Rhetorical Abstraction Is an Enemy of Sound Government

© 2011 Peter Free

 

06 January 2011

 

 

Columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. invoked History’s preeminent conservative, Edmund Burke, to make a point that both American political parties and the public should note

 

E. J. Dionne Jr. directed his criticism of irrelevant political abstraction at the new Republican Congressional majority.  In my view, his critique equally applies to both parties and to the public that supports them.

 

Dionne began by using two of History’s conservatives to implicitly chastise American modernity’s empty imitation of its Conservative heritage:

 

"I never govern myself, no rational man ever did govern himself, by abstractions and universals," Burke wrote.

 

"A statesman differs from a professor in a university; the latter has only the general view of society; the former, the statesman, has a number of circumstances to combine with those general ideas."

 

Michael Oakeshott, another great conservative philosopher, declared: "It is the mark of all intelligent discourse that it is about something in particular."

 

© 2011 E. J. Dionne Jr., New GOP House can’t govern with rhetoric alone, Washington Post (05 January 2011) (extracts)

 

Today, in contrast:

 

[T]he new Republican majority that took control of the House on Wednesday is embarked on an experiment in government by abstractions.

 

Their rhetoric is nearly devoid of talk about solving practical problems . . . .

 

The primary task should be a relentless campaign to move the public discussion from the abstract to the concrete: from doctrine to problem-solving; from "smaller government" to the specifics of what government does; from "budget cuts" to the impact of reductions on actual programs.

 

© 2011 E. J. Dionne Jr., New GOP House can’t govern with rhetoric alone, Washington Post (05 January 2011) (extracts)

 

 

Journalistic truth-telling fleshes abstractions with Reality’s grit

 

Mr. Dionne concludes that journalism’s role is to hold politicians accountable for their flights of unrealistic and unhelpful fancy.

 

I agree, but (generally speaking) despair at modern journalism’s disinclination to see its role as anything larger than opportunistic money-grubbing.

 

With or without effective journalism, the combat with abstraction is our own to wage

 

Given the general media’s increasing irrelevance to anything (a) soundly accurate or (b) genuinely meaningful — I suspect that the American public will have to reorient itself toward demanding facts and analysis, rather than the air-headed emotional grandiosity that politicians thrive on.

 

In a democracy, politicians reflect our own incapacities and harmful predilections.  We vote them into office.

 

Even though plutocratic money allows politicians to campaign (and buys their allegiance afterward), it is our votes that permit elected officials to avoid dealing with the realities that drown most of us.

 

As a public, we have become victims of our own inner political abstractions.  Something conservative Edmund Burke warned against.

 

Mirrors are useful.