Noble Lies

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.

Trump: The Caricature

Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, what do you know about the presumptive Republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump?

AM:  Well, according to our noble and objective mainstream media, Trump is corrupt because of four bankruptcies and infidelities resulting in three marriages; he is a racist because he suggests a Mexican judge might be biased against him in a class action civil suit; and he’s a misogynist because he has said ugly things about Rosie O’Donnell in the past.

IM:   And don’t forget that his rallies are characterized by angry protests.

Old Gadfly:  What do we know about the bankruptcies?

AM:  The bankruptcies were corporate filings, not personal filings.

Old Gadfly:  Is the distinction important?

AM:  Absolutely.  A personal filing would indicate that an individual failed to manage his or her personal finances, such that debt far exceeded revenue (sound like the federal government?).  The major reason liberal democracies have bankruptcy laws is to incentivize business development.  Such actions involve risk, and investors know this.  When a corporation files for bankruptcy a judge examines all the circumstances and works out reorganization arrangements and a just settlement among the stakeholders.  America would not be the most powerful economy in the world without bankruptcy laws.

Old Gadfly:  What do we know about the marriages?

AM:  He’s on good terms with his former wives.  Yet, the media will find all sorts of ways to paint an ugly picture.  A recent GQ interview/article was very subtle in painting a demeaning picture of Melania Trump, a legal immigrant, now US citizen.  Somehow the article missed the fact that Melania has a degree in architecture and is fluent in five languages.  But, on the other hand, the author went to great lengths to uncover “dirt” on Melania’s family from Slovenia.  I wonder if the author would be as thorough on Hillary Clinton’s knowable background.

IM:  And then those who resented the picture painted by the GQ author were called Trump-following neo-Nazis.  The name callers (from such notable sources as the Daily Koz and The Huffington Post) just leaped at the imagined racism because the GQ author is Jewish.  In other words, here is the implied logic:  readers are critical of the GQ author, not because it was a sleazy hit piece, but because she is Jewish.  Those that do not like Jews are anti-Semitic.  Nazis were anti-Semitic.  Therefore, those who criticized the author are neo-Nazis.  Sadly, fellow Copernican drones, who patronize these notable sources, latch on to the manufactured Trump follower neo-Nazi meme.

Old Gadfly:  How about the judge?

AM:  To think the judge is not biased is naïve.  He was nominated to his current position by President Obama.  Consider Elena Kagan, a relatively new Supreme Court Justice, nominated by President Obama.  She served as Solicitor General prior to this appointment.  Remember the birth certificate challenges?  Three of these challenges reached the US Supreme Court.  Kagan played a role getting all three of these cases dismissed.  See here, here, and here.   She was also apparently involved in defending Obamacare through her Solicitor General office (see for example here).  Yet, as a US Supreme Court Justice, she refused to recuse herself from cases dealing with Obamacare.  Pat Buchanan recently analyzed the hypocrisy on racism related to this case.  See here.

IM:    Gentlemen, I know that both of you are graduates of the USAF Academy.  I noticed a recent Atlantic Monthly article that celebrated the institution’s effort to manage diversity.  From reading this article, I learned that the Academy cadets were guided through diversity discussions related to the Ferguson—Black Lives Matter episode by a think tank called Knapsack Institute, affiliated with the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.  Here is an excerpt from their website:

The name, “The Knapsack Institute” hails from Peggy McIntosh’s renowned article, "White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies,” in which she states:   

"I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks." (Peggy McIntosh, 1988 "White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies." Excerpted from Working Paper 189, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley, MA.)

Old Gadfly:  Of course this is what many Americans are being taught to believe (even at our character building institutions).  This is why social justice is the moral imperative of the progressive community:  to “equalize” through socially constructed identities.  Isn’t this a similar socially constructed phenomenon harking back to the Third Reich?  The protest rallies then are similar to those we see today—Copernican drones hitching their emotional wagons to the charlatans promising hope and change.  Incidentally, Hillary Clinton and Peggy McIntosh are both alumni from Wellesley College.  And, Clinton’s passion for social justice, and the need to identify “opponents,” was documented in her senior thesis, "There Is Only the Fight ,” an analysis of the Saul Alinsky Model.  The goal of Alinsky’s model is political power.   

