A Plea for Restraint

You Really Want Me to Listen to You?

I’m a somewhat patient person. I’ve taught philosophy and religion to about 10,000 people who were rank beginners in each area. So I’ve gotten used to people who think they know more than they do, and I know they’ll make progress just as I am still making progress in mastering more of what I don’t know—which is a lot.

But I’ve about had it with the media experts shooting off their mouths with bombastic dogmatism when they ought to know they are going way beyond the evidence.

Recently there were lots of blowhards saying that there is no tie between between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, between the government of Iraq and al Queda.

To begin with, people with much less education than these pontificators know you cannot prove a negative. Would they be cautious and just say there is no solid evidence of a connection? No. They thunder as though they know for certain.

Then a week later the New York Times, one of the worst overstaters in my judgment, finds that there is evidence of a link between the Iraq regime and Osama’s people. They have to contradict their bold statements of the previous week. This is supposedly the best paper in America?

The Bush administration ignored warnings that Saddam’s former general should not be leading the new Iraqi army in the fight for Fallujah. “We know what we’re doing.” Then they find they got the wrong guy—the names were similar. Pretty lame. Even scary.

Then Ted Kennedy (I’ll confess that I’ve lived in Massachusetts since birth and have never voted for any Kennedy) says he knows Bush deliberately lied about Iraq. He knows Bush was out for oil. He knows Bush wanted revenge for Saddam’s attempt on Bush 41.

The truth is there is no way for Kennedy to know any of that.

Here’s a challenge. Just sit back and listen as objectively as you can to all this political blather. Ask yourself “Is there any way this person, this paper, this talking head can know any of this he’s saying?” Is the speaker being tentative about what he should be tentative about? Or is he way out beyond reasonable evidence?

I have a hunch about what caused us to fall for this hype. It started happening sometime after I got out of college four decades ago. Then we used to say, “I think this or that.” Then we’d be expected to give some reasons to back it up. Now people say “I feel this or that.” We don’t need to prove feelings—they’re just there. So if someone has strong emotions about something that seems to justify outrageous claims.

What other charitable explanation is there for some of the nonsense that often passes for public debate on the issues of the times? Of course, I’ll be modest. I could be wrong.