Quoted below, for example, are a couple of paragraphs from a column by Will, published in August of 2013, entitled 'Taming the Tax Code Beast' --
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-taming-the-tax-code-beast.html
...
At the 2004 Republican convention, George W. Bush vowed to “simplify” the tax code’s “complicated mess.” The convention roared approval. Next, he promised new complexities — tax benefits for “opportunity zones” in depressed areas, a tax credit to encourage businesses to offer health savings accounts. Another roar of approval.
Since the 1986 simplification, the code has been re-complicated more than 15,000 times at the behest of Americans who simultaneously praise the principle of simplification. All other taxes could be abolished if we could tax the nation’s cognitive dissonance.
...
At the 2004 Republican convention, George W. Bush vowed to “simplify” the tax code’s “complicated mess.” The convention roared approval. Next, he promised new complexities — tax benefits for “opportunity zones” in depressed areas, a tax credit to encourage businesses to offer health savings accounts. Another roar of approval.
Since the 1986 simplification, the code has been re-complicated more than 15,000 times at the behest of Americans who simultaneously praise the principle of simplification. All other taxes could be abolished if we could tax the nation’s cognitive dissonance.
...
And here are a couple of quotes from Will, from an interview with Reasons's Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, published in September of 2013, entitled 'George Will's Libertarian Evolution: Q&A on Obama, Syria, & the Power of Choice' --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POphmn25gVs
http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/09/13/george-will-on-syria-obama-why-hes-becom
...
(at 11:45) "I wrote the other day that if we could tax American's cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, they're human beings. They want a high services, low tax, omnipresent, omniprovident, cheap welfare state. "
...
(at 45:00) "The conservatives who are in elective office are looking over their shoulder at a deeply conflicted electorate, and again it's the cognitive dissonance. The American people rhetorically are Jeffersonians, operationally they're Hamiltonians."
...
But there is an important problem with using the phrase 'cognitive dissonance' in this way. Cognitive dissonance is roughly defined as, the psychological conflict that results from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.
So without some mental conflict or anxiety, there can't be said to be cognitive dissonance.
But notice that an overwhelming majority of Americans are in solid agreement about the bulk of what the government does, and express no reservations in supporting it — there's certainly no evidence of widespread psychological conflict.
What is the largest government activity? Transfer payments. Compare the numbers in these two tables, to see that over 60% of federal expenditures in 2011 were payments to individuals for various reasons --
http://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2011/compendia/statab/131ed/tables/12s0469.pdf
http://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2011/compendia/statab/131ed/tables/12s0474.pdf
This 'Death and Taxes' poster also provides a good overview of government spending --
http://www.timeplots.com
So what's the essential point of agreement among Americans, for which they advocate without reservation? It's obvious, since it's repeated in some form over and over again in the press most days — Americans want the cost of government to be paid by others, and they've created a comforting system of rationalization to justify their desire as moral.
From the establishment of Social Security in 1935, to the protests over highly taxed engineers riding in taxed buses which use public infrastructure those taxes helped pay for, to a multimillionaire writer receiving acclaim for claiming that success is mostly luck, the same petty dishonest drumbeat has been sounding for decades: there are others who are better off than me, and it is moral to force them to subsidize me.
To describe the American people as 'rhetorically Jeffersonian' as Will did in the Reason interview is pretty absurd, given the dominant social trend of the last 90 years or so — apart from a small numerically insignificant minority, no one is arguing for more freedom. The current size and function of the Federal government stands as eloquent testimony to that statement.
Cognitive dissonance?
Cognitive dissonance in the electorate regarding the conflict between liberty and an ever expanding government, would imply that Americans have at least some recognition of the damage caused by sacrificing liberty to greater government control.
Where is there any evidence at all, that Americans in any significant number have that recognition?
It is correct to say that Americans are largely hypocritical for pretending to be freedom loving, while at the same time sacrificing all the freedoms they claim to love — but there is no evidence that Americans experience any conflict or ambivalence regarding the government's principle activity, which is to manage a large group of entitlement programs, and make transfer payments from groups seen as 'stronger' to those seen as 'weaker'.
