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The Decline of Empiricism - MUST READ - Liberals v. Conservatives
I don't think a day goes by when Glenn Greenwald doesn't offer up an essential post, and today is no different. This is probably one of the best dissections of the right's concept of "judicial activism" as I've read. The piece really takes off at the end:
The systematic erosion of the rule of law in America has many aspects, and one significant one is that conservatives have been trained that they have the right to have judges issue rulings that produce outcomes they like, and when that doesn't happen, it means the judicial process is flawed and corrupt. Put another way, those marching under the banner purportedly opposed to "judicial activism" have been taught that they are entitled to have courts ignore the law in order to ensure the outcomes they want.
This is a key concept, and a window into the right's current mindset on the law: that there are no genuine establishments of law. Law is merely a tool to advance ideology. This is why the Bush administration feels free to engage in domestic spying; why the Vice President's office feels free to proclaim itself a new "fourth branch" of government; why the very idea of Congressional oversight is so loathsome. Even where the law proscribes the ability of Congress to oversee action's taken by the Executive branch, Congress has no real right to do so in the conservative worldview, unless such oversight is necessary for the advancement of the conservative agenda. The laws are only relevant in as much as they can be used to further political ends. This is why the Republican congress was free to pursue their bloodlust for Clinton to the bitter end, but why any suggestion that President Bush be held accountable is met with utter contempt. Whether or not Congress actually has oversight authority or whether the issue in question is worthy of investigation is completely irrelevant.
There is a connection between this and the conservative movement's disdain for science. The two are both related to the declining importance of empirical reality within the philosophy of the conservative movement. What the laws actually say is of little importance as to how a court should rule, just as what the evidence says -- of evolution or global warming -- is of little importance as to how those issues should be discussed. There are great dangers in this abandonment of reality. The primary of these is that without respect for empirical evidence, there becomes no real forum for the discussion of the issues which face this nation. We can no longer debate with the opposition on the merits of various policy matters, because they adamantly refuse to acknowledge any empirical reality in which we mutually reside. There are no agreed upon observations, no agreed upon facts.
Facts, in the new conservative philosophy, have no place in the discussion if they prove inconvenient to the ideology. The ideology itself is the only reality, the only relevant fact. The effect of this philosophy upon the Americans who are swayed by it will be incalculable.
For more commentary, visit The Left Anchor.
Comments (14)
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Feed me the love.
April 7, 2008 3:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
I tried to insert a $5 through the opening on the side of my iMac but it does not work for some reason.
April 7, 2008 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
And the planes don't even fly on time.
"Fiat justicia, ruat caellum!"
Nice post.
April 7, 2008 5:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't forget Torturegate...:( They even knowingly violate domestic and international laws to fulfill their lust for torture. Vanity Fair covered this in gruesome detail. The part where Feith shared his Geneva-Guantanomo "epiphany" is particularly.....excruciating.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/guantanamo200805
April 7, 2008 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I read an excellent piece in the "Readings" section of Harper's years ago. It discussed how the conservative right had adopted the academic philosophical positions of deconstructionism and postmodernism that there is no objective truth, only subjective opinion. The article discussed how this attitude was used to dismiss theories of evolution and global warming, and to push for war in Iraq, etc. I wish I could give a better citation--the article was great.
April 7, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very good posting. Thank you. I guess it goes a long way to explaining how abortion is a medical procedure which is legal, but funds can be witheld from organizations who provide them. States can effectively remove the option by requiring unnecesary and onerous room-sizes, personnel, etc. Allowing pharmacists to refuse standard medical care ORDERED BY A PHYSICIAN in order to promote an agenda; and of course promoting -- WITH OUR TAX MONEY -- "Abstinance Only" programs that have been shown not to work.
It goes on and on...
But when they call Global Warming a hoax -- I have to ask; who is cashing in on the hoax? The only cashing in I see is by those who deny it --> the oil companies. Of course, that's just facts -- who cares about them?
April 7, 2008 7:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Though none of this is new, it does need saying, ever more clearly and succinctly:
The "conservative" idiotology is essentially a psychosis. The ultimate solipsism. The ultimate sophistry.