AM:  Most of the public only knows what an aggressive and biased media wants us to know.  Gadfly, recall that in our philosophy course at the Academy, we learned amazingly, in The Republic, that Plato offered an explanation for this progressive behavior in Socrates’ cave allegory.  The public represents slaves chained to the illusions created by the political elite (the media, Hollywood, academia, and government bureaucracies as puppet showmen creating the images tied to the illusions).

 

IM:  Other chains are the variety of public welfare programs, aggravated by a labor participation rate trend that highly corresponds with Obamacare.  Notice the steep decline in the labor participation rate aligns with the implementation of Obamacare.

Old Gadfly:  Only by breaking away from these chains and climbing out of the cave into sunlight can these slaves become liberated by truth.  In reality this is the moral imperative of education—to draw out of each of us the desire for the discernment of truth made possible through the capacity to critically think and to overcome passion and emotion with reason.  Given this imperative, what can we learn about the real Trump?

IM:  I suspect there is much we could and should learn.  Wouldn’t it be ideal for the people, especially those chained to their illusions, such as the notion of white privilege, to keep an open mind in collecting triangulated information to arrive at a reasoned judgment?

Old Gadfly:  Yes it would be ideal.  Getting back to caricatures, what do we know about the misogyny allegations?

AM:  If one has been sufficiently conditioned[1] through political correctness, then it is forbidden to say anything that might be construed as hateful toward a protected class (women are a protected class).  As we witnessed in the Presidential primaries, Trump does not pull punches against women or men.  Regarding pejorative comments toward men, the conditioned believe they represent crassness and a lack of elitist nuance.  Similar comments directed towards women are misogyny.

Old Gadfly:  As modern as our civilization might be, Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek observed (the same year McIntosh published her article cited above) that “mind is not a guide but a product of cultural evolution, and is based more on imitation than on insight or reason.”[2]  This is why manufactured caricatures are so powerful.  Do you remember President Obama’s response to reporters following the first presidential debate, in which Mitt Romney decisively won?  He said, “That was not the real Romney!”  The message here from the puppet showmen is that the Romney we were supposed to believe in was the Romney we have been manufacturing in the public narrative—a wealthy white man who is out of touch with the ordinary American.  To demonstrate how this approach was so successful, there was no public outrage when Harry Reid acknowledged he lied about Romney not paying taxes for 10 years.  Nor, was there any shame by Reid—to the contrary, he boasted, “we won, didn’t we?”

AM:  Our culture has surely evolved since the day we ascended the Academy ramp with the “Bring Me Men . . .” inspiration from Sam Walter Foss’s The Coming American.

Old Gadfly:  Perhaps we’re still searching to understand this evolution and its consequences.  After all, the noted political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, argued a compelling case about America’s decay.  He suggested that a shock is needed to reverse America’s decline. 

IM:  Frankly, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton represent and embrace the conditions leading to the decline—that is, there is ample evidence that they can morally overcome the evils of white male privilege. 

AM:  Is Trump the needed shock?  Are enough Americans ready to embrace such a shock? 

Old Gadfly:  Or, as Jefferson observed in the Declaration of Independence, “experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  These forms are the softer forms of tyranny, where the elite regulate the masses.  It helps to make this tyranny sufferable when more and more Americans find themselves dependent upon government subsidies—that is, welfare payments made possible by redistributing wealth.

IM:  Venezuelan citizens have reached the insufferable threshold based on this model of governance; but, too many “conditioned” Americans will not associate these circumstances with the socialist “hope and change” promised by Hugo Chavez, and similar promises made by President Obama, and candidates Sanders and Clinton.

Old Gadfly:  Unfortunately, the public narrative caricatures of Sanders and Clinton, manufactured by the political elite puppet showmen, are more flattering.  The American public may need more shock to loosen the chains.   

---

[1] Conditioned refers to the two classes—the conditioners and the conditioned—described by C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man.

[2] F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit:  The Errors of Socialism, (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 21.

Cogito Ergo Sum ("I Think, Therefore I Am," Descartes)

What is the rationale for this blog?  The blog presents reflective and analytical articles by Old Gadfly about a world that is becoming increasingly absurd and ripe for catastrophic unintended consequences. 

We inherited libraries and artifacts of great wisdom and methods for scientific inquiry.  We enjoy the conveniences stemming from technology.  Yet, we seem to be losing a collective capacity to reason--to think clearly, to discern the finer qualities of distinction among differences. 

