncement: "There will be no end to the troubles of the state or indeed of humanity until philosophers become kings or until those we now call kings really and truly become philosophers."  So how do I think my error philosopher (pictured in Post 224) will behave as a king, or ruler?

The error philosopher's first concern, remember, was to avoid gross mistakes, rather than attain fine truths.  And that concern, to avoid rather than attain, would no doubt be carried into government.  In the financial crisis of 2008, for example, he would ask, not "What can we do to rise shining out of this recession?" but "What can we do to avoid falling into a Great Depression?"  Both George Bush and Barack Obama could, I think, be called Avoidance Rulers in that year, and I think most of us now approve — as we disapprove of Herbert Hoover for the mistake that in 1931 tipped recession into World Depression: raising tariffs.

In foreign policy the Cold War gave us perhaps our clearest distinction, since the grossest mistake was so terrible: falling into a nuclear war.  There was no goal so fine that it would be worth suffering that, though there was a goal that came close: containing communism.  So close.  For some it was almost a tie.  What a problem! And there it stood for forty years: to patrol the line against communism without blundering over it into world destruction.

There we have no trouble identifying our Avoidance Statesman: he's the one being so careful to step on the safe side.  The Attainment Statesman will be careful too but he'll have a harder time keeping his balance.  He's got too many forces impelling him ("Drive on, American, drive on!  Fulfill your high destiny!") and too many people pushing on him ("What are you going to be, soft?  A wuss?").  Feel sorry for the poor Avoidance Statesman.  He's got all that testosterone against him, with all that idealism it can dress itself in.

Another word for idealism here is romanticism, typified in Robert Browning's famous lines "A man's reach should exceed his grasp/ Or what's a heaven for?"  The Avoidance Ruler and his Statesman are anti-romantics.  Anti-romantics (sometimes called classicists), if they were to write a counter-poem, would write, "A man's reach should coincide with his grasp, and that's how you mount to heaven."  A few years ago they'd have put their view, or found it, in Greek, to show how deeply rooted it was in ancient wisdom, the old warnings about over-reaching.  Hubris, you know.  But no Greek at election time.  You look a little wussy.

In politics and foreign affairs a close-observing classicist (the most common kind) would see that the romantic idealist's banner-word, "freedom," now means (or has been revealed by our experience in the Middle East to include) "freedom of warlords to go at each other."  So: "Pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship for that?  Extremism in defense of that is no vice?  moderation no virtue?" Oh that young idealist, John F. Kennedy.  Ah that old romantic, Barry Goldwater.  John McCain, would you step forward?

You can feel sorry for the Attainment Statesman too, though.  He's got all those people trying to put more hair on his chest.  Look at him at election time, a manly enough fellow already, being badgered to open his shirt.  Even so, as we observed, he's got to be careful too, and think, and choose the least dangerous steps, and risk looking like a wuss, even on the way to the greatest attainment.

Nuance, that's what's needed in arguments for war or peace, especially now, when cases are so complicated and words jump around so.  Hawks are as capable of it as doves, as we know when think tanks flow out against each other.  But there's this about hawks: when they're in danger of losing an election they know they can tap another tank, the no-think tank, with a spigot doves can barely reach.   Need backing for Marines into Da Nang? bombs on Haiphong?  Out it comes, onto bumper stickers: "Victory over Communism, not Coexistence."  Think of all the work doves would have to do, all the explaining, before they could get that kind of sock into a sticker.

Sure, doves have their spigots.  There is such a thing as liberal reflex, and it's widely exploitable.  But the doves' spigots are nothing like this one.  This one opens directly, with nearly frictionless ease, into the pool of under-educated voters, the great pool that collects under every democracy.  Though a constant in the minds of political scientists, its occupants are known by different names at different times.  What I call the "under-educated" was once, in America, the "Know-Nothing" and is now, more commonly, the "low-information" voter.  Not too long ago he could be called the "dumbhead" voter.  In any case, he's in a pool most easily tapped by hawks.

"Fine.  Your Avoidance Ruler will be above that.  He'll be above — meaning indifferent to — a lot of things that could lead his country into trouble.  But he'll also be indifferent to a lot of things that could lead the world, including his country, into disaster.  Hitler militarizes the Rhineland.  What will he be doing?  Passively waiting for the Great Mistake.  What will he be saying?  'Calm down, you (dumb?) hotheads, calm down.'"

You're missing something.  The Avoidance Ruler is a philosopher, remember.  Thinks.  Sorts out and traces cause and effect.  Visualizes consequence-chains.  Does a cost-benefit.  And what he can't do he has a staff of experts do.  But what he does best, and must do all by himself, is prioritize threats.  So he can concentrate on the big ones and wave away the little ones, no matter how hot his citizens get over them.

