Moral courage in politics

Moral courage is a concept rarely used in politics. It is safe to assume that most (95% ?) partisans on the left and right, if they think about it at all, believe that they exercise lots of it and their political opponents exercise less or none. In a sense, they are both right. Most partisan definitions or conceptions obviously include most or all of what the believer believes and does, while rejecting everything else as false or worse.

Like the concept of service to the public interest, most people have their own definition for political terms of debate. Moral courage is an example. If they think about it at all, people live up to their definitions to a variable extent, occasionally to the extent of self-sacrifice.[1] That's just human nature. For better or worse, mostly worse, political discourse or debate and action is based on defined terms or concepts. Misunderstanding, distrust and intolerance is the typical result when definitions or concepts clash. In the standard two-party system and its way of doing governance, the most common result of clashing definitions is waste, inefficiency, partisan hate, public confusion, gridlock and diversion of public focus from the more important to the less important. Of course, that's desirable from the point of view of both parties and the corrupt[2] system[3] they built and defend. Public discord and gridlock serves the political status quo more than the public interest.

When it comes to defining key terms of debate, there are two basic options. One is to leave everyone to define terms such as moral courage as they wish and live with the miscommunication and waste. The other is to begin a process of definition. In the long run, that will best serve the public interest. The first option supports the two-party system and its corruption, waste and failure status quo. The second begins to clarify values that are relevant to serving the public interest and would begin a slow process of reducing misunderstanding and distrust. In turn, that should increase the efficiency of governance.

Moral courage defined

Dissident Politics (DP) defines moral courage in politics to mean rejection of political ideology and the biases that ideologies generate in favor of (i) unspun reality or fact and (ii) unbiased logic from the point of view of service to the public interest.

That may sound fairly simple, but it isn't. That is no different than nearly all contested issues in politics. Politics is rarely a matter of black and white regardless of how fervently ideologues on the left and right would dispute that for essentially any issue. The definition of service to the public interest can be disputed. The definition of moral courage can be disputed. Is moral courage limited to physical courage or does it include the courage to make compromises on behalf of the greater good, even if that means some or great harm to one's personal interests or beliefs? In politics, the more relevant aspect is self-sacrifice for the greater good or public interest.

For politics and politicians, exercise of moral courage means doing what is right for the public interest before doing what is right for the party's or the politician's interests, even if it means losing. That can happen. President Johnson knew that when he signed the civil rights act in 1964 that the democratic party would lose the South for at least a generation. According to Bill Moyers, Johnson's press secretary, President Johnson said: "I think we've just turned the South over to the Republican Party for the rest of my life, and yours." President Johnson was right, despite conservative ideologue denials of the facts. Hard core ideologues and partisans usually either distort or deny facts that undermines the advocate's opinion.

Evidence of that is the fact, not opinion, that such differences fall almost exclusively along partisan ideological lines. For example, most liberals believe humans cause climate change and most conservatives believe that is not true. That is the case despite the majority opinion of relevant scientists. Many conservatives still continue to believe that most climate scientists do not believe humans are relevant to climate change. Accepting uncomfortable facts for what they are takes moral courage. Facts often undermine or contradict ideology. Lacking moral courage makes such facts hard to accept but very easy to deny or distort.

Maybe average Americans are beginning to see the lack of moral courage in the ideologue's inability to face facts and logic. If so, then it is no wonder that the American public has lost trust in the federal government, or that many voters lost trust in both the democratic and republican parties. That is solid evidence that that average Americans are beginning to see the self-serving, corrupt two-party Emperor and its ideologies are naked. The loss of public trust in the face of moral cowardice is rational and fully justified.

Footnotes:
1. Of interest is asking how most liberals see the ultimate sacrifice of conservatives they rarely or never politically agree with and vice versa. It is probably the case that when the ultimate sacrifice is made, both sides will usually see merit in the final act, but when disagreements over politics arise, they usually see little or no merit in the disagreements or the opposition. That includes a willingness to call political opposition traitor, idiot and other colorful but incorrect epithets. That's just partisan politics as usual because that's just human nature as usual and how the two-party system plays on that basic human nature. Because they serve themselves first, neither side in politics (most or all hard core democrats and republicans) is willing to rise above crude, crass self-interest. For the hard cores, it is about winning, not governing: "It's all about winning, it's not about governing anymore.".

