by
Gadfly
In his The Road to Serfdom
chapter, “The End of Truth,” F. A. Hayek explains how totalitarian leaders create
“myth” to justify action. For example,
The totalitarian leader may be guided merely by
an instinctive dislike of the state of things he has found and a desire
to create a new hierarchical order which conforms better to his
conception of merit; he may merely know that he dislikes Jews who seemed
to be so successful in an order which did not provide a satisfactory place
for him, and that he loves and admires the tall blond man, the “aristocratic”
figure of the novels of his youth. So he will readily
embrace theories which seem to provide a rational justification for the
prejudices which he shares with many of his fellows (bold italics added
for emphasis, p. 173).
Five days before presidential
elections in November 2007, Barack
Obama announced “We are five days away from fundamentally changing the
United States of America.” He explicitly
promised new policies to create a new hierarchical order. He was explicit about more aggressively
taxing the top 1% of income earners in America because there was no satisfactory
place for them in his vision of America.
We see now the significant
effect narratives (novels or otherwise) have had on our youth when a presumably
innocent and still naïve teenager can get an international platform
to pontificate about the existential crisis of climate change. She has an enthusiastic choir that not only
spontaneously reacts to and rejects opposing arguments, they want to punish nonbelievers.
Complementing this phenomenon are
prejudicial theories that have so painfully afflicted so many fellow travelers. Universities now teach, as if scientific
fact, the injustice of privileged versus oppressed classes (see Vanderbilt University
handout here
and Scripps College presentation here). As a Christian, traditionally married, father,
senior, white male, I am privileged (thus an oppressor) in at least seven
ways: (1) a Christian, (2) a heterosexual,
(3) a believer in traditional marriage between a man and a woman, (4) a prolife
advocate, (5) who is old, (6) white, and (7) male. I had no choice in three of these circumstances
and a choice in four. The crime in my
choices is that they represent values that are contrary to the progressive
left; therefore, not only are they wrong, they are immoral. Leading progressive University of California-Berkeley
Professor George Lakoff argues for such a conclusion in his book, Moral
Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives
Think. But Lakoff goes beyond mere
analysis and pseudoscience in advancing his prejudices regarding political
values. He developed a handbook, Thinking
Points, to train and guide progressives to in turn shape the masses through
manipulative narratives and story-telling.
Has it worked? Absolutely.
In Jeffrey Feldman’s book, Framing
the Debate, George Lakoff authored the introduction. Here is what Lakoff said:
For most of the past forty
years, conservatives have had a clear field, as progressives did little or
nothing to counter the ongoing conservative framing of issues. That began to turn around in 2004, with the
work of the Rockridge Institute and the publication of Don’t Think of an
Elephant! and has continued with the publication of Thinking Points,
Rockridge’s handbook for progressives.
Progressives throughout America have begun the reframing process and it
showed in the 2006 election (p. xii).
What are key implications from this short quote?
1.
The difference
between conservatives and progressives (liberals) in the forty year period was
the differences in their ideas regarding governance and political values, not
in the “framing” of issues. This
difference has been magnified now during the Trump administration and it
represents what Professor Victor Davis Hanson describes in a recent eBook, Dueling
Populisms. According to Hanson, “Trump
has revived the ancient tension between urban radicals who seek equality and
rural conservatives who seek liberty.”
2.
The Rockridge Institute, a 501c3 claiming to be
nonpartisan, was essentially one person—George Lakoff.
3.
The books were both authored by George Lakoff.
4.
In 2006, George W. Bush was in his second term. When 9-11 took place in his first term, Democrats
joined Republicans in supporting Bush’s response. His
approval rating reached 90%.
Recognizing no political capital in supporting a successful Bush agenda,
Democrats turned against him and campaigned vigorously through Lakoff-style narratives
in the media (the Democrat agenda was arguably focused on pollical power, not
what was good for America or the free world).
In 2007, Democrats took command of both houses of Congress and laid the
groundwork and sustained their momentum in getting Obama elected President in
2008.
More recently, Democrats
repeated their “framing” to achieve victory in the House in the 2018 midterm
elections. They did this primarily by falsely
telling voters Republicans wanted to take away medical insurance coverage for
pre-existing conditions while trying to remove a duly elected Republican
president through a concerted false narrative campaign. Lee Smith’s book, The Plot Against the
President, should scare the s*** out of every law-abiding, truth loving American.
Of course, as I have previously
written, the Communist Party USA took credit for generating 12 million more
votes for Democrat House races and 11 million more for Democrat Senate races.
Perhaps the best Lakoff-style
framing was most recently demonstrated by Congressman Adam Schiff. I think most objective observers were not
only shocked, but terribly disappointed, by his theatrics during a public
hearing on September 25, 2019.
