My Country Right or ?
To be right, you have to risk being wrong. That’s not only common sense; it’s the heart of a logical principle known as falsifiability. The basic idea is that for any proposition to potentially say anything truthful about the world, one must be able to envision a circumstance where it would not be true.
Consider this example: “if I flip this switch and that light goes on, then the wiring is set up right; otherwise it is not.” The falsifiable condition communicates information even when it’s false, because it’s just as important to know if the wiring isn’t set up right so you can go back and fix it. A non-falsifiable proposition might be, for example, “if I flip this switch and the light goes on, then the wiring is set up right, but if it doesn’t, it’s the work of my enemies.” Note how success remains a condition of one’s own actions, but the reasons for failure now lie outside the system, with no clear solution. Although superficially explanatory, this proposition really contains no useful information because it excludes the possibility of error.
Spotting non-falsifiable claims can be tricky, especially since few people these days are trained in the tedious discipline of formal logic. In science, non-falsifiable claims a red-flag indicator of charlatanism. Pseudo-sciences like astrology, alien abduction theories and creationism are rife with propositions whose proof requires one to accept them as true preconditionally. Perhaps they are true, but there is no way for anyone to prove it in any kind of objective sense without believing in them first. As such, they are useless as the building blocks of a systematic framework of knowledge.
Non-falsifiable claims serve a different purpose in political discourse. In science, there is a tradition of assigning value even to disproven hypothesis. Not so in politics. Politicians who declare themselves categorically on an issue and are proven wrong by circumstances risk bringing discredit on themselves and on whatever ideological system they used to arrive at their faulty conclusions. Career interest and whatever intellectual stake a politician has in his or her ideology provide strong incentives to reach outside the logic of cause-and-effect to explain failures and inconsistencies. Almost every public figure regardless of party has been guilty of this from time to time. Few have the character to accept responsibility for their mistakes or the flexibility to learn from them.
Unfortunately, while politics and politicians promote a certain casualness with respect to rigorous method, public policy itself benefits when policy makers approach it as a science rather than an art. To achieve the best results for society, it is necessary to have some kinds of standards by which we can eventually judge policies to be successes or failures, even if that means having to come to some unpleasant conclusions about cherished ideologies or individuals. Loyalty to partisan ideals is admirable up to a point, but in order for our ideas to be really, truly right, we must admit the existence of conditions where they might be wrong.
At base, it is the determined insistence of this Administration to resist the establishment of any measurements for success or failure of any of its policies that is at the heart of my unflagging opposition to it. We are told that tax cuts are the answer to the current stagnant economy, but the issue is framed in such a way that if economic conditions do not improve as a result of enacting them, then the blame inevitably lies elsewhere. Despite the complexities of economic policy, this is, in scientific terms, a poorly-constructed experiment. Bush and his supporters never allow the possibility of error. Like astrology, the problem is always in the interpretation of the results, or in some critical piece of missing information, or in the scale of the timeframe, but never in something fundamental about the Supply Side theory that might lead to its being rejected as poor policy.
In foreign policy, the same method leads to even worse results because we are dealing with an “open system” with many more uncontrolled variables. To date, Bush has justified every move he’s made against what he calls “the cost of doing nothing.” Since we are not planning to “do nothing,” these costs are not only fundamentally unknowable, they are absurd as a point of comparison. Meanwhile, he has been elusive in defining any other metric of success that could be assessed through some means external to his own self-defined framework of action. “Disarmament,” “regime change,” “war on terror,” and all the other catch-phrases that surround the Administration’s activities describe tactical goals, not benchmarks. One assumes that the endpoint of all of this is enhanced security for Americans, regional stability, and an environment where America is freer to pursue its interests on the world stage. But at what point can we assess whether the Bush foreign policy has achieved those goals or may have, in fact, resulted in less security, less stability, and greater suspicion and scrutiny of American actions in the world? The question, of course, is “less than what?” Regardless of the outcome, Bush can and will claim that taking action was “less costly than doing nothing” – reducing any and all criticism to senselessness.
Obviously this course serves Bush’s political objectives. He’s fixed the rules and stacked the deck, and in the rare case that he finds himself still on the losing side – as with his bizarre proclamation, and humiliating retreat, from the categorical statement that the US would seek a UN vote “no matter what” — he simply ignores the inconsistency and moves ahead. Great short-term politics, disastrous long-term policy.
The ticking time-bomb inherent in ignoring the consequences of potential failure are best illustrated in an example that should be familiar and satisfying to Bush’s most loyal supporters: the case of Communism. Marxist ideology built such a bulletproof shell of non-falsifiability around its principles that every fact which appeared to dispute it was met with confident rebuttals – each one of which was a textbook case of pseudo-scientific argumentation.
Q: Where is the world revolution that Marx claimed was inevitable?
A: The preconditions still aren’t right (e.g., resist defining success by a date certain).
Q: Why is the worker’s state failing?
A: Because of collusion by the capitalists outside (e.g., reach outside the system for the explanation).
Q: Why was it necessary for Stalin to murder over 20 million of his own people to bring about “utopia” on earth?
A: They were counter-revolutionary and had to be liquidated. (e.g., presume your audience believes “revolutionary” ends justify any means, which is the point in debate).
Communism so completely excluded the possibility of self-criticism that its contradictions eventually led to catastrophic collapse, not just failure. The President and his defenders are starting to sound a lot like Politburo apparatchiks in the ways they are refusing to grant standing to any facts or positions that dispute their case.
Q: Inspections of Iraq have been largely inconclusive, and when violations were discovered, they have been addressed.
A: If inspections find nothing, then Saddam is lying and must be confronted. If they find something, it proves he remains dangerous and must be confronted (e.g., argument excludes condition leading to anything but the desired outcome).
Q: What if war in Iraq leads to the use of weapons of mass destruction or increased terrorism? How does that make us safer?
A: It is better than the “costs of doing nothing.” (e.g., comparison with a hypothetical, making actual measurement impossible)
Q: What about the widespread international and domestic opposition to the war?
A: They are anti-American (e.g., presume the Administration position exclusively defines American interests, which is the point in dispute) or they are motivated by self-interest rather than principle (e.g., exclude the possibility of principled opposition, contending that any critics must lie outside the self-defined system of principle)
By dodging real logic, the President is able to present an airtight case. But when an airtight container comes under too much pressure, the result is much more sudden and dramatic than if there had been a release-valve. Bush’s behavior and conduct indicate that he is almost pathologically resistant to criticism and temperamentally inflexible. Paul Krugman quotes a Nelson Foundation report that says, “Sober minds wrestle with how to break into the mind of George Bush.”
Being resolute is admirable, but refusing to recognize any risks or warning signs of policy failure is potentially catastrophic for the country. Bush, the man of faith, is in the thrall of ideologies that transcend the material world, whose truth cannot be impeached by any fact in nature or human reason. Clearly, this faith gives him strength and peace. But when we surrender our pursuit of truth for the blind certainties of dogma, we lose all the benefits of reason and science that have allowed us to wrest some degree of control of our destinies from indifferent fate. Bush has laid down the tools of intellect and reduced us all to creatures of faith.
Good luck, Mr. President – you’re going to need it.
12:57:01 PM 
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