2. Corruption in politics (DP definition): Engaging in (1) standard illegal bribery or quid pro quo action by politicians, partisans and major campaign contributors in return for payment such as money, sex, tax breaks, laws that reduce competition or that favor a donor's personal or economic interests and (2) unwarranted service to a special interest in view of the public interest as defined previously. Major campaign donors are relevant: The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 was enacted to, e.g., (1) limit undue influence of wealthy individuals and special interest groups on the outcome of federal elections and (2) limit abuses by requiring public disclosure of campaign finances. Today, the conservative side of the two-party system fights those requirements, which is an example of partisan interests trumping service to the public interest.
3. Two-party system (DP definition): The democratic and republican parties, their higher level elected politicians (say, more that ~10,000 votes depending on the office and locale), their major campaign contributors and the partisan biased media and thought leaders/advocates, e.g., the editorial pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal (not the news pages of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal), the National Review Online, MSNBC, the CATO Institute and Fox News.

Politicians lie

Feb. 13, 2015: David Harsanyi, an intelligent and articulate senior editor at The Federalist, commented in a National Review Online (NRO) article[1] about lies that politicians, President Obama's lies in particular, tell the public to achieve their goals. The asserted purpose is to allow or coax the public to arrive at beliefs that the speaker believes are desired or necessary. Whether one believes that or not will vary from speaker to speaker, comment to comment, and listener to listener. Regardless, these comments merit everyone's consideration because they are so rare and candid. They are acutely revealing about how the two-party system thinks and operates with regard to the public.

In his NRO article Mr. Harsanyi says this:

"Politicians break their promises and modify their positions all the time, of course. They BS us about their opinions and carefully craft identities that are palatable to the average voter. When a person enters this political universe, we need to accept that most of the things we hear are, at best, poetic truths."

Two obvious conclusions are direct and simple: Absent personal knowledge to the contrary, there is no reason to trust or believe anything any politician in the two-party system says about anything. They could be speaking truth, lies[2] or some unknown mix of the two.

Although the quoted comments are aimed at a conservative audience as a prelude to a partisan attack on President Obama, the comments are astounding for their candor regarding two-party politics in general. As written, those comments apply to liberals, conservatives and all other players in politics, politicians, pundits, partisans and lobbyists alike. From the context of the full article, the quoted comments are not limited to the President or the democratic party or politicians. Those comments apply to two-party politics as usual. This takes nothing out of context or puts any words into Mr. Harsanyi's mouth. But, of course, everyone can and should decide that on their own.

Maybe this insider rhetoric reflects a reason that, continuing a long-term trend, voters register as independents (43%), more often than democrats (30%) or republicans (26%). That trend arguably reflects distrust and/or disagreement with both parties and/or their way of doing business. That interpretation is not inconsistent with comments such as these from another, more prominent insider, former CIA director and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta: "Members of Congress rarely legislate; they basically follow the money. . . . They're spending more and more time dialing for dollars. . . . It's all about winning, it's not about governing anymore."

Footnotes:
1.    National Review Online is a hard core right wing website of considerable influence. Its ideological content rarely wavers. According to a conservative source, NRO ranks among the top 20 conservative websites and 4,461 in Alexa ratings as of Q2 2014. Although there may be differences, the ideology of the Federalist seems to largely overlap NRO ideology.
2.    Lies in this context is a misleading and/or incomplete term. Spin, as defined previously, is an expansive but more accurate term.

The high cost of spin in politics

American freedoms include the freedom of speech. The U.S. constitution protects it with a broad, strong shield. With only some exceptions, for example, inciting violence, making false statements and child pornography, Americans can say just about anything about anyone or anything with no fear of legal retribution or lawsuit. That is a real freedom. Despite the constitutional shield's power, a debate is quietly going on about whether to broaden it further.

One of the two sides, hard core pro-free speech Libertarian ideologues, argue for reducing or eliminating at least some existing limits, especially when it comes to spending money in politics as a form of free speech. The other side, maybe less ideologically driven, argues that some limits are needed for civil society. Their proposals are modeled, more or less, on speech laws in some European countries.

Since 2010, the pro-speech side has been winning significant cases in the Supreme Court. Congress, being hopelessly divided and gridlocked, is mostly irrelevant. The court cases expand free speech by nullifying anti-corruption or campaign finance laws on free speech grounds. This is fundamentally shifts power in political debate from average individuals (and candidates to some extent) to entities and individuals willing and able to use wealth for political speech, much of which contains deceptive content. In the process, laws intended to limit political corruption from special interest money were overturned as unconstitutional limits on free speech. The roots of such anti-corruption laws go back a century. Modern successor laws, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and counterpart state laws, are being successfully struck down on free speech-based constitutional grounds.

Free speech: What is the cost-benefit?