Put another way: moral relativism is their absolute.
April 7, 2008 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
No offense, I've known this forever because I know how the Religious Right reads the constitution. It's really bizarre - it's inside out and totally backwards.
And that's how conservatives in general read the constitution. We've watched the Repugs trample all over the rule of law the last 8 years. I'm shattered by what they've done to the Justice Dept and the courts. The judicial branch of our government has been the people's real last bastion against government. And the thing is - the constitution is nothing more than one long document that sets out the prohibitions against power - against the government. That's what it basically was intended to be - to hold them in check because we're supposed to be in charge and the founders understood the corrupting power of power.
I maintain and believe that the modern Repugs do not believe in our constitutional democracy at all. Bush obviously doesn't. But he's hardly the first. They are on the whole very dangerous because of that.
April 7, 2008 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are no agreed upon observations, no agreed upon facts.
And why should there be?
"There are no facts, only interpretations." Friedrich Nietzsche
April 7, 2008 9:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
For the contextually challenged: reality exists; whether we are capable of interpreting it objectively is another matter.
I never liked that upstart Nietzsche.
April 7, 2008 11:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
And have you noticed the use of the term "strict constructionist" to describe rabid, right-wing judges and justices who have no intention of enforcing and defending the Constitution? Constructionists of jails and bases maybe.
I don't follow every link I see here, but this one is VERY on-topic and highly recommended.
"A World Where Lies Are True" by Chris Hedges:
http://tinyurl.com/26nap2
Orwell:
"From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened."
And could someone please dig up that even better quote from Orwell, about how men were given medals for bravery in battles that never happened, while men who actually fought bravely died anonymously, etc.,...something along those lines regarding the authoritarian creation of a factless reality.
Good post, even if my initial reaction was, ugh, Don't remind me.
April 8, 2008 12:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
All funds can be sent to:
Happy Dude
742 Evergreen Terrace
Springfield
And yeah, I know there's nothing new here, but I think we need to keep making these connections as often as possible. The challenges we face are far too great to be turned into partisan issues used to divide the electorate.
April 8, 2008 12:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Epistemology is a topic that requires something other than extreme assertions bordering on caricatures. The notion of an objectively knowable real world of the sort demanded by empirical realism tends to be treated with distain by professional epistemologists, that is, by folk who think seriously about such matters. Try the following thought experiment. An alien creature that is without sense organs like ours has a different set of sense organs including, for example, an ability to sense extremely high end oscillations of gamma rays, an ability to sense magnetic fields related to nonmetalic phosphates, and so on. Such a creature would have a very different experience of "the real world" than would you or I, even if it shared the same environment with us. It's experience would be sufficiently different, in fact, for us to admit to the Kantian suggestion that we can know only a phenomenal world (that is, a world that is knowable as a function of the categories that make our experience possible), but we cannot know an objectively real "noumenal world" that has a real nature independently of our experiencing it. There thus is no objectively knowable real world. There is only a world that is knowable in terms of the experiential categories that make our experience possible. So, the epistemological extreme of an objectively knowable real world is a naive claim. The other extreme, that is, of an epistemology of extreme deconstruction, is similarly a dead end, for it claims that there are no knowable worlds, including the phenomenal world of experience. What is needed is a good faith epistemology that realizes that certain human ways of understanding nature are possible. Interlocutors must bring good faith to the dialogue, however, if we are to proceed with premises that are agreed upon. The problem with today's conservatives is not that they fail to admit to an objectively knowable real world, but that they refuse to make a good faith effort to accept reasonable interpretations of a world that is knowable in the ways that humans can experience it.
April 8, 2008 2:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate the in-depth nature of your post, and I am aware of the basic limit to what we can know in the strictest sense. But that would sort of gum up the works in trying to describe the wrongheadedness of conservatives. And as you agree that they fail to accept reasonable interpretations of the world based on experience, it effectively amounts to the same thing. But in the body of a blog post, its easier to talk about empirical reality and avoid the deeper questions of epistemology, of which discussion could (and has) gone on forever.
April 8, 2008 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
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