Social Security, for example, is referred to as 'the third rail of American politics' for precisely this reason — not only do Americans feel no conflict about giving this important area of responsibility for their lives over to government (and forcing everyone else to do the same), they're so without conflict about it, it is impossible to even discuss its problems, because it is seen as hateful and immoral to do so. Raising the issue of Social Security reform typically provokes some version of this reaction: 'Why do you want to throw grandma under the bus?'
Consider this demonstration of the same attitude. Walter Williams gave a talk in February of 2012, entitled "The Legitimate Role of Government in a Free Society." In his talk, Williams repeatedly emphasized the moral aspect of being free from coercion, and the immorality of forcibly using another person to serve your purposes, and yet the first question from the audience was to question the morality of freedom, as if Williams didn't discuss it. Here's the question from the audience member --
" ... the very foundation of liberty rests in a central idea. It has to do with interests, it involves self-interest, if you will, but that self-interest is always defined with a moral foundation.
[supposedly the questioner is quoting James Madison here] Interest doesn't have any bearing, unless you qualify interest with every necessary moral ingredient.
... and that moral ingredient has to do with the idea of recognize other human beings as human beings and treating them as such, so there's a real positive moral component I think that's the basis of liberty in America, and I'm wondering if you would speak to that ..."
Note that the first question from the audience member wasn't for some clarification or specific application from Williams of the principles he was describing — she asked that he readdress the main point of his talk. Her question implied a concern for the moral justification of liberty, but Williams repeatedly stressed the moral justification for liberty in his talk, so the act of posing the question treated that moral justification as unimportant and even meaningless. Clearly, using one person to serve the purposes of another, as Williams put it, didn't resonate with her as a critical issue in defining liberty.
The important point to notice here is that the audience member expressed a cultural norm — a dominant belief that is shared not only by the vast majority of Americans, but by most people around the world — which is the belief that liberty is inherently immoral, and so the loss of liberty caused by government is not a problem, it's a moral imperative.
This is what makes the use of the phrase 'cognitive dissonance' so inappropriate in describing the average person's view of freedom and government — the average person feels no conflict in their belief in a large government that restricts freedom — in the dominant view, that's precisely the point.
The average person feels cognitive dissonance when they do not support government restrictions of liberty, since, with very few exceptions among individuals, an altruist ethic is universally viewed as the only valid morality — as long as there is some vague notion of serving some supposed 'common good' to justify any particular government coercion, the average person has the feeling that they're being immoral if they oppose it, when it's their support for coercion that makes them immoral.
If Americans felt cognitive dissonance at 'wanting incompatible things', government would not have grown into a monster, attempting to provide the 'omnipresent, omniprovident, cheap welfare state', that George Will describes. To Americans, these things are not incompatible — they're moral.
That the welfare state is 'cheap' is completely irrelevant to a majority of middle class Americans, because that majority has convinced themselves that there is always a class of people that is better off than them, and that it's moral for that class to be forced to pay any government costs that the classes beneath them cannot easily afford.
Hence the widely held belief that there is such a thing as a right to health care — and no one adds the qualification, 'but only if it's cheap'.
This is what makes this system of rationalization so firmly entrenched — Americans have found a way to make the desire for a free lunch seem moral, and so the vast majority are perfectly comfortable in a belief in the acceptability of irresponsibility, since under the altruist ethic that has been accepted as morality, need is the only critical factor.
Those who can see this problem shouldn't expect this dominant belief to change anytime soon (if ever). It would take a couple of exceptional generations to even put a dent in it, and given the state monopolized educational system, both in America and around the world, there are huge impediments an individual has to overcome to even have the chance of discovering a rational view of ethics, never mind actually understanding such a view.
See Chapter 10 - 'Collectivized Ethics', in Ayn Rand's 'The Virtue of Selfishness', for a brilliant discussion of this issue —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OvL1_89QDs
No comments:
Post a Comment