Fighting your position

Something which constantly annoys me is the inability of many people, whatever their political views, to argue their own position well. Many is the time I've sat watching debates or current affairs shows where the protagonists seem to be like blind swordsmen weilding foam claymores- unable except by accident to lay even a tiny blow on their opponents.

Much of the anti-war blather, for example, is completely ineffectual: no facts are adduced, no rational position is posited, no evidence of sober thought about outcomes or morality revealed. There are usually very good arguments against particular wars; sadly, most anti-war fanatics rarely discover the genuine arguments and simply rely on generalities, rhetorical flourishes and sentimental gibberish. Having the overpowering feeling that they are right, they don't feel the need to think.

Irrationality is always a fact in politics. But it cannot, in any sane, advanced polity be allowed to be the basis of politics. I would be happy to discuss the US/British interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq with anyone who knows at least as much about those conflicts as I do, has a serious moral interest in the best outcome of those conflicts, and who is able to argue rational points. The latter means accepting when you are wrong, and taking new facts into account even if they destroy previously held beliefs.

Vast numbers of people in Britain now project political poses- a facade of political beliefs without any basis in knowledge or underpinning principles. Britons used to take pride in their extraordinarily dull politics based on the simple, unchanging facts of social, economic and spiritual life. Politeness, geniality, fairness, privacy, personal responsibility, steadiness, thrift, enterprise, dependability, honour, vigour, charitability, humane concern and pity for the less advantaged formed the core of all politics, that part of politics which is not partisan. These ancient and real virtues have been replaced by modish empty vessels: slogans about human rights, generalities about international law, specious historical parallels and taking every possible view on a position other than that of a patriotic Englishman/Englishwoman.

The lack of toughness and vigour of our education system can be blamed for a large amount of this; the rest is the direct outcome of the explosion of anti-rationalist dogma in the 1960's. This anti-rationalist dogma, in among its teeming hatreds, loathed science, political calculation, the existence of objective truth and even simple biological truths. This dogma also touted the arbitrary assertions and revolutionary psychopathologies of Marxism as revealed truth. Anti-rationalism breeds confusion and fatalism- states that exist to a huge degree in British society. What is to be done? A return to our traditional virtues, especially the ones that require speaking the truth, would be a good start.