An Inch of Skepticism leads to a Mile of Wisdom
Several years ago when I was looking at graduate schools to attend I was invited down to the University of Virginia in order to meet with some of the professors in the department. The gentleman who took me to dinner was of British nationality and fit the stereotypical mold of the mild mannered elitist who would contain his arrogance until provoked by a remark or challenge that he interpreted as an affront to his intellectual superiority.
During the conversation that ensued when dining at a decent restaurant, other than its hideous service – after all, rich college kids attending the University of Virginia do not break their backs when servicing others – I remarked that the current Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair, who of course was Labor, was a neoconservative. Taking exception to my assessment of Blair, the English academic subtly started to mock me, and continued to do so, because he continued to be provoked by my persistence and intransigence in upholding my opinion of the labor friendly Prime Minister as a neoconservative.
My assessment of the Prime Minister was not so much a reflection of his economic ideology, but, rather, knowledge of the fact that he was an Evangelical, which – at the time, and currently still – I associated with an intellectual disposition prone toward absolutism; the clear and indivisible distinction between right and wrong; truth and falsity; a faith in an inalterable reality where issues of moral significance contrast as black from white. Without such convictions, how else could one be presumptuous enough to feel justified in sustaining an effort to convert others to a belief system that has no empirical basis for confirmation; or, even, indication or suggestion. People of this persuasion consider their knowledge to be Ab Initio, and, consequently, beyond refute and exempt from falsification. In overt insincerity the Englishman said, “You obviously know a lot about English politics.”
My refusal to acquiesce to his intellectual authority stemmed from the association I had made at a relatively early age that belief in absolutes – whether it relates to religiosity or politics; both of which are intimately related with which to begin – results in a refusal to acknowledge the potential falsification of one’s own beliefs, because the absolute conviction supersedes the contingencies presented by the empirical experiences to which one is exposed. When one who subscribes to absolutes is faced with contrary events, he dismisses the observances with ad hoc contrivances, such as it is simply a test of faith; or it is a hardship that must be suffered, but neglects to qualify as justification for an alternative path of action because one must remain resolute in his moral fortitude; i.e., the tribulations emanating from the sacrifice of war that will eventually bring victory in Iraq, ending in democratization – the unquestionable state to which the processes of humanity’s maturation will materialize – and – in the longer term – this moral courage – the unwaveringly steadfastness in the Iraqi struggle will serve as a catalyst for the democratization of an entire geopolitical region.
The fact that Bush was a neoconservative was a given for me, since not only did he so obnoxiously wear his religiosity on his sleeve, he was also a product of the cultist culture of Alcoholics Anonymous. Blair was more subtle, but, nevertheless, the biographies I had read of him had convinced me that he had instilled in him from his Evangelical upbringing the intellectual disposition for absolutism that translates in political terms into neoconservatism – the absolute conviction that American, Western democracy is the correct and only appropriate form of a social formation for a people to assume; an arrogance that dismisses objections to its ethnocentrism as moral confusion or an attribute equivalent to a weakness in character.
Well, as the events of recent history have disclosed, Tony Blair is demonstrably a neoconservative, and if knowing more than a pompous academic from England about his own national politics qualifies as knowing quite a bit about the UK politics, then I suppose I am knowledgeable about English politics, which – if using the good professor as a standard – does not qualify as much, but, then again, I always entertain the fallibility of my beliefs.
Russell Cole