Given the shifting legal landscape, it is reasonable to raise the question about cost-benefit of free speech in politics, including spin.[1] Spin is a subset of protected free speech and in Dissident Politics (DP) opinion, it dominates political discourse. DP's starting assumption is that the costs of spin to the public interest outweigh its benefits. The assumption is based on the beliefs that (i) political policy debates and choices will be better in the long run when spin is not used to convince citizens to choose among competing options and (ii) debate winners should win on the merits, not on the spin because that is the American way, or, the way it should be. However, parts or all of the two-party system (TPS)[2] may not share that opinion.

Maybe some or most TPS participants and supporters would argue that political debate should be dominated by spin because if the public relies on unspun fact and unbiased logic, (i) the public interest is not well-served and (ii) our elected political leaders are elected to get what they want and whatever they want does in fact best serve the public interest.[3] Examples of political spin include its probable use to get American public opinion behind World War II, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Some would argue that all of those wars were preceded by clever spin on the public to rally public support. Roosevelt bluntly admitted he misled congress and the public to get America into WWII and that it was for their own good.

Assuming allegations of pro-war spin are true, did that spin benefit or harm the public interest? Maybe there was net benefit. Maybe not. Maybe it was necessary. Maybe not, but if not, think hard and carefully if that is really true. In the case of WWII, wasn't it inevitable that the U.S. would be drawn in sooner or later? If later, would that have made a noticeable difference in the outcome? Maybe. Maybe not. No one can know. What is the public interest net balance from a possibly earlier entry into WWII via lying vs. damage to public trust from political lies?

Regardless, if some or most politicians and/or partisans think that spin confers a net benefit on the public, then they owe it to the American people to tell them that their rhetoric is spin intended to deceive us for our own good. In that case, we all might as well stop voting, walk away from politics and let the TPS do whatever it wants because it will be good for us. That's not a very appetizing choice, is it?

Another cost of spin in politics includes loss of public trust in federal governing institutions. That makes governing harder and less efficient. TPS rhetoric has sunk to the point that even some politicians and other prominent TPS players openly voice unwarranted disrespect or false accusations for politicians in the opposing party. That reflects disrespect for their own system and American voters who put the opposition in office. No wonder public trust in government is low. It should be. Even the TPS doesn't trust itself.

The bottom line

If one steps outside the TPS's rhetoric and looks objectively, the costs of political spin are far higher than either side is willing to admit.[4] The costs arguably include trillions of wasted tax dollars, tens of thousands of needlessly lost lives, long-term erosion or stagnation of the American standard of living and a drag on annual GDP growth, maybe 0.5% - 0.7%.[5] Despite the costs and lack of convincing rationale for using it, both parties, their politicians, partisans and the remaining parts of the TPS ruthlessly and relentlessly spin the public with little or no regard for damage to the public interest. If nothing else, incessant reliance on spin over merit and honest debate reflects the complete intellectual bankruptcy of the TPS, the ideologies it is based on and the participants who keep the Leviathan alive and well.

