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Ask
Auntie Pinko
July
26, 2001
Dear Auntie Pinko,
Differences between Democrats and Republicans seem to
be values-based rather than fact-based. What's the use of
debating values, which seem to determine which facts are relevant?
Wondering Why Bother,
Kansas City, MO
Dear Wondering,
You bemuse me. Values are all that human progress has ever
been about, and what could be more worthy of discussion or
debate?
Albert Einstein once wrote: "We should be on our guard not
to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is
a question of human problems." As politics is quintessentially
the study of human problems (hopefully, with an eye to their
resolution, rather than an eye to how we can get rich off
of them,) it is inseparably intertwined with values.
All economics systems are values-based. All religions are
values based. In fact, all great human institutions are values-based,
and even the great High Priests and Priestesses in the temples
of Science attend diligently to how values inform human progress
in understanding the natural phenomena of our space-time.
Auntie Pinko is not casting aspersions on facts - useful
items, indeed, for they are one of the essential ingredients
to competent decision-making. It is silly to try and make
a decision about, for example, where to site a building, without
having certain facts about geography, geology, climate, etc.
But it is equally silly to make such a decision based on
fact alone. Considerations of the building's purpose, the
past, current, and future need for its functions, the competing
values of other uses for the site, historical or religious
associations of the site, and a dozen other values-based considerations
are appropriate to the process.
American politics is a symphony (albeit sometimes a very
modern and dissonant one) of competing values. Perhaps the
most fundamental debate is that of how to balance individual
benefit with community benefit. Others include the values
of instant versus delayed gratification, the association of
rights with responsibilities, and the knotty problems of religious
morality vs. secular ethics.
Auntie Pinko has often been struck by the inconsistency with
which we put these values into practice. For instance, we
enjoin our young people to consider the merits of delaying
sexual gratification (an admirable, if somewhat wishful, goal,
as most young people have more than enough difficult emotional
and psychological hurdles to challenge as their bodies mature,
without adding the tangle of sexual politics into the mix.)
We are curiously reluctant, however, to delay our collective
gratification for non-renewable resource-guzzling consumption.
We are free in conceding to our citizens the right to engage
in all kinds of potentially dangerous recreations-riding motorcycles
comes to mind, here-but painfully backward in defining and
enforcing the responsibilities associated with such "individual"
risk-taking. (Auntie Pinko has to wonder just how much of
the cost of looking after brain-damaged and/or quadriplegic
motorcyclists who wanted "to feel the wind in their hair"
has been passed on to the rest of us in the form of increased
insurance premiums?)
In short, I grow suspicious of the motives of anyone who
attempts to convince me that a political or social decision
"has nothing to do with values" and is purely "fact-based."
Such a person is either too ignorant (or naïve) to be in a
position of responsibility and trust, or trying to put one
over on me.
In fact, I would recommend to the next Democratic presidential
candidate that he replace the sign which reportedly adorned
all of Mr. Clinton's campaign offices with a new one which
states: "It's the values, stupid!"
Thank you for writing to Auntie Pinko!
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