Schiff blatantly and grossly distorted the conversation between
President Trump and the newly elected President of Ukraine that took place on
July 25, 2019. In his Committee report, “The
Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report,” dated December 2019, Schiff
proclaimed
Our
investigation determined that this telephone call was neither the start nor the
end of President Trump’s efforts to bend U.S. foreign policy for his personal
gain. Rather, it was a dramatic
crescendo within a months-long campaign driven by President Trump in which
senior U.S. officials, including the Vice President, the Secretary of State,
the Acting Chief of Staff, the Secretary of Energy, and others were either
knowledgeable of or active participants in an effort to extract from a foreign
nation the personal political benefits sought by the President (p. 9).
What was the “personal
political benefit”? In Adam Schiff’s
words, “dirt on a political opponent” (i.e., Joe Biden). Nowhere in the telephone transcript is this
made known, explicitly or implicitly.
The day before the call, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller had testified
before Congress regarding the Mueller Report.
It did not produce any smoking guns for Democrats in their pursuit of “dirt”
on President Trump. After over three
years of being under a spotlight for conspiracy theories about collusion and
obstruction, President Trump had every right, personally and especially
constitutionally, to get to the bottom of the conspiracy against him.
According to Democrats, Biden’s
presidential candidacy became a shield against any investigations, even though
he is widely known to have bribed the Ukrainian government to the tune of $1 billion
to fire a prosecutor who was investigating a company that employed his son. President Trump was denied any such shield
during his candidacy, transition, and incumbency.
Lakoff and fellow progressives
(i.e., the Democrat Party) strongly believe in “framing” issues. From their perspective, the masses are not
smart enough to weigh the merits of ideas and policy proposals. This notion shines a light on the real
issue: the nature of governance. The left believes in rule by men: governments (i.e., ruling elite or central
planners) govern the masses. The right (i.e.,
the Republican Party) believes in the rule of law: we the people establish governments and
delegate enumerated powers to protect our inalienable rights. The sovereign is “we the people.” Governments are their instrument in
protecting institutions (i.e., “rules of the game”) established to protect our
God-given rights.
The left’s moral justification
for its “framing” of issues takes on the force of a doctrine. In F. A. Hayek’s chapter, “The End of Truth,”
he explained
The need for such official
doctrines as an instrument of directing and rallying the efforts of the people
has been clearly foreseen by the various theoreticians of the totalitarian
system. Plato’s “noble lies” . . . serve
the same purpose as the racial doctrine of the Nazis or the theory of the
corporative state of Mussolini. They are
all necessarily based on particular views about facts which are then elaborated
into scientific theories in order to justify a preconceived opinion (p. 174).
While Hayek’s use of Plato’s “noble
lies” gets an important point across about shaping public sentiment, there is a
deeper distinction to be made about lies and doctrines.
Simon Fraser University Professor
Christopher Morrissey teaches philosophy, Greek, and Latin. At Voegelinview.com, he recently posted an
article, “The Truth
About Plato’s ‘Noble Lie’.”
Morrissey explains that the mainstream understanding of the “noble lie”
concept is incorrect. A proper
translation of the original Greek text in Plato’s Republic includes “noble”
but not “lies.” Over the years, “lies”
has been inferred as the subject.
Morrissey also argues that an understanding of the context is critically
important. As Plato is putting words in
Socrates’ mouth, Socrates is attempting to explain that government guardians
will use untruths, even lies, in advancing their agendas, and that it would be better
to advance doctrine that represents the truth and wisdom of tradition. In other words, Socrates argued for noble
doctrine (based on truth and wisdom, not untruthful framing) in advancing
political agendas. As we know, the
government guardians rejected Socrates’ appeal for noble doctrine, and he was
put to death.
The left wants Americans to
believe President Trump is a liar. They
have not ceased their efforts to politically kill him. According to them (in particular, I think of The
New York Times’ David Leonhardt), Trump not only tells lies but countless “ignoble
lies.”
Aside from the tremendous
volume of noise from a concerted effort by the leftist mainstream media, many
Americans can appreciate the real signal at play, mostly through President Trump’s
Tweets and a small number of credible news sources.
Who are we to believe? What are we to believe? In my opinion, we should believe the person
who advances a populism that reflects the original idea of our Constitutional
Republic. Democrats have cited our Founders
a lot lately even though their efforts are contrary to what the Founders
intended. Democrats argue for a populism
of urban radicals seeking equality. President
Trump, on behalf of conservative Republicans, speaks for the populism of rural
conservatives who seek liberty, which is most consistent with our Founder’s
vision for a Constitutional Republic.
Moreover, President Trump champions liberty for all, rural and urban.
Believe it or not, like it or
not, President Trump speaks noble doctrine.