Footnotes:
1.    As explained before, DP defines spin as lies, deception, misinformation, withholding, distorting or denying inconvenient facts or arguments, unwarranted character or motive assassination, and, conscious or not, use of fact or logic that is distorted by ideology and/or self-interest. Distortion of reality and logic by ideology, self-interest or both, is common and has been rigorously documented by years of research. DP accepts that research as basically accurate and valid, although it is still ongoing and incomplete. Future research may refine our understanding, but is very unlikely to negate existing research findings that ideology and self-interest have great power to subconsciously distort fact and therefore logic, i.e., garbage in, garbage out.
2.    DP defines the two-party system as the democratic and republican parties, their politicians, their ideologically aligned or affiliated pundits and think tanks, major campaign or other political cause or PAC contributors, lobbyists working for those contributors and partisan media. Although the lines are not sharp and content is not always obviously biased or flawed, the partisan media includes outlets such as Fox News, MSNBC, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and websites such as Huffington Post, The Blaze and National Review Online. The TPS does not include average Americans, roughly defined as people who engage in typical levels of political participation, non-voters or minor campaign contributors. The partisan media does not include outlets that, although maybe ideologically biased to some degree, rely on mostly on unspun reality or facts and logic not unduly flawed by ideological bias or self-interest. Non-partisan media includes the Economist magazine, the news pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Los Angeles Times, CNN, The Week, factcheck.org, politifact.com and flackcheck.org (a FactCheck-Annenberg Foundation joint project). Politifact.com has been accused of being a conservative spin or shill operation set up by the conservative Tampa Bay Times newspaper. If that is true, DP has been fooled because Politifact appears to be even-handed and grounded in unspun reality in criticizing both the left and right. But, as one observer has pointed out, even fact checkers make mistakes, presumably including mistakes that arise at least in part from the subconscious power of fact checker's ideology to screw things up. Human error arises because the mind human is not a perfect cognition machine. Although most partisans 'know' they are solidly grounded in reality and that their opposition is delusional at best and insane at worst. Many or most hard core partisan ideologues use that false argument as their rationale to dismiss facts and logic they dislike or cannot rationalize away. This all boils down to a fight over core values, but that topic is for another post.
3.    There is some evidence that at least some politicians are willing to leave what would appear to be crucial aspects of governing to political leaders and quiet, powerful players in the TPS. For example, some politicians don't bother to read legislation they vote on, preferring to leave that to their party's leaders, lobbyists or whoever it is that does those unpleasant legislating things.
4.    Other costs of political spin include fostering (i) distrust between the left and right by appeal to emotion, primarily fear, anger and hate, instead of neutral argument over unbiased fact and reason and (ii) reluctance or refusal of partisans or ideologues to accept unspun facts that undermine their ideology or self-interest. Rejection of fact is bipartisan. It cripples effective governance. It is usually easy to know whether the politics of a partisan is liberal or conservative simply by asking a few questions they are reluctant or refuse to answer. The reluctance stems from answers that are uncomfortable for ideological reasons. For example, pro-abortion liberals tend to avoid answering the question 'Is a 20-week old unborn child a human being?', while anti-abortion conservatives generally have no discomfort answering the question because the answer does not undermine their anti-abortion ideology or belief. For ideologues, reality (facts) is often hard to reconcile with their ideology and many often do not face it honestly and instead, subconscious or not, deny or distort uncomfortable reality to make it palatable. Politics based on that kind of flawed perception and thinking is second rate and wasteful at best. Ideological politics doesn't serve the public interest nearly as well as facing reality despite the psychological discomforts. The most obvious conclusion is that ideology is bad for politics and the public interest. This boils down to a fight over core values, which is a topic is for another post.
5.    Obviously DP cannot prove the costs, because no one has done a serious, fact-based, unbiased assessment. On the other hand, no one can disprove them either for the same reason.

Federal debt; military bases

Federal debt

Feb. 3, 2015: The Wall Street Journal reported that a White House analysis projects that interest payments on the national debt, about $210 billion for 2015, will increase to about $600 billion by 2021 and about $790 billion by 2025. The 2021 amount is roughly equal to projected defense and nondefense discretionary spending for that year. The projections suggest that the competition between debt service obligations, defense spending and discretionary spending will be fierce.

Under the circumstances, one might think that Congress and the President would instantly jump at any opportunity to increase revenues without raising taxes or passing major legislation. Unfortunately, if one though that, one would be wrong. Each year Congress knowingly allows hundreds of billions in tax revenues to go uncollected. IRS net tax gap (tax evasion) data for 2001 was $290 billion and $385 billion in 2006, an increase of $19 billion/year. At that rate of increase, the tax gap, Congress' annual gift to tax cheats, would be $537 billion for 2014. To collect most of that, all Congress would need to do is to increase the IRS's budget for tax law enforcement. Instead of enforcing existing law, Congress intentionally limits the IRS enforcement budget, thereby allowing tax cheats to steal hundreds of billions each year from honest U.S. taxpayers. This bipartisan game has been going on for years. Not surprisingly, the situation undermines public trust in the tax system and in the rule of law. Obviously, some of the spending that the lost tax revenue could have paid for is financed by debt.

A reasonable conclusion is that Congress annually permits hundreds of billions of theft from taxpayers and resulting added debt because it reflects Congressional incompetence and/or it serves the interests of people in Congress, e.g., pandering for re-election, corrupt payback to campaign contributors or whatever else the case may be.

Military installations

Feb. 7, 2015: The New York Times reported that Pentagon officials have asked Congress for permission to inventory all military installations with the goal of shedding unneeded installations and saving billions in operation costs each year. The Pentagon has about 562,000 facilities worldwide and they cover about 24.7 million acres. That is about the size of Virginia. Congress blocks attempts to allow the DoD to do the inventory. The NYT article implies that Congress prevents an inventory because doing that could be the first step leading to base closings in affected Congressional voting districts.

A reasonable conclusion is, as the NYT implies, that Congress annually defends billions in Pentagon waste because it reflects their incompetence and/or it serves their interests, e.g., pandering for re-election, corrupt payback to campaign contributors or whatever else the case may be.