I know that sounds presumptuous, but ranking blunders is his thing.  He (or she) is an error philosopher.  So I think, with his philosophy, and his (or his helpers') ability to work out the cause-effect chain, that when Hitler went into the Rhineland, he'd have said, "This is big.  It would be a mistake not to act.  And act big."   You can't call an Avoidance Ruler a passive ruler.

"Got you.  And I think you're letting me call George W. Bush an active Avoidance Ruler.  He went right after terrorists.  It would have been a big mistake, a Rhineland-ignoring mistake, not to."

Oh please, let's not get back into George Bush.  I'm tired of talking about him.  I know, I know, he was an Avoidance Ruler.  I've granted that.  But he wasn't a philosopher.  He didn't come close.  Low standards of evidence, haphazard justification, loose cost-benefit, weak imagination.  I don't think he finished 101.  But I don't think I need to say any more about him.  Ari Shavit, in Wednesday's NYT Op-Ed (11-21-13), has pretty well said all that needs to be said.

126. "Facts on the ground"

The expression "facts on the ground" was apparently first used by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the 70s. He was describing the new settlements in the Occupied Territories. By adding "on the ground" to a word that was already sufficient he suggested something to future statesmen: this is something solidly based, stuck in the earth, and you are not going to change it easily.

He also implied a distinction from facts of another sort, I think, the facts you might call "facts in the heart," facts that are hard to see and, some say, easy to change. Disapproval of the settlements is a fact in the heart of many Americans and Israelis. It is certainly a fact in the heart of Tzaly Reshef, one of the founders of Peace Now, who last week wondered (NYT, 3-25) whether the Israeli Supreme Court would be able to get Benjamin Netanyahu to change the old "facts on the ground."

But Reshef and his fellows in Peace Now, and, more distantly, in the United Sates, are dismissed as idealists. Understandably. None of their talk has had any effect. The settlements have continued to expand during the regimes of every Israeli prime minister, liberal or conservative, hawk or dove.

"What do you expect, idealists? That facts on the ground will give way before your heart's desire? Get used to them." That's what I hear the realists, the ones Menachem Begin counted on, saying now.

The tough-ground-soft-heart distinction is not as firm as it looks, though.  Facts on the ground come from human intention — which is to say, the human heart. There is a logical connection (effect to cause) between a settler's hut and a Likud prime minister's heart. Bend your eyes to that and you can raise them to the larger connections — to future needs, to American support, to peace in the Middle East. No, you're not looking at the sky; you're trying to see future facts on the ground.

Imaginative statesmen raise their eyes. Realistic statesmen don't blink at what they see. Tough statesmen don't hesitate to ask questions about them. They're determined to know what, on the ground, their country is going to have to live with. So imaginative, tough, realistic American presidents would have asked each of the Israeli prime ministers who expanded the settlements this idealistic-sounding but very realistic question, "Tell me, Menachem (or Yitzhak or Benjamin), do you, in your heart, want all of the West Bank for your people?"

And all tough, imaginative Americans wanting a realistic foreign policy for their country, would ask all the Jewish groups supporting those prime ministers the same question.

Ah, but is that realistic? Can anybody actually picture any American President putting that question to any Israeli Prime Minister? No, it has suited everybody politically, and has suited everybody politically for 35 years, to keep that question locked up, which is to say, it suits them, linguistically, to keep "facts on the ground" separate from "facts in the heart." Let us, says the Israeli, just look at what's there, now, and leave what will be there out of the discussion. Let us, says the American Congressman, let us not upset the Christian constituency that supports the Israeli moves. You can talk about the heart, but do it in some other context.

I can't help thinking that they will have church in mind. Church is where the idealists gather, isn't it? It is certainly where Christians will hear a lot of talk about the heart. That's where, according to Jesus, you look to find sin.

Yes, church is the perfect place to put Americans who want to talk about the heart. They're accustomed to talking about the facts there before they get back to the facts on the ground during the business week.

But I wonder how much compartmentalizers really know about American churches. Do they know that some congregations pay close attention to world affairs? And some preachers use extreme language? I have known some, and I can hear them now: 'Whoso looketh at the West Bank to lust hath already committed aggression in his heart.'"

And I've heard there are some rabbis who say the same kind of thing. It's not true that all the heart talk comes out of the New Testament. There's "Thou shalt not covet" from Moses. I think we could have a rabbi in the pulpit right next to our preacher, shouting across the water, though I'm not sure about his speech. I hear, "Hey, you. You know you can't covet your neighbor's ox or ass or wife. So what's this you're coveting the West Bank?"

So you can't even count on keeping facts on the ground separate from facts in the heart in church. Some people there are very good at reading the truth in your heart from the facts you put on the ground.