In his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek warned against the pathologies of political correctness, we currently witness and experience, in his chapter, “The End of Truth.”  Hayek observed that in societies sliding toward, or completely overcome by, totalitarianism, it is not sufficient for citizens to acknowledge (i.e., to tolerate without affirmation or advocacy) values prescribed by the political elite; to the contrary, members of society are expected to spontaneously and emotionally react to anything that challenges or threatens those values.  Have you ever encountered a situation when another person gets angry about something you said?  It happens a lot nowadays.

I realize that many potential readers may be incapable of comprehending the reflection and analysis in these blog entries.  Most of these people are what I call Copernican drones, and some are the product of a public school educational system that spends more time prescribing what to think instead of how to think.   These Copernican drones lack the functional capacity to pollinate the world with enduring ideas based on their own creative thinking or critical analysis.  Nicolaus Copernicus only published one book in his lifetime—On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres--and it sparked a scientific revolution.  In the introduction to his book, there is a discussion about Copernicus’s reluctance to officially publish his analysis and theory of the solar system.  He knew that it would receive harsh criticism--not from the few who would take the time to digest his work first hand, but from the “drones among bees” who claim to be experts but only repeat what other drones such as themselves have written in newspapers and magazines (in other words, sound bites such as those we hear on the nightly news, or read in newspapers or magazines like the modern era’s Newsweek). 

Even our academics seem to be losing a capacity for lucidity and depth of reasoning.  Am I incorrect in assuming that academia should be that one sector in our society where knowledge is advanced through reasoning (i.e., spatial reasoning, conscious thought, and language) that takes place in the neocortex of our brains?  Yet, this “neocortex” function of academia is subordinate to a political orientation that derives from what Paul MacLean (in his book, The Triune Brain in Evolution) calls the “paleomammalian complex” portion of our brains where the functions of long-term memory, emotion, and motivation take place.  By the way, this is where political framing originates and resonates.  Frankly, today’s hubristic scholarship is devolving to mere flotsam, drifting on the surface of an immense ocean of potential knowledge.  To cite just one example, read the work of George Lakoff, whose publications represent mostly old wine in new bottles.  The wine in Lakoff’s case is normative—it prescribes a world the way he (and those who subscribe to the same politically correct values) thinks it should be.  Lakoff even claims, in his book Thinking Points:  A Guide for Progressive Framing, that it is the frame that matters—if facts fit, great; if not, then the facts do not matter.  Scholars such as this do not discover the truth; they create it.  You’ll read more about this type of emotionally-grounded thinking in future blog entries.

The blog approaches topics from a gadfly perspective.  Socrates was known by two metaphors:  a gadfly and a midwife.  As a gadfly, Socrates challenged many “truths” of the day that were based on assumptions about reality.  Many assumptions can be myth or fact—true or false.  In today’s political narratives, the frame is more important than actual fact.  This may explain why a prominent national politician can feel safe in encouraging the voting public “to pass it [Obamacare] so you can know what’s in it.” 

Socrates also saw his role as an educator to be similar to the role of a midwife--one who facilitates the birth of grand and noble ideas (that can pollinate the world).  Notice, Socrates did not teach others what to think.  He shaped their ability to think for themselves. 

The blog’s primary objective is to challenge many of today’s narratives, advanced by the political elite (mostly politicians, journalists, and artists from Hollywood who believe life should imitate art).  If, in the process of presenting the reflections and analysis, readers find alternative ways of seeing things through a less distorted lens than the prevailing narrative, then this will be a nice objective as well.  New understandings can liberate us from the chains of our illusions, described so eloquently in the cave allegory in Plato’s The Republic.  Unfortunately, too many of our citizens are complacently content to remain chained to illusions  because they may be reinforced by normative delusions of reality.  This observation includes those who are afraid to test assumptions.  We know who they are.  Some reveal this form of bondage when they say: “let’s agree to disagree.”

Most of the reflection and analysis contained in this blog are based on material in a manuscript (currently being written) entitled, Reflections on the Contest in America.  This blog was created to connect with minds that have the capacity to reason before November 2012.  We live in a perilous time.  If a majority of the self-determining citizens of America do not stem the current drift of our Nation, we will discover the real consequences of our failure as cautioned by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom and documented by Hannah Arendt in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism.   

Most of the reflections and analysis in future entries to this blog will be presented in the form of a conversation.  Meet our conversationalists:  IM (a fictitious inquiring mind) and Old Gadfly (me).  Old Gadfly encourages your inputs to the conversation.