Political movements have always tried, perhaps unconsciously, to manipulate language so that their intended result is inevitable from the beginning terms; that was the whole point of George Orwell’s “1984”. If war could be defined as Peace, and slavery as Freedom, the government need not worry too much about opposition to either one.
Our current crop of “Conservatives” have elevated this prevarication to an art-form, with their “Clear Skies Initiatives” and “War On Terror”. They don’t seem to be able to go to the bathroom without warping the language around their agenda. But it is no accident: they are doing it on purpose.
Case in point, “flip-flopping”. Never mind if the reason for the change of position is a good one, such as evidence that an existing policy was a bad idea and does not work. No, thanks to the Swift-Boating strategists who hijacked conservatism, politicians are now supposed to take their stand on ideologies and just ignore evidence.
This is not a recipe for positive change. Janet Stemwedl at Adventures In Ethics And Science rips open this bit of GOP legerdemain:
Why would you want the people governing you to take any less account of reality?
It seems like elections frequently turn on which candidate shares the voters’ world-view. I would like to see candidates make more of an effort to share our world.
And, one of the things that comes with being accountable to the world is being ready to modify your positions in the face of data that would make those positions difficult or impossible to maintain. Keeping your eyes open to reality occasionally requires us to “flip-flop”. That’s not a sign of weakness, but rather an indication of your involvement in the world you share with the rest of us—even if we don’t all share the same vision of what the world should be.
- In defense of “Flip-Floppers” – attention to reality matters
The ScienceBloggers and others want a “science debate” among the presidential candidates. I am not sure this is a particularly good idea, as it would be a debate among science-illiterate candidates run by a not-much-more-literate media for a public which is fifty percent unsure if the Earth is older than the Egyptian pyramids. No, I’d just be happy if every candidate had to answer this person’s question:
“What if research were to demonstrate your policy hadn’t worked in the first three years, then what would you do?”
I want to know that a candidate can tell when he’s made a mistake, and when we all have. That is the long-term self-correcting nature of science, to abandon mistaken ideas for better ones. Not to seize upon one and hold it up as The Answer while reality washes credibility away from beneath it.
What *should* be the goal of identifying flip-flopping is finding those pols who change their message in order to take advantage of prevailing public sentiment. It’s sometimes a tough call to make definitively—did Mitt Romney really have a spiritual and moral epiphany that abortion was wrong, or a political epiphany that he couldn’t become the GOP nominee if he supported abortion rights. (As much as I dislike the man, props at least to Giuliani for not backing away from his more liberal social policy as NYC mayor).
But, as you note, suggesting that people not only don’t, but shouldn’t, ever change their mind is just goofy. Is it a derivative of the religious tradition of “eternal truths” (which always avoids the equally valid tradition of “revelation”)? Or is it just a sign of mental inflexibility or easy pot shots at more thoughtful opponents.
The question is not whether someone believed or said something different five years ago, or fifteen, but (a) what they feel today, and (b) what they think about what they thought then. I’m willing to cut Huckabee a bit of slack on his AIDS statements in 1992 (I believed a lot of stupid things on various topics in 1992, too)—except he doesn’t really seem to have moved away from them, but isn’t willing to admit it.
I like your question of candidates. I’ll have to remember that one.
Thanks. Must point out it is someone else’s question, but I like it too. (edit follows)
Hadn’t worked for whom?
This type of question is generally subjective. The top 1% of the population realized a massive gain under this administration (but to be fair, it also did great under Clin-ton).
(The rest of the article is very worth reading.)
It could be argued that the government (or lack of it) is focused on tuning for success of the ubermenschen. Should the government reward losers? Should we all reward mediocrity?
Bush’s policies are working great—rather like supertuned—for some—those that are worth concentrating on. We are proud to be an ownership society—the needs and outcomes of those that own the assets of the system should be considered primary (see the Nietzschien definition above); they are the real constituency of the administration(s).
Please sir, the Decider-In-Chief refers to them as his “Base”.
Well, the real issue is with the semantic aspects of questions like this person suggested.
There is a popular, media driven understanding of the way things are (democracy = one qualified citizen, one vote and equal, consistent standards of justice under the law), and an actual understanding of the way things are (in an ownership society, those that own more, count for more—because ownership brings an unstated reality; the owner that employs 10, 100, 1,000 or 10,000 has decision-making impact over at least that many, but more often their employees and the dependents of those employee so the impact is 2-3 times greater. To equate the standalone employee, with their constituent opinions with the individual that employs thousands is not all that efficient.)
I find progressives that consider themselves the “reality based community” are very averse to calling a spade what it is because they’d like to have it both ways—human rights, but without tinkering with property rights and the integrated machinery that property rights drags along as it strip mines “democracy”.
Hence the inherent subjectivity from each side of the political spectrum on questions like this. The question as stated is either naive or intentionally manipulative, but it plays well in a closed echo chamber.
PS: You can substitute republic for democracy above, not that it would matter much though.
Actually, I just noticed this tag in your post:
Bravo; that’s multi-layered with zen-like properties.
I love that definition too DOF!!!
Personally I think we need a whole new political system. Our current one is based too much on money. In a true democracy anyone can run for political seat. In our system on the rich or independently wealthy can. This already pushes out certain social classes from having say in our government. Then on top of this we have politicians making policies to give kick backs to constituents. This should be illegal and swept away from our system.
The only way I can think to eliminate these issues is to have a tax funded system. People choose a party to run in and have primaries in case multiple people run under same party. Then once the primaries are finished and candidates running for political seat have been selected, they receive campaign money from a pool. This pool is filled from tax dollars. Make it so only this money can be used, period.
In the long run this would actually save tax payers more money, then our current system due to corruption and kickbacks. Heard an interesting talk on it on NPR 10 years ago.
Anyways my system may not be the best, anyone else have